Category: Life & Miscellany
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Forty-watt bulbs
Despite an overabundance of deadlines and studio hubbub lately—well, beautiful spring weather and productivity just don’t mix. Besides, a sunny Friday in the Northwest is basically a license to play hooky. So I took a day off and made my annual pilgrimage up to the Skagit Valley to catch the end of the Tulip Festival.…
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Cuppa cure
It might officially be spring out there, but around the house, winter still has us in its grip. Both the Tailor and I have been battling a particularly nasty, über virus for weeks now, so no matter how promising the weather reports might be, my brain is just screaming at me to stay home. I’m…
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S.O.S.
Not long ago I stood where the ripple of a far-away tragedy would soon wash ashore—just as we will send the Pacific rippling back westward when—not if—our time comes. We received the echo of Japan’s catastrophe like the other end of a tin-can walkie-talkie, string pulled taut. This time the waves are faint at our…
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Back from Narnia
After thirteen days and 2,382 miles on the road, I’m finally home in the real world again. And that’s exactly how it feels—like I’ve been in a land of make-believe for the past two weeks. A place of impossible landscapes and endless shorelines and absolutely no connection to things like phones and computers and deadlines…
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M.I.A.
Going A.W.O.L. from the studio can be a very good thing—especially when this is the destination. I’m here to spend some time with these folks, for the sake of this. But the “work” part of my trip is done now, so I spent today up here. And tomorrow I’m leaving for home, but I’ll be…
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Winter roses
Despite the time of year, we’ve got brilliant sunshine streaming in the windows. Judging by how well the Christmas roses are still doing, we’re not the only ones happy about it!
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Turning the page
This might seem a little strange, coming from me, but the New Year’s resolution at the top of my “art” category is to draw more. I mean that I’d like to spend more time with my sketchbooks—with everything else that happened last year, there just didn’t seem to be a spare second for observing the…
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Merry and bright
I was afraid I wasn’t going to have any holiday photos to show you—when I was in Portland the other week, my camera took a nosedive after being bumped off my shoulder in a crowded room. Snippets from my daily journal So I shipped the lens off to the good folks at Canon for repair,…
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Aboard the Pineapple Express
One of the nerdy things I love most in the world is “collecting” regional nicknames for weather systems. I’ve lived in a lot of different places, and have first-hand experience with such things as the Nor’easter, the Albuquerque Low, the Alberta Clipper, and Blood Rain (which, I’ll admit, is as freaky as the name; watching…
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Stalling a wee bit
You know what? It’s pretty dark here in the winter. No, I mean really dark. Not just a sunrise-at-eight-pitch-black-by-five dark, but a kind of silver pall that sets up a permanent residence, even at midday, and makes you forget about the sun. It’s absolutely beautiful when you’re taking a walk in the fog, or curling…