Mr. Bud, the previous owner of our house had a highly eccentric view of home repairs. Even after six years, we're still discovering some of his notions.

Today my husband and a friend moved a fridge out of storage and into our kitchen. Since it has an ice-maker, my husband connected the plumbing and then found that when Mr. Bud had put the valve in on the pipe, he'd put it in so that it faced the drywall. As in, no you can't reach it - there are studs on each side, drywall behind it and a pipe in front.

So my husband went and bought a cunning little door and frame, and next week, he'll knock a hole in the drywall, put the door in and we'll have access to the valve. It's in the laundry - I can live with this.

P.S. For those of you wondering how Mr. Bud accessed the valve - he put a hole in the drywall. At some point before he sold the house, he turned the valve off and patched the drywall. The only thing that surprises me about this is that he patched the drywall.

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Or something.

For what it's worth if you go to http://www.askkids.com, type in elephants and click on images, one of my paintings - Big Game Animals 2.01 - comes up on the first page.

I also notice that Amphibians Dream of Flight has made it to the second page of images for Frogs. Some kids are going to have some awfully strange notions about frogs, I think.

Posted via email from organ-kean's posterous

Laundry, Finances, Dishwashing, Walking, Bread-baking, Web-mastering (my site - due for a new one soon) and

 YES!

 Painting

 Need to go pet cats now. That's next on my to-do list.

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I just had a painting juried in to the Puyallup (for non-locals, that's the Washington State Fair - the biggest one this side of the Mississippi).

 I never get in juried exhibits.

 Well - maybe it's I never used to get in juried exhibits. :)

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Never go on a trip with three geeks and one internet connection.

"Please pass me the brain."

Everyone has an elephant in the living room; mine is visible and I know its name.

"No longer a slave to ambition, I laugh at the world and its shams - I sit here in my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams!"
from a real song taught by Ivar Haglund to Pete Seger (or the other way around) referring to life on Puget Sound.


Which is a good thing. At my dr's appt today I found out something I didn't know - given the amount of iron in clams, you should be able to harvest them just by dragging a magnet along the beach.

As it is - that figure out at Alki in the fog, with the bucket and a clam gun over the shoulder? That's me, getting breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. And the occasional snack.

If you haven't googled today, do so.

The art show just closed. Some sales, both prints and originals, so not bad - but also not the best show I've had here. I rec'd some nice compliments on the growing group of penguins - and the latest penguin watercolor, "Professor Fishmort and His Pinniped Repelling Ray Gun (With His Assistant Muffy)" was one of the ones that sold.

The panels this year have been better than sometimes, both the ones I was one and the ones that I went to see. Two stand out; The Evil Temptress and Concept Art. I particularly liked the second; it was useful to hear from working artists what employers in that field are looking for.

I also spent some time looking at everything in the art show. It's a really good show this year. Irene Gallo, art director at Tor, who's a special guest this year, had a row of panels where she curated a show of covers she has commissioned. It's a really impressive set of work. Johnna Klukas, the woodworker displayed a marvelous wall piece based on one of the most beautiful slices of burled wood I've seen. Mary Kay Kare displayed a colorful necklace of fish beads of all kinds with fish vertebrae used as the spacer beads - alas, not for sale.

It's been really cold here; I was out once on Friday to walk a block or so, and well, I'd forgotten how really cold it could get. I will be glad to get home, to climate instead of weather.

After a not exciting plane flight (a little mild turbulence when landing), I grabbed a cab with the people I was sharing a room with and headed out for the hotel. It was much easier than usual, as I'd shipped the trunk.

The hotel is still very nice, it now has a bar/restaurant in addition to the dining room, and it has the cutest little leaf shaped soaps.

That's the good news.

The bad news?

I left a painting (a big one) at home. My glasses broke (metal fatigue, of all things, in an ear piece), and I snagged and ran my favorite tights. The hotel is charging me an obscene amount of money - as in as much as it cost to ship it - just to accept shipment on the trunk ($60 if you're interested).

Things need to start getting better fast.

(Oh, there was one other good thing. The hotel shop was selling lovely shawls for $10.00 each. I have two, now. Faded purple to lavendar, and a burgundy one.)

And I will have three new paintings (as in never shown anywhere) in the art show, and all but one of them will be new to this convention.

Back to work now.

Other people get purebred puppies with names longer than their tales; our pets wander in from the alley, or are the finest of barn kittens.

Our new pet is no different - over the last few weeks, we've acquired a feral traffic cone. It's been hiding out by the garbage cans ever since the big snow we had in December. We don't see any name on it, so we don't know who it belongs too.

It's been suggested that we take it into the Seattle DOT and see if it's been chipped, but I called them and they said in our neighborhood, it was likely dumped, and not really worth getting a carrier for it, etc.

It's a pity - it's a friendly little thing with a bright orange coat and two bands of reflecting tape - quite charming actually. I wonder if it was the orange coat that caused it to be dumped? We were over in Bellevue last weekend and the fashion there seems to be for light gray traffic cones. That just isn't right. People shouldn't expect their pets to be fashion accessories.

It also seems pretty smart. I expect I could teach it tricks with no effort at all.

So one of my errands tomorrow will be to the pet store for a traveling container, a harness and leash, and two real pet bowls to replace the cottage cheese containers. I wonder if they have Purina Traffic Cone Chow?

We went to the Puyallup yesterday. This is different than just going to Puyallup; the Puyallup is local shorthand for the Washington State Fair. Among other things, we saw Dexter cattle - a very small, easy-keeping breed from Ireland, and some American Cream Draft horses - as my husband put it, a breed with a bad sense of timing, as they originated in the 1930s. Really good looking however. I wouldn't mind having one of them around for moving things, and maybe breeding heavyweight saddle horses.

I also found out something I'd wondered about for nearly twenty years - I now know what The Ugliest Bird in the World was. The original UBW was a member of a mixed flock that used to live in the SW corner of Greenlake when I used to live there, and rode around the Lake before work during the summer. It looked like the result of a turkey-goose cross, not necessarily getting the good parts of either.

There was one at the fair yesterday and now I know why it wasn't in any of the bird books I consulted. They were all for wild birds, and this was a Muscovy duck. I am comforted by the fact the UBW was not the last member of an extinct species.

This morning is housekeeping; we'll have a house guest for Foolscap later this week, and the last Foolscap meeting before the con this afternoon. There will be further meetings this week, but those will be work meetings - put the program book together and such. Next Friday is F-Day, and it looks to be fun; Michael Kaluta and Esther Friesner are our GOHs this year and we have a new hotel in Redmond. I'm not in the art show, alas - we've run out of panel space as we've become more popular. But I will have a demo table Saturday, so if you're there, please stop by. I will have a few things for sale; my new book, some prints, etc.

Or a zap'em ray, or a nanotech, or a fairy godmother or something that can kill the common cold.

I didn't need this cold with its attendant bronchitis. Neither did my husband. He didn't need the sinus infection that followed, either. But we both seem to be recovering anyhow, but it's put me behind on almost everything - housekeeping, reading, exercise - and, most urgently - prep for Comic-Con and Denvention.

The book for Comic-Con arrived though! It's gorgeous, and a big thank you to scarlettina and Kaja Foglio for blurbage. My family (a tough but kindly bunch of art critics all) likes it. Whee!



If you're interested, you can order a copy here.

And I finished the order form for special orders today - so should I get any, I won't forget important information.

Next - matt cutting, framing, packing, running in circles! Oh, and a Foolscap meeting next week. Eep!

The Challenge:


Post 3 things you've done in your lifetime that you don't think anybody else on your friends list has done.
See if anybody else responds with "I've done that." If they have, you need to add another!(2.b., 2.c., etc...)
Have your friends cut & paste this into their journal to see what unique things they've done in their life.

I have:

1. Rec'd fan mail from six continents - still working on Antarctica.
2. Found an ametrine on a beach - just a small one, but all the same.
3. Been kissed by a seal. Fishy, but true.

So, Saturday, I worked on a website for a client, finished a sketchbook for ComicCon and sent it to the printer, and then went on errands with the Amazing Mr. B - bank, mail box (check, yeah!), and the local Hancock Fabrics which is going out of business for a couple of years until they get their new building built. We were hoping to find upholstery fabric for Mr. B's kneeling chair, but we waited too long. So we went down to the sale at JoAnn's and found just what we wanted, but perhaps we paid a little more. By then we were hungry so we went to Anthony's in Des Moines for salads and fresh strawberry lemonade. After that, we were tired so we went home.

Sunday we met with cyberangel and her husband for brunch at Endolyne Joes - fabulous mushroom omelette after which we all went to the Foolscap meeting. We had unfamiliar faces! We had more people than could sit around the table! That's a really good feeling - I'm happy to see that other people that I don't even know (or at least not very well) think that Foolscap is a good time investment. A lot of discussion followed, including what we should do for tenth anniversary stuff (yes, LD, you cannot escape the cake!), and new ideas for promotion. Our new volunteers had a lot of good ideas in that area. Afterwards a fair chunk of the committee went out to dinner at Atlas (very much a Chow Foods day!) and we finally got home by 10:30.

Monday was back at work and Monday evening was Silent Movie Mondays - a vast improvement over last week's movie. This week was El Gaucho - and there were parts where I didn't always know what would happen next. On the way home we stopped by B&N and I picked up a much needed black bag - this one in messenger style, with a great design in two shades of grey silk-screened on the flap.

Tuesday was not supposed to be busy - really it wasn't! We picked up pills at the pharmacy (twofer sale on vitamins) and then Mr. B. suggested a little dinner at Alki as it was a glorious evening. Unfortunately, everyone else in West Seattle thought that was a good idea too and there was absolutely no parking anywhere. So we retreated to the Admiral District and Blackbirds, where I had a thunderingly good sweet pea and morel rissoto and a fruit tart. The filling was wonderful, but the crust needed work - or perhaps I should say, less work - much less. The service was exquisite, and we didn't hurry at all.

When we got home - remember Saturday, when I sent the book to the printers? All the last three days, we'd been trading files back and forth, fixing errors, but there was one persistent one I could not figure out. So I sat down with Acrobat and went through the whole thing with a fine tooth comb and finally found what the problem was. I didn't get to bed very early.

So everything was going along swimmingly until this morning when I got up. I mean, I think I got up - at least my eyes opened. But my head hurt abominably, my muscles ached, and the rest of me didn't bear mentioning. I stayed home (darn - work had hit an interesting bit again) and napped most of the day ( I will not divulge the rest of my activities - you don't want to know the details, trust me). Woke up about 3:30 feeling much improved. So have I just been overdoing it? got bit by a minor bug? yearly migraine? ran into whatever herb it is that disagrees with me? who knows? But it better not happen again, 'cause I got lots more to do than just nap with the cats.

The plumber has been and gone. He didn't have to cut into the main stack; evidently he had a few more tricks up his sleeve than yesterday's plumber. He thinks the problem is that we have a bow in our drain. Whether we have to do anything about it will depend on whether we have anymore trouble with it.

Both the cats are upset but again for differant reasons. The older cat is mourning the loss of career opportunities ("I coulda been a plumber") while the younger one continues to be upset that I didn't show enough sense to hide under the bed with her ("Anything could have happened Mom!")

I'm looking forward to a normal day tomorrow.

I am now trapped, waiting for the plumbers to arrive. Trapped, with two cats trapped in the upstairs bedroom, neither of whom is happy.

Cat 1: "Let me out, let me out! I want to meet the plumbers, ride around in their truck, wear my own little tool belt, be the Amazing Plumbing Cat and have George Lucas make movies about my adventures!"

Cat2: "Hide me! Hide me! The horrible cat-eating plumber zombies are coming to get me! Me, personally! I'm getting under the bed and if you knew what was good for you, you would too!"

It's going to be a long day.

Like plumbing. Last night after a several hour computer session, I stepped out of the downstairs bedroom and into the laundry room. The floor looked funny; like it had suddenly gotten leprosy. When I went to turn the lights on, the truth became clear - the laundry was flooded.

Well, not much that I really liked/wanted/needed was damaged, and the flooding didn't spread into the carpeted rooms, remaining in the tile-on-concrete laundry. That's the last of the good news though.

bedii and I spent about 12:30 AM to 3:00 AM Sunday morning mopping the laundry room floor and moving stuff and setting wet stuff out to dry and mopping some more....

At that point we thought the washer was broken. Sunday morning I researched washers and washer problems on the web. Then I took my shower - and that's when bedii watched my shower come bubbling up through the drain in the middle of the laundry. Oops. Washing machine's OK. Drains, however, are not.

So we go to brunch with my family (we have a good sense of priorities, we do) and called a plumber when we got home. He could not get into any of the drains' access points. He could not get the snake-thingy to go down through the upstairs toilet. He and a partner and special equipment are coming back tomorrow to cut into our stack and make a new access point to our drains. The stack is cast iron, btw. Then they'll send a snake in with a camera, so we can see what's wrong with the drains.

This is getting expensive - and I'm not getting paid tomorrow cause I'll be watching plumbers. I'm beginning to appreciate the interaction of water and gravity like I never have before.

P.S. The cats just sat through the whole mopping episode, looking smug, watching us work. If they do that again, I'm going to tie them to the mop handles and see how long-haired cats work as mops.