Making the World Weirder for You and Your Kids

Tonight was kinda fun.  After working out and working on the house, I elected to attend Dr. Sketchy's anti-art life drawing night, featuring a local burlesque performer and friend, Annie Cherry.  The event was held in a loft on the fourth floor of a West Bottoms building, and replete with a kitchen and full bath, it sure felt like it was someone's home.  And I think it was.

Naturally, being on the fourth floor in a place without air-conditioning, the Dr. Sketchy thing doesn't tend to happen in the summer, because ick.  HOT.  No problem for March, you say?  NOT SO!  With our unseasonably warm weather, the first hour or so was...sticky.  (Which may have helped Annie's costume maintenance, since there was a fair amount of glitter festooned about her decolletage.)  Luckily, it cooled down a smidge soon enough.

Then, all I had to concern myself with was the overwhelming stench of le pot.  Yes, yes, I KNOW.  Artists [heart] drugs, especially le pot.  But, since I've never even tried that stuff, my senses go a little nutty, and I start convincing myself I've gotten a contact high from the chair I'm sitting on.  It didn't really happen, but anyway, my feeble mind worries.

I didn't stay the whole night, tonight being a 'school' night and all, so I took my leave at 8:45.  6-8:45 for a 6 dollars cover with some food and drink available plus a DJ?  Worth it for the experience and to create a bit.

As with all life drawing classes I do, I have SOME sketches I LOVE that I want to show off and turn into something else grander, tempered by a few sketches that I angrily cross out in disgust.  :)  I'll post some, if I can find some appropriate to do so.  It was a burlesque night, after all.  Items of clothing came off.

Today will mark almost the (not bitter) end of the major house projects. Today, we install doors and baseboard trim in the basement. It's the LAST room, folks.

We honestly won't know what to do with ourselves when it's over. Socialize? Make art and music?


Read?

And it's finally dropped into single digits. Warm Winter.

This month we'll have the 16th anniversary of Derek's and my first date, so awwwwwww. Plus, he turns 42 in a few weeks, with me 40 the day after that. And, this year, there shall be CAKE. Oh, yes, there shall be. Actually, there may be two cakes, since we're apparently inviting the entire world to our house. Fun!

Forty! ACK!

Even though Derek didn't feel the greatest, with some stomach thing, we had a fairly good time last night, for our once-in-a-great-while splurge kind of evening.




View from our room:

...was a telephoto lens for the digital camera. Yay! It's allowed me to take some shots with a greater depth of field, keeping more things in focus.



But, it's ALSO allowed me to get shots of the woodland creatures that live around me here in Snow White's forest from a distance where they will actually remain still for the shot. Case in point, this cedar waxwing:



Thank you, Santa!

I mean, I GET that Ed Benes likes women. I GET that he likes their rumps. But, Newsarama put up a preview of #5, which included the cover and the first 5 pages of interiors. And, in those first 5 pages, we're treated to this:




I mean, YES, I fully understand the whole nature of comics is impossibly-proportioned metahumans running around in all-too-revealing spandex underthings, but there comes a point when some of it seems just excessive, right? I mean, I guess we'll never see a comic starring Namor in his little Speedo costume where there are gratuitous butt or crotch shots every other panel, will we?

Incidentally, this is why I never felt Benes was a good fit for Birds of Prey. Too. Much. Cheesecake.

One of the shelves behind my drafting table. Yes, that is a rotating platform that Darkseid is on.

My husband asked me if I would ever include HIM in my daily self-portraits, or if it had to be ONLY me.

Well, DUH. Love him. He's actually been in the background of one of them before, off in the garage, but this time I included him in the subject. :) Beautiful fall walk in a nature sanctuary. Didn't get to see any deer, but we see a lot in our yard every night, so that's okay.

So, I'm off to Canada for work next week. Found out today, so wow!
I'll be in Toronto almost all week, so I'ma gonna treat it like a vacation that work pays for. We at the Glitter Factory are remodelling some of our stores, and a co-worker and I get to go help! Yay!

I would say, "OMGZ, this will be my first time in Canadia, so OMG YAY!" except that I *have* been to Canada before, if you count just barely driving over the national boundary to the other side at Niagara Falls in my family station wagon when I was a kid. No? Doesn't count?

Okay, then...OMGZ, this will be my FIRST TIME in Canadia!

Seriously, though, after the week leading up to the Kauffman Center opening, interspersed with a Human League concert, and followed by driving to St. Louis to see Erasure (Two things: 1)WOO! 80s! and B) There was a fist fight at the merch table, and I was involved only because the guy getting punched got knocked into me), then a weekend of finishing drywall in my studio, then a normal work week (which is NEVER truly normal), and now this? I'm gonna need a drink.

We're rehearsing for the big deal opening of the new Performing Arts Center (um, this thing --http://kauffman.kansascity.com/)



...anyway, yeah, so we're rehearsing some stuff for later (Brahms Requiem, which I LOVE), and into our rehearsal walks PLACIDO DOMINGO. He sits down and listens for a bit then tells us we sound lovely. We applaud him in thanks, he leaves, then about 15 minutes later, Patti Lupone sneaks in to sit and listen because "Placido told me you sound so good." Then she gushed about the movement we sang for her.

Oy. OMG. Um, okay, so all these nights of 3+ hour choir rehearsals plus my normal work schedule so these folks could listen in to our rehearsal and say nice things? And, then we get to be IN a concert with Itzhak Perlman and Diana Krall on Saturday?

I mean, yay! I LOVE being able to do music, and love to be part of something truly GRAND. And i SO called my Mom as soon as rehearsal was over to tell her -- her master's degree in piano performance had such an impact on my childhood and what I like to do now.

Wow. But, am I TIRRRRED now. And I get to see Human League tomorrow night.

On Sunday I shall rest.