Peer Pressure Prevails

For someone who does not like joining, I seem to end up in a lot of things I would not do on my own.

I suppose it must peer pressure.

I find that I have agreed to attempt both NaPoWriMo (a poem posted each day in April) as well as Camp NaNoWriMo, a novel in April.

What was I thinking? Certainly not that I could do it. There is nothing in my history to make me believe that. But my friends asked me to lend them support and I understand how valuable that can be. I surely don’t have much else to offer them.

So check in here for poems and progress reports.

Assuming I make any.

Turning 65

I am all ready to be 65. I've often wondered why, of all the birthdays that are considered "big ones", no one seems to complain about the 65th.

I think I understand now.

Never mind that the ferry system grants discounts when you are 65. Never mind that in the eyes of restaurants everywhere you are well-and-truly a "senior". The big thing is getting on Medicare.

You see, I'm in that sector of the populace that actually will see improved benefits and a vast reduction in expenses once Medicare kicks in. I pay a small fortune for terrible medical coverage: it doesn't pay anything until I'm broke and in the hospital. That's pretty bad compared to Medicare. There's too many things to detail here, but I now know why few Boomers really complain about the 65th.

I'm looking forward to it.

And it's not as if I could successfully pretend that I'm much younger...

Spring Snow

Spring and Snow

Today is the first full day of Spring. It also happens to be the first snow of the entire Winter. Somehow, this seems wrong.

What does Spring mean, what does Winter mean if it rains all Winter and snows in the Spring?

Predictions for the Pacific Northwest agree that this year will be wetter and cooler than the last few, in opposition (or balance) to the rest of the country seeing warmer and dryer weather.

No one said anything about snow.

Forced to go online

Well, another frustrating afternoon fighting software. Perhaps the thing to do is succumb to the tedium of posting from within a browser. I mean, really, is that so hard?
Especially given how seldom I post here.

So what's the difference? Nothing, except that I need to remember the password here. Using Ecto and the now-apparently-dead blogo, I only had to click on "post".

sigh.

Further whines about blog software

So it turns out that something deep within ecto is not happy with the way I type.

I hit a return in the RTF editor and it turns into both a paragraph and a line break.

That's just not right. If I have a pet phrase, it must be "That's just not right."

But it isn't.

Another Format Test, this time of Ecto

OK, here's how it is. I'm fighting Ecto's desire to add both the paragraph break and the basic break after each sentence.
I really don't like that.
Viewed in the HTML editor, they aren't there. But post them…

Whidbey artists

I scored some major enthusiasm today by visiting the Made Right on Whidbey show up in Coupeville, WA.

I went originally to see Linnane Armstrong and her woodcuts, but as I wandered about, I stumbled across Bev McQuary with some of her lampwork beads! I hadn't read closely enough to discover that she was going to be there.

To make this short, I came home with a boat-load of enthusiasm for getting back to art. Oh, sure, I took some pictures of the flames in the wood stove yesterday, as sources for doing custom flame paint jobs (haha, like I'll ever get back to doing that), and have been doing paper miniatures for wargaming, but really: these two are real artists with work to show and sell.

I managed to avoid descending into wood block prints (having done some before as well as serigraphs), but I find myself all fired up (no pun intended) to light the torch and make some beads.

Imagine! I want to make something!