5/22/07

IT'S RAINING!!! We've had a third of an inch already. It has been so dry here. I tried digging a post hole yesterday for a garden gate, and the dirt just sifted through the post hole digger. I quit when I got about a foot down.

I've been neglecting my blog. I've been working on beads, and doing more painting. I gave up on my ACEOs for a while because I wanted to try doing oils again. I've got three paintings in progress, a cheetah, a pair of chickadees in my crabapple tree, and a horse that I saw at the Horse Expo last month.

I've got another set of bead auctions on ebay ending tomorrow. I would have had more in the kiln except Saturday when the boys were here working on my front sidewalk, I got distracted and instead of turning the kiln control one click to the right (low), I turned it one click to the left (high). Results: blobs of glass.

I had better start selling some paintings and beads. We just got notice of the health insurance rate hike: up $332.27, to a total of $1,337.76 for the three of us. How do we continue this...

5/2/07

What a lovely day, sunny with a bit of a breeze, and my tulips are blooming. It's time to get out into the garden and start getting some tilling done.

I finished another ACEO last night, titled Tag Along. It's a buffalo cow and her calf out in Yellowstone. The tree line must have 20 layers of paint on it, and I'm still not satisfied with it. Oh well...



I tried working on the lions again this morning, but gave up on it. I'll go back to it later. I'm going to start working on a painting of a buckskin I saw at the Horse Expo last week.

My other goal today is to get some beads put up on ebay. I've been letting the beads slide because I've been so into the painting lately; unfortunately, the painting side isn't going to pay any bills anytime soon.

4/20/07

You know, it's just not fair! Lukas brings home a bug from school and he's sick for 2 days; I catch it and it's been a week... so far.

Oh well. I did finish another ACEO. It's of Slider and my dog, Tynha. I don't know why, but cats really like her. It must be that wooly fur on her, but they just like to curl up around her and rub up against her.


I've started another painting, but this one is about 4"x4", of a pair of lions I saw on a wildlife program. They were sitting relaxed in the grass, and then a herd of wild buffalo came into view. They both just sat up and watched those buffalo. I just thought it would make a neat painting. I've started on the background, and am having trouble with the leaves on the bushes. It would be wonderful to be like some of these artists who fly to Africa every year to take photos.

Nawww, that wouldn't work. I don't fly!

4/16/07

Two more ACEOs finished: one is of some draft horses I saw at a horse show 30 years ago, and the other is of my horse Amber several years ago, down in the pasture on a foggy evening.




I struggled with the fog. I still am not satisfied with it, but enough is enough!

They were doing a controlled burn in the refuge tonight. It was a very interesting scene, with the smoke billowing up and turning the sky red, dark storm clouds, and the sun breaking through with shafts of light. It would make a neat painting to put a couple of deer in there.

I switched over to boro today; just ran out of ideas for beads with Moretti. It makes for a nice break. I'm going to try to do some florals with some frit. If they turn out I'll post some pics.

4/6/07

I finished another ACEO. This one is a painting of Slider, my son Lukas' cat (gone to kitty heaven a couple of years ago). Don't ask about his name; I have no idea why Lukas named him that.

This one I did with acrylics and then gouache. Gouache is a pigment-rich opaque watercolor paint. I do like working with it, especially with the whiskers.



The next one I'm going to do is from a photo I took some years ago. It was at sunset with a fog laying on the ground, and Amber, my horse, standing down in it. I've got the basics laid in, but I'm going to go back and lay in some darker red for the sunset. It's too bland right now.

I find myself struggling with my retirement. I feel a bit lost and directionless, even with all of the things I want to do. I've been taking a nap every day. Well, at least I'm not going to bed at 9 p.m. now. It's been midnight most nights, which is just fine with Lukas, because he's on spring break & he gets to stay up late too.

The boys are coming up tomorrow to tile my foyer. I'll be glad when they get to tiling my studio. It'll certainly make it easier to clean up after my babies (ferrets).

Well, back to painting. Or maybe I'll have some supper and play Civilization...

4/5/07

My, what changes a month can bring. When we got home, it was to the sight of a foot and a half of snow and the snowblower stuck halfway up the driveway. Long and short, I called work & told them I was quitting. Last Friday was my last regular day; hopefully they'll be calling me back in to fill in once and a while. I miss it, and this was only my first week off.

I made quite a few beads this week, but today was a painting day. I finished my first ACEO acrylic. It's a swallowtail butterfly that was visiting my flowers last summer. It turned out pretty good. I've got about a dozen other ACEOs started; now I just have to finish them.

