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Home Sick Today

heather

I came down with a nasty cold yesterday – the kind of cold where you always need to have a tissue on hand because at any second, liquid snot will just start pouring out of your nose.  I mean pouring – like water pouring out of a faucet.  All the moisture from my nose vacated, so during the night I had to get up and put a moist washcloth over it to protect the fragile, exposed cartilage.  I need some mucus back up in there.

I went to work this morning because my nose seemed better and because at our office we have Paid Time Off (PTO) which means we don’t get sick days.  We just get days to use for whatever.  I, of course, have all of mine allocated to fun stuff like Benny & Nate visits, trips and what not.  But I had to break down and use some of my precious time today.  I took a brief 10-minute stroll with a co-worker this morning, and when I got back to my chair, the aches set in – all in my legs, my hands, my head.  In the span of 10 minutes I went from feeling poorly to feeling horrible.  So home I went.

After a nappy-poo I watched the first Firefly episode, then I tried to read The Dispossessed.  It’s a great book, but my fever-addled brain could make no sense of the words on the page, so I put it down and watched Good Will Hunting.

There is nothing like laying around all day, doing nothing, and then watching a movie about a genius to make one feel inadequate and as if one is not living up to one’s full potential.  I’m not sure it was the best movie to watch in my state.

But tomorrow is another day.  Hopefully I will be feeling better and will be able to accomplish something of use.

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Watercolor Aspirations

heather

So…again I haven’t written in a while.  That doesn’t mean that  I haven’t had anything to write about.  It just means that I haven’t written in a while.  I’ve actually had tons of things I wanted to write about, but my old bane, inaction, has been at it again. Maybe if we tossed the couch and the TV, I might actually get something done.  I blame some of my inaction on an uninspiring work location.

I moved my laptop to the top of our book-case in an attempt to create an ad-hoc stand-up desk.  It works fairly well; however, I don’t have much room to work, and since I’m just standing there facing the wall, I feel rather anti-social.  It’s not an environment that is conducive to creative enterprises.  It’s conducive to checking email and Facebook, and that is all.  My brother and father are both building me stand up desks…eventually. They both have plans, and they will both build something amazingly beautiful, but it may be awhile.  Anyway, once I get my stand-up desk(s), I am going to experiment with a little rearranging, so I can position it in front of a window instead of a wall.  I stare at fabric-covered walls for 8 hours * 5 days a week, and I can’t take the wall-staring a minute longer on the weekends.

I did find a way to alleviate some of my cubicle discomfort.  I purchased a piece of original, amazing art from Ryan Hayes.  It’s a small piece of art that packs a big punch.  It’s funny; when I first considered taking watercolor classes, I was reluctant to do so because when I thought of watercolor, I thought of poorly painted, washed-out, sad little flowers.  That wasn’t what I was interested in painting. At all.  However, the more watercolor work I see, the more  I realize how false my prejudice was.  People create absolutely stunning work with watercolor.  It’s ironic, though, that the piece I bought is a painting of flowers.  But it has amazing movement in it.  Check it out here.  See what  I mean?  Anyway, I hung this painting up in my cubicle.  It breaks up the expanse of grey & tan and provides my eye with a much-needed visual retreat.  It also reminds me that I should be doing artwork of my own.

On that note, I signed up for another art class at the Figge.  This class will focus more on technique, I think.  I kind of jumped into watercolor painting without have any basics in it.  Hopefully this class will strengthen the foundation.  While looking up the colors that I need for this class, I ran across this website:  http://www.watercolorpainting.com/index.htm.  It has tons of good information and tutorials on the basics (how to hold your brush, how to do a wash, etc.).

My friend, Butterbrickled, is creating an animation involving pirates and ninjas.  It looks great so far, and he has enlisted my help to paint some floaty/Tiny Wings inspired backgrounds for it.  I’m happy that he has assigned me a task, as hopefully it will make me actually get my gear out and get to work.  I lack motivation something fierce.

I read a good article from LifeHacker today, though.  The article advised just DOING something, one thing that you’ve been putting off, to get yourself out of a rut.  It’s so easy to fall into a rut of inactivity, and so hard to get out.  But just by taking action – any action (cleaning off your desk, for example), you can start to lever yourself out.  I have  about 10 things hanging over my head that I know I need to do, but I keep putting off. So, my baby step today is to finally write a blog post.

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An Evening Stroll

heather

Tim and I were in a quandary as to what to do last night.  We talked about going to the fair, but we didn’t feel like braving the crowds and the heat just for access to delicious, horrible junk food.  We talked about seeing a movie (Captain America or Rise of the Planet of the Apes, perhaps), but we missed the matinee cutoff and so were dissuaded by the expensive ticket prices.

Finally we decided to just leave the house and follow the wind.  Actually, there was no wind last night – just heat and humidity, so we followed the lights instead.  We drove past the fairgrounds, and everything and everyone we saw there convinced us that we did not want to go in.  Teenagers now, evidently, think that white booty shorts are the pinnacle of fashion and sexiness.  I saw outfits I have not seen on a walking, talking human being since watching “The Dukes of Hazard” after school 20 years ago.

Just writing that paragraph made me realize how my perspective has flipped.  I am at the age now where I can refer to something that happened 20 years ago and that something happened when I was a fully functional, remembering human being.  I am also complaining about the clothes of “young people.”  Well, to be honest, the clothes of slutty young people.  I’m sure I complained about that when I was “young person” myself.  I use quotation marks because “young person” is completely relative, both to the person saying it and the person hearing it.

I digress.  After driving past the fair, windows down and eyeballs boggled, we coasted downtown through some west-end neighborhoods bursting with non-Central Davenport personality.  We finally hit River Drive by Credit Island and followed 61 into downtown.

Davenport recently create a new park, Centennial Park, which is where the RAGBRAI riders deluged the Mississippi.  The City created a spray park, replete with garish shower heads that look like the sexual organs of plants and oddly shaped, very steep hills.  It’s actually a very cool, unique site.  The randomness of the hills and banks hides the spray park from a river view and provides some somewhat challenging hiking for kids.  The City even built, or is in the process of building (growing, I guess?), a meadow.  A real meadow.  Davenport has planted (or allowed to grow naturally – not sure which) prairies/meadows all along Duck Creek.  The intent is to keep pollutants out of the creek and to reduce the amount of mowing that needs to be done around the creek.  The meadows are absolutely beautiful.  Over the course of the spring and summer,  the flowers, grasses and colors change, providing something to distract your eye while you’re pounding the pavement or cycling past.  I am hoping that the meadow downtown turns out similarly.  It will be really beautiful down there eventually.

Next we strolled over the Veterens Memorial Park.  It’s not quite done yet; at this point it’s just some granite boxes, some lights, and 3 huge flag poles jutting into the sky.

Finally we headed over to the basketball courts/skate park, only to realize that the park is bifurcated by a fence north of the rail road tracks.  From what we could see in the night, visitors to the park cannot walk between the two park sections unless they head out to Marquette Street.  I don’t know why the park designers would set the park up this way.  Doesn’t make a lot of sense.

We strolled back to the car, admiring the lit-up Centennial Bridge and the sapphire sky.  What a beautiful evening.

I read an article in Women’s Health yesterday about happiness.  What I got from the article was that you can’t rely on the “big” moments in life to keep you happy – getting married, having kids, buying a house, etc.  These moments happen too infrequently, so those highs are followed by too long of a valley.  Humans have a remarkable ability to adapt, too, so we adjust to the new level of happiness quickly and fail to notice our transformed state.  The article recommended finding happiness in daily life – the evening stroll with your best friend, a baby frog chilling out in your flowers, the sleepy eyes on your warm chihuahua, a breeze that brings a scent of salty ocean. These moments happen every day, every hour, if you take the time to notice them.  Like so much in life, happiness is a matter of perspective.

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Uncategorized

Super tasty breakfast

heather

Yesterday Tim and I ran (well, I walked/jogged to be precise) the Race for the Cure.  The weather was perfect for running – cool and slightly overcast.  Tim did excellently – ran the whole way.  I, on the other hand, ran the first mile and then walked/jogged the rest of the way.  I also got confused as to where, exactly, the finish line was located.  I assumed it was under the huge balloon arch that designated the starting line. After crossing under the arch, I wandered around for a bit, looking for Tim.  When I couldn’t find him anywhere, I realized that beyond the arch was the huge number 3, designating the third mile mark.  And… people were still running.  I flowed back into line and ran the 1 or 2 minutes to the real finish line, just up and around the corner.  I was super frustrated with myself for not catching on immediately and adding 5 minutes to my time, but it was a still a great experience.  The Race for the Cure is a very happy/sad experience.  It’s amazing to see 9,000 gathered together in a stand against a disease, exercising together and supporting each other.  It’s also super sad to see the long lists of loved ones who have died from cancer pinned to the backs of people’s shirts.

To cap off our 5K, Tim and I decided to take a bike ride.  We mapped out our route, from Rapids City, IL to a certain jog in the road that we biked to last time.  According to Googlemaps, the round trip route was about 22 miles:


We loaded up the bikes on the Civic and headed out.  Again, it was a perfect day for biking – cool, overcast.  As long as we didn’t stop in one place for too long, the bugs were not too annoying.  We started off in Rapids City and biked through Port Byron, past Cordova, and to the jog in the road.  It sure seemed much longer than any other 22 mile ride we had taken, but we chalked it up to being tired from the run.

We finally returned to our car, never so happy to see it before.  Our shoulders, necks, taints – anything that was in constant contact with the bikes was throbbing.  Once we arrived home, we looked at the map more closely and realized that we originally mapped the wrong jog!  We actually biked 13 miles further than we intended:


No wonder we were so exhausted!!  It really was a great ride, though, and a good training experience for RAGBRAI. We learned the importance of bringing snacks (dry-roasted peanuts), lubricating delicate body areas that you DO NOT want chafed, and taking breaks to give your shoulders and arms a rest from the unforgiving road bike tires.

To reward ourselves for all the exercise, we had a delicious supper of fried mushrooms and pork-T at Filling Station.  We continued the healthy eating spree with a super delicious, cooked-by-Tim-with-love breakfast this morning.  He cooked up some spicy chorizo and combined it with scrambled eggs, cheese, avocado, fresh green onions, and Salsa Brava and rolled it all up in a chewy, toasted tortilla.  It very well could have been the tastiest burrito I have ever eaten.

So that was Saturday.  Today is Sunday, and I have a list of like 30 things I would like to get done today.  We’ll see how long the coffee buzz lasts…

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The beauty of seven

heather

I’ve started writing a couple of posts lately and have ended up deleting them.  I recently changed jobs – actually, more to the point, I recently changed life styles.  It’s been a huge change for me, and I’m still trying to figure out what I think about it and how I feel about it.  Normally, I would write about this sort of experience, but it’s very personal, and I don’t want to entangle my work life with my personal life.  Plus, I’m afraid that in writing about my feelings, in the exploration of those feelings, I will end up writing something that I don’t truly believe or feel, but I won’t realize it immediately.  But, yet, it will be out there, said indefinitely for anyone in the world to read, including the HR personnel of any and all companies.  So, I best wait until I figure out exactly how I feel about this, which will probably only be at my deathbed because my feelings about anything constantly flux until the end is known.

But, since this pathway of public mental exploration is closed to me, I’ve been struggling to write anything on this blog.  I can’t think of anything to write about, which is unfortunate as part of the reason I made this lifestyle change is to give myself more time to write.  So I’ve resorted to taking suggestions from WordPress itself.  WordPress writes a blog about things to blog about.  I found this topic interesting.

My favorite number.  Hmm.  I really love the number 7.  Maybe it’s because I was born in 1977.  Maybe because 7 means completeness.  It’s a holy number.  Maybe it’s because George Costanza wanted to name his child Seven.  I think that’s an awesome idea.

Wikipedia has lots of interesting things to say about the number 7.  The number 7 is so awesome, in point of fact, that I think everyone’s favorite number should be 7.

SEVEN.

Cooking/Recipes, Uncategorized

Celebration of food

heather

Tim and I are having an all-around lovely weekend, and like all lovely weekends, it was capped from start to end with deeelicious food.

Ben and Leah visited us for the weekend.  It’s been months since we’ve seen them – I last saw them before I became an accountant and now I am already almost not an accountant – more on that later, maybe.

Anyway, they arrived Friday night, and we were all starving.  We’ve been hearing good things about La Rancherita in Rock Island, so we headed off.  It was a cool, brightly lit Mexican restaurant with tasty pico de gallo and delicious tacos.  The crowd was very eclectic – a mix of races and styles and party sizes.  We saw everything from hipsters to gangstas.  For dessert we introduced Ben and Leah to the joys of Checkers apple pies.  We got 4 for $2.12, and they were perfectly delicious.

For breakfast on Saturday, Tim made his ultra-tasty egg, cheese, Canadian bacon, and  English muffin sandwiches.  He fries the egg perfectly, so that the yolk is the perfect state of gelatinous.  After doing a little shopping at Greatest Grains and the mall, we returned back to the house for a snack lunch of $7.00 Tillamook cheddar cheese, braunschweiger, saltines and cans of Great River Pale Ale.  While the boys played video games and Leah busted through advanced Soduko puzzles, I made guaucamole using this excellent Allrecipes.com recipe.  The freeze-squeezed lime juice gives it a tasty, fresh snap.  After contaminating all of my dishrags and utensils with tiny bits of chopped cilantro, I made chocolate chip cookies, using the recipe from the Nestle Tollhouse bag.  The trick is to get the butter at the perfect level of softness.  About 2 bursts of 10 seconds in the microwave gets it to the stage where it creates tall, fluffy, chewy cookies.

For supper Tim made amazing tortilla soup from an America’s Test Kitchen recipe.  The soup, paired with the gaucamole, made for an excellent supper and uncomfortably fitting trousers.

While we digested our Mexican feast, Leah and I soundly beat Tim and Ben at euchre and then retired to watch Despicable Me.  About 30 minutes into the movie, Tim and Ben were both sound asleep.

Tim treated us with another delicious meal this morning by making buckwheat pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Ben and Leah are cast iron snobs.  Ben, unheeding my warnings, convinced Tim to cook the pancakes on our fairly unseasoned cast iron griddle (which weighs about 30 pounds).  Ben convinced Tim and that a little butter and oil would cause the pancakes to not stick.  He was wrong – stick they did.  But they were still delicious.  I am right now re-seasoning the griddle and our cast iron pan.  I have already set off the fire detector.  We have several windows wide open, but the whole house is still quite smoky.  It better be worth it.

Besides eating, we spent the rest of the weekend playing video games, drinking excellent beers (Hopalicious!), doing lots of dishes, and just all around enjoying each other company.  Hanging out with family is so awesome.  It really makes me wish that we lived closer to Ben and Leah, and/or my brothers.  Someday…

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Back in the Saddle (the power of positive thinking)

heather

I finally made it back to the gym this morning.  I haven’t been to the gym in the morning for several weeks – before Tim and I got wicked bad colds and I lost all motivation to do anything besides watch television in a NyQuil stupor.  But, I made it back this morning.  I’ve been reading a ton lately about the power of your mind to affect the abilities of your body.  So, even though I’ve only been to the gym in the morning once so far this week, I’m telling myself that it’s just what I do now.  I’ll be back there tomorrow without question.  By saying it, I’m making it so.

 

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The Frozen Marsh

heather

I read an article in the QC Times last week about a local woman, Julie Malake, who is producing a book of photographs taken in Nahant Marsh, a reclaimed wetland on the outskirts of southwest Davenport.  Even though Tim has lived here his whole life, and I have lived here for a third of mine, we have never scouted the Marsh.   On Sunday we decided to change that. After bundling up in long johns, hats, neck gaiters and good socks, we grabbed the binoculars and camera and headed out.

If you are one of the people who, like me, enjoy the subtle variety of colors that be found in a primarily brown and white landscape, I highly recommend a walk through Nahant in the winter time.  If you look closely, you’ll see all sorts of beautiful shades of lavender, brown, blue, golden.

Here is a little photo tour of our excursion (if you click on the picture, it will open up to a larger size).

This is a the entrance to the park.  The visitors center does not have extensive hours, but during daylight, you can park the car at the entrance and walk the trails to your heart’s content.


This is a viewing shed perched on the edge of the wetlands.

After exploring the marsh, we drove to the mighty Mississippi and used the binoculars to spy on the pack of Eagles chillin’ in the trees across the river.  They were too far away to see clearly; when we looked through the binoculars we just saw dozens and dozens of splashes of white, popping out from the trees.

Next we headed to the lock and dam in Downtown Davenport, which is evidently a very popular eagle-watching hangout.  They feed on the fish below the dam.  It was wicked cold by this point, so we didn’t linger long.  I caught a picture of these ducks.  I love ducks, ever since we had a pet duck when we were kids.  Her name was Mildred, and she was best friends with our dog, Kanute.  She laid unfertilized eggs everywhere, so we had a nice supply of rotten eggs, which is a useful thing to have as children.  Ducks are so awesome.  Look as these two – they are so in love!  Quack Quack.

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My pretty letter S

heather

I forgot to upload one of my letters last week.  This one is just a little guy.  I painted him on an ATC (artist trading card).  I tried to paint a border around the letter, but the line was very messy, so instead I colored in the background with a purple wash and then used my PITT artist pen to draw on the border.  I really like how it turned out.

I must say, though, that painting on 2.5″ by 3.5″ pieces of paper is tough.  I need to drink like 50 cups of chamomile tea to steady my hands first.

We’re taking a trip to Dick Blick in Galesburg today to pick up the supplies for our Mark Polomchak class next month.  I am super excited.  I am sure to buy more than I need, but I have a huge soft spot for art supplies – there is just so much potential there!

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Painted Mom and More Letters

heather

I broke out the old watercolors again this weekend.  I need to finish up a couple of note cards for some friends, and my drawing of Mom (from Futurama fame) has been taunting me.  She’s all stretched out and stapled to my painting board, just waiting to be juiced up in living color.  Or at least in plastic color.

I’ll start with the letters.  Here is the M. I like the structure of the letter, but I wish I would have used a smaller palette of colors.  This is quite the rainbow M!

 

 

 

 

 

The N started out really well.  I was really happy with the balance of the letter, and the straightness of the lines.

 

 

 

 

 

I mucked up the painting of the letter, though.  The left-hand side got too muddied, and no amount of lifting the paint off would get it ethereal anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

As Tim pointed out to me yesterday, however (which amazingly came as sort of an epiphany to me), I have a tendency to focus on the negative.  I should focus on the right side of the letter, with which I am quite happy.  Half good is better than no good.

And…on to Mom.  I only have the base colors done so far.  She needs some more layers to get the colors right, and then some shading to finish her up.  I think she’ll look really cool when she’s done, though.

 

 

 

Look closely, and you will see that Mom’s hair is too big for the paper, and she has 2 staples through it.  I am spatially challenged, what can I say.  Maybe that can be my thing – my claim to artistic fame – all of my art runs off the page due to bad centering.  Ah, I’m waxing negative again, damn it!

Hopefully next week I can finish up the Mom painting and the cards, so I can figure out what to do next.  Mom (my mom, not the Futurama mom) and I are taking a watercolor paint class in Chicago (taught by Mark Polomchak) in February, so I need to practice some more, so I can keep up with the rest of the class.

Take care, and best wishes on your creative projects!