Photos from the zoo

Aside from extreme allergies, fall has been pretty nice this year. Today Garry and I took the bus downtown, ate at a local café, and went to the zoo to visit all the aminals. I got to itch a pig, and Garry got pooped on by a bird in the aviary. All-in-all a good day out.

Recent Art

This week I’ve had creativity fever. It’s like I woke up and realized that designing for a bank isn’t all I need to do for the rest of my life. I’ve been drawing, scanning in fabric…. Garry seems to think this is economically viable and started up an Etsy site.

Baraboo Art Tour

This weekend was the annual Fall Art Tour, where participating artists in towns near Madison open up their studios to the public and let them wander around t see how they work and live. We managed to tour about eight studios around Baraboo. There was one – a pottery studio in a converted barn – that made me absolutely jealous; it was in the middle of no where, surrounded by corn fields, with a horse outside and a big old farm house. Sigh. We didn’t see anything we wanted to buy, but we did enjoy visiting the studios, and the drive through the fall countryside was very pretty.

Some new art... and some pants

I’ve been sketching a bit to keep from getting bored. It’s nice to be drawing again, and creating stuff that isn’t for work. And on the left is a photo of one of the pairs of pants I made myself for work. I love having pants that fit for once!

I wish I updated this more. I like looking back and reading about what happened in the year, but now I can’t remember anything that’s happened in the past three months. I better get into the habit of it again; maybe now that work is becoming more of a routine.

My dad cutting his cake

I’m looking through my photos to see what we did, but there aren’t many photos, so I guess we didn’t do much. For my dad’s birthday (Aug 7) we had a picnic that Garry and I prepared. We ate at the Baraboo park, which has a little zoo filled with old animals or empty cages. It was still fun; the prairie dogs and deer seemed to be proliferating at least. We then drove to the 100th anniversary celebration of the “man mound,” which is a big mound of dirt the Indians made. They were taking everything down when we got there, but we got to enjoy the exciting lump ‘o grass.

Our Dwarf Hamster

Our last gerbil has been laid to rest out back. We bought two dwarf hamsters to fill the rodent void in our lives; unfortunately one of them died after a few days and we returned the other. No idea what happened… at least we didn’t get attached (and they slept all day anyway).

Pookie's Sweater

I’ve been crafty a lot lately; I’ve made about 6 pairs of pants, and two of them actually fit and aren’t see through, way to wide legged, or insanely itchy. I’ve also been knitting; I’m half way done with a sweater, and I also made a little turtle neck for Pookie. He’s so dashing! Today we tried to take him outside and take some photos of him in the sweater with the nice fall backdrop, but he hasn’t been out for awhile and wasn’t very happy, especially after he tried crawling into some trees and managed to walk right through a huge burr patch. Then he really wasn’t happy when we got back and I had to take the scissors to his fur…. Now he’s asleep in his bed, and I’m a very guilty feeling mommy.

Geekkon 2008

This weekend was Geek.Kon. Unfortunately I had to drop some of my duties (though I still ended up having to do pretty much everything I did last year, only not as well, since we didn’t have anyone else to do it and I didn’t have the time to do it well). I’m a bit annoyed since I asked for help and no one did anything, yet they still seem to think I didn’t do enough though they knew I didn’t have the time. But ranting aside, it all seemed to go fairly smoothly. I’m hoping this year I can be more involved, though another part of me wonders if I want to be more involved. But it’s nice being a founding member of a (hopefully) soon to be growing con. And the con itself is just a really nice thing to have in Madison.

Digital collage art

I’ve been trying to find the time to do little art bits, as well. I’m really hoping to create enough in a somewhat unusual style that I can go around to galleries or maybe make a viable little business online, and then once Garry finishes school and gets a job with insurance I’ll be able to take it to a full time business. But then I also want to create a business doing anime portraits at conventions, or maybe creating a line of products with original kawaii characters, or maybe a business selling pants! I have too many projects. Tomorrow I’ll try to bring some of my work projects to scan in, too.

Garry started school about a month ago. He started in Biotecnology, but decided that science wasn’t the way to go. So next semester he will be switching to the Marketing department, and one day we may be able to start a business together!

Ethnic Fest Artwork

I’m glad I take the bus to work, instead of driving. Not that we could afford a car even if we wanted one. But the bus is so much more relaxing; just looking out the window, thinking about the weather and watching the people on the bus. I like sunny mornings, because for some reason sun bouncing off the cars on the road makes me feel like I’m on vacation, which is a nice way to start the day.

In the Garden

It’s finally summer, and yesterday we heard our first cicada. The peas are still putting out flowers, and the head lettuce isn’t going to seed yet; I think because we had such a cool and rainy June. There are hundreds of green cherry tomatoes on the vines; I’m starting to get a bit annoyed with them because they’ve been green for over a month. How long do they need to ripen, really?

VIP Nurtrition Store logo

Work is good, or as good as any job can be. I think I’m more suited to working from home; being around people for 8 hours a day is really tiring. So I’m slowly trying to think up things I can do from home; I’m thinking if I did a couple of different things at least one might take off and be viable, like prints, freelancing… even refinishing furniture with cool painting techniques. Of course it won’t be for a couple of years, but it’s nice to have the time to think about it without feeling the pressure to make it work ASAP.

Chickens and a red wheelbarrow

The art in this post is a painting I did for my mom’s birthday of her favorite poem about chickens and a wheelbarrow or some such, a logo for some online vitamin store (I’m not overly proud of it, but I made it more because I knew the client would like it. Bad designer!), and also a thing I did today for this ethnic fest that Anchor is sponsoring, which I think turned out pretty neat.

A storm rolls in

Days seem to be flying by now that I’m working; I don’t seem to have time to do much outside of sleep, eat, and maybe visit the garden.

It was stormy and raining for about two weeks or more; huge amounts of flooding, and a lake disappeared (burst the dam) and took some houses with it. There’s a very cool video clip of the house just sliding away, all in one piece (until it goes under the water!).

My dad started his new job this week; for father’s day we gave him an abacus to use. It’s slowed down a lot at Anchor; we’re blaming the recession but I think it’s just slow. I’m making the most of the little projects.

A fresh green salad

I don’t know if it’s all the rain, but our garden is doing really well. Almost everything is thriving (our sole cucumber seedling never made it and our melons are iffy, but everything else is great). We go out pretty much every night, though there’s very little to do except pull a few weeds and I have to stop Hubband from obsessively watering every few days.

LoyaltyMatters layout concept

The last two weeks have been mainly work and organizing. On the work side, I have created a new logo for a new employee loyalty program called Loyalty Matters (there was a naming contest). It’s basically 100% my project; Chris (the head of the marketing department) described this new program to me and told me to go create a poster and a logo. And eventually I’ll be creating all sorts of other crap for it. Yay!

This is the logo they picked; it’s meant to be the good weather and the water that supports the anchor ship (like how the employees support the bank, yup yup). I had made about 20 comps, we narrowed it down to three and I created layouts for those, Chris threw one of those out because it was so anchory and he was afraid the board would pick it, and the “Loyalty Task Force” met today and decided on this one.

Cowboy Cookout - yee-haw.

The other picture is just of a invitation I did today for a Cowboy Cookout. Most of the work I do is based off of current designs, but sometimes I can play around like with this one and the Loyalty Matters mark. It’s a nice mix of being creative but not going overboard and burning out. And yes, I know it’s overly cheesy; but how can you not have fun with an invitation to a “Cowboy Cookout”?!

Watercolors

In other news, Garry quit his job on Saturday (yay!) and he’s going to go to MATC tomorrow to look into applying for the fall semester. I’m the breadwinner, hah! It was Memorial Day weekend this past… weekend. We gardened, went for a nice walk through Shorewood Hills, saw Iron Man at Sundance (very good movie, especially since we saw it for free with some passes), and I organized my craft bookcase all nice and neat with labels and stuff. I’m hoping to create art and teach Garry to list it on Etsy, which would help make a bit of income and give him something productive to do while he’s home.

Art cards

I’m thinking I can do these silly little ACEOs for, like, $3 each, and then sell prints and maybe some originals. Of course, I don’t know how many times I’ve made plans like these, but it’s good to dream! And I’m really looking forward to having a house husband; I already made him a daily task list and put it on the fridge. ^_^

Garden House Hotel

Thursday morning we caught the train to Dover. I had recovered quite a bit and had also managed to pass my germs on to my mom; her throat was just starting to feel sore.

View of Margaret's at Cliff

We rented a car in Dover that stank like bathroom cleanser (apparently we had been given an “upgrade”). And at the hotel we were given a top floor attic refurb with a minimalist style (read: no furniture), instead of the cottage we had rented (yet another “upgrade”). Once we had settled into our rooms, we drove to a historic estate that we had stayed at when we visited in ’96, and sat in the conservatory enjoying a very proper cream tea with warm scones. We also learned that the owner (or “restaurateur” as he was called) was planning to purchase the hotel we were staying at.

Wild Dover ponies

The weather was sunnier near the coast and quite nice (thought the wind was a bit chilly), so after returning from tea we decided to set off on a walk across the English countryside. We stopped at a war memorial, met some “wild” ponies, followed a path along the white cliffs, and almost made it to a National Heritage lighthouse before heading home. The walk was a bit long but the weather couldn’t have been better.

I say, what an English road.

We ate dinner back at the hotel. The chef was obviously very fond of putting meat on some form of starch; lamb on potatoes, chicken on sweat potatoes… and the entire meal was bland and overpriced. But thank god we had made reservations; there were a whole six other people in the dining room. But on the plus side, we were able to climb right up to bed afterward.

View over London

I can safely say that flying with a cold does not make your sinuses explode, but it still isn’t very peasent. After the seven hour flight from Chicago to Heathrow, I had an amusing inner-ear issue where I was deaf only when my head was upright and looking forward, yet I could hear perfectly fine when looking down; so I had the option of seeing but not hearing, or enjoying my first few days in England staring at the ground. I picked the seeing.

The train at Dorridge

We checked out my parents’ Kensington flat, which despite having 80s down couches with blankets as slipcovers and a bathroom that failed my mom’s exacting sanitary standards, was generally very nice and had a great view of the London rooftops. We ate a late breakfast/early lunch at a nice café on the high St., then caught a taxi to Marlibone station for the 2 ½ hour train to Dorridge. Once we arrived, Garry had quite a time finding a working phone to call his dad (apparently they expect tourists to carry cell phones) and ended up having to use the phone and the nearby pub.

Knowle

Garry’s parents are just as we left them. His dad has built a couple more cold frames and a new green house in his garden, and has a quite a serious production going on back there (who needs 127 geraniums???). The weather wasn’t great; typical English drizzle and overcast skies. We took the train to Birmingham on Tuesday and I bought two pairs of pants from TopShop. And that evening Andrew came over and watched the football with Garry (how very proper!).

On Wednesday afternoon we caught the train back to London. Next time we plan to stay longer, maybe take some walks if the weather cooperates.

A London square garden

We stayed the night in the aparetment in London. Dinner was at a pretentious Italian place, but we did get to explore the new four-story Kensington Whole Foods (they had osterage eggs!). Garry listened to a Chelsea football match on the radio (it wasn’t showing on TV) and we were able to hear the roaring of the crowd from the Chelsea football grounds two miles away!

Garry had the day off today and it was also incredibly nice out (mid-fifties for the first time in living memory), so we made an effort to get out into the real world and not just go for a hike in middle earth.

First we walked to a fairly new store that sells running gear. We were looking for Superfeet that would conform to my crazy high arches, and it turned out a guy from North Face also had a job there, so he was able to help find the perfect fit (I’m a green E, apparently). But of course they didn’t have my size, so now Garry is going to check for them back at North Face tomorrow.

We then boarded the bus and made our way to Tenny Park on the near East side. There were quite a few people there; everyone was out enjoying the weather. I had a run-in with a porta-potty, we saw some happy ducks, enjoyed a selection of tunnels, and generally had a nice little walk along the canal from the park to the Willy St. Co-op.

Mmm, lunch

At Willy St. we picked up some lunch and two little baggies of sprout seeds. I would have liked to have gotten something for dinner there, but Garry was becoming bemused by the great numbers of hippies (he has a low tolerance for such things). So we escaped with our picnic to a little bench overlooking Lake Monona. It was a bit chilly (there’s still a lot of ice on the lake) but very nice.

And for dessert...

We caught the bus a block away and transferred at the square, and when we got home Garry took a nap while I learned about and planted my sprouts (they’re broccoli sprouts; I also got a “mixed salad” seed blend that I’ll try after). And I was in such a planting mood that I also planted some lettuce to grow indoors in a ziplock baggy (hey, I saw it on YouTube!) and made some modifications to the garden plan (as if I’ll actually follow the plan once we start planting). Later we ordered chinese take-out (it’s within 100 miles…) and had a bit of a BSG marathon (I think it’s getting a bit slow in the third season but Garry’s convinced it’s as good as ever). And that was our very pleasant first-real-day-of-spring!