3/3/07

We're in a campground in eastern Ohio. Was that just yesterday we were in New Jersey?!?

We got into Philadelphia, and stopped at a small shopping mall. I called a cab and went to the Franklin Institute early. That was dumb. I didn't think about the rest of the name: Science Museum. I was think museum, things to see! Not, Science Museum, things for kids to learn (can you tell that science is not my favorite subject). So I sat around for an hour and a half, waiting for my turn to go in.



It was a little crowded when I did get in, but I was able to get up close and see some things I've never in photos before. There was a gorgeous head of Nefertiti, and a statue of Tut that was just wonderful. And the detail of some of the artifacts were just incredible. The golden dagger of Tut's has gold granulation (gold balls smaller than a pin head) on it in diamond patterns. How did they do that???? This was a society that was just beginning to get iron objects in trade. They used copper and stone tools. There were some ushebtis (small models of the person who died that were supposed to do the work for that person in the afterlife) that were painted and carved with so much detail. Just incredible.

That was the good part. It went downhill from there. I was just about to the end of the tour and really anticipating seeing his gold mask again. Then alarms went off and lights started flashing and guards starting hurrying around. First they stopped each group in the room they were in, then after a few minutes they started hurring everyone out. They evacuated the whole museum (the Tut exhibit was on the 2nd floor and they made us all go down the stairs), and then a couple of minutes later, they let everyone back in. Back up the stairs (they let those of us who were at the end of the tour go up the back way to get back to where we were when we had to leave), and on to the last part of the tour. No gold mask. I asked the guard, where's the gold mask? It was damaged somewhere along the way, so they decided it was too precious to send on the rest of the tour. AAARRRRGGGGGG!!!! I WANTED TO SEE THE GOLD MASK!!!!!

Poop!

So I left the museum, called a cab, they said 5-10 minutes, 15 minutes later I said heck with it & flagged the next one that came by and went back to the RV. That was about 5:30 p.m.

The houses in the older part of Philadelphia are the brownstone row houses. It's block after block of theses, with a sidewalk going up to the front door, with a window on each side. No front or back yard, it's all concrete. They're about 20? feet wide, and then along the street on both sides are the utility poles, with a couple of wires going to each house. The streets are very narrow and one way only, allowing parking on just one side of the street. On the main street that we went down, the parking was diagonal parking and the area on the middle of the street that was painted with yellow lines or had a concrete curb was used by people parking. They even parked behind the cars that were diagonally parked!

It took over 2 hours to get out of Philadelphia and into the suburbs. It was probably a good thing that it was dark, because we went over some high bridges along they way. We finally found a Walmart and boondocked.

We left there about 6:30 this morning and headed to Gettysburg. That was another disappointment. What they've kept of the battlefields are between houses and farms. That was the neat thing about Chickamauga, Georgia, you really could get a sense of the history there. At Gettysburg, there was no such feeling; nothing said to me 'take a picture' or 'that would make a really neat drawing.'

So we headed west... over mountains. David was driving, and I didn't think to tell him to downshift, so by the time I noticed he was starting to hunch over and get that doomed look in his face, the RV temp was on the red. So we pulled over and took a break. I did not realize that most of southern Pennsylvania is in mountain. We went up and down and up and down and up.... and then it started snowing and the wind started blowing. If you've never been in an RV, wind really affects it, especially when you come from a wooded area into the open, like over a (dreaded word) bridge.



And if I hear any politician talking about putting toll roads in Minnesota, I'm going to write him/her a really nasty letter. The toll road through Pennsylvania is a narrow 4 lane potholed highway with every other mile under construction, and there are no rest stops along it. We've had to spend over $20 in tolls so far. 169 up north is a whole lot better than this road.

Tomorrow we're headed up to Chicago. David figures we should get into Wisconsin by tomorrow night.

3/2/07

We're in New Jersey at a campground, and it is raining and glooming. I'm going to the King Tut exhibit this afternoon in Philadelphia, and then we're heading west to home.

We went through Washington D.C. yesterday. They have some huge buildings there, 2-3 blocks long. We went right by the Smithsonian. If we ever come back here, I want to go there and spend the day there. The KOA that we stopped at in Virginia has a shuttle to the train to Washington, so maybe next year. We'll see. The pictures I got of the White House aren't very good. After 9/11 they closed off the road in front of it, so you can't get very close to it anymore. But we drove by the Washington monument and the Lincoln Memorial. It was neat to see what we did of them.

And then there was the bridge we went over. I'm not posting the picture David took of me driving. I look like a spooked horse, ready to jump. Honestly, after all of these bridges, the Golden Gate would be a breeze. At least that one is just straight across, not the going way up in the air.

Christian says he's snowed in, and the schools are closed. At least it's March, and the snow won't be around too much longer.

2/27/07

2/27/07
We're at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and our trip is winding down. It's getting chillier already. It's only 71° and it feels colder than that. We're going to jump on the freeway and head to Fredericksburg, Virginia for tomorrow night, and then the next day head to Philadelphia. It's getting harder to find campgrounds that are open. Most likely from there we'll be boondocking at Walmarts. No TV & no internet. Yuck!

2/26/07
We got our propane fixed this morning. Hot Water!!!! Can you believe it? It took them 2/10ths of an hour to find and fix the leak, and an hour to figure out the bill (well, maybe 50 minutes). Unbelievable. Camping World is fast becoming my least favorite place to go.

After that, we went back to the campground and I relaxed, read, and took a nap. That was a mistake. I didn't realize Bonaventure Cemetery closes at 5:00, so I only had about an hour to take pictures there. That is a HUGE cemetery. Following are some photos I took there. The first one is of the bridge that we did NOT go across. I might have done it except for the fact that as we were approaching it, we came out from the trees to grasslands, and the wind hit me broadside & pushed me halfway into the next lane. I had to pull over and decide if I wanted to drive over the bridge, and decided not too; was still shaking too much.

Tomorrow we're heading up the coast. We have a reservation at KOA Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. They have both cable & internet there. The weather is supposed to continue to be nice here. I talked to Christian. He had just gotten in from plowing out from 12" of snow, and the van was still stuck in the snow. Boy, am I glad to be here!

2/24/07

Well, today made up for all the badness. I spent half the day at Jacksonville Zoo, and I would have spent more time if my camera battery hadn't run out. Next year I'm taking Lukas here. I can see why it's rated one of the top zoos in the country.

I got there about an hour after it opened, parked in the front row, walked across the street to the ticket window, and within 5 minutes I was looking at animals. Very different from the MN zoo, which seems to be made more for joggers and bikers for the distance you have to walk to see anything (if you're lucky). Granted, the enclosures here are smaller than at MN, but except for the leopard, they didn't seem to be cramped. And there are so many animals here, and they're so easy to see. And it wasn't at all crowded with people.

They have 3 African elephants, and I was so thrilled to hear one of them rumble. They are such NEAT animals.

The walkway that goes by the giraffe area goes up to their head height, so people can actually feed them and touch them.

The leopard had an adequate enclosure with a tree to climb, but he just paced back and forth in just one spot. That was a bit sad, but what a beautiful animal! And the black panther was sleeping half in the sun, with one hind foot up in the air. I was about 6 feet from him (behind glass). They have BIG feet!

A really nice thing about this zoo is that the birds are so easily seen. They have one area that's covered with mesh that you walk into, and you're right in with the birds. The peacocks were free to go wherever they wanted; they weren't in an enclosure at all.

Just a very, very nice day. It was in the mid 70s and sunny.

Oh, the last picture is of a cruise ship along side the road, and in back of it is a suspension bridge that I was VERY happy not to have to go over.

We solved the generator problem for a while. I bought a bigger power inverter to plug into the cigarette lighter and that powers Lukas' Playstation and TV while we're driving. When we get back to MN I'll call around & try to find someplace to get it looked at. We're thinking about picking up a battery and putting in under one of the seats, getting a small solar charger for it, and hooking up a power inverter to it for future travels. That way we wouldn't have to run the generator all the time when we're driving. That will save on gas.

Tomorrow we're going to Savannah, Georgia. We have an appointment Monday morning with Camping World to get our propane leak found & fixed. Then we can have hot water again, and run the furnace! It was downright cold this morning, only 37°.

Hopefully, that will be the last problem on this trip.

2/15/07

Thursday, 2/15/07
Well, it's one step forward and 1/2 step back. We're in Pensacola, Florida. We stopped at the RV place in Baton Rouge this morning, and the idiot who told us to bring it in Thursday didn't know what he was talking about. When we got there, they said they were 3 days backed up. I begged and one of the guys came out and checked the windshield wiper motor. Turns out it wasn't getting a good ground, so he ran a new ground wire. Scott's juryrigged 2nd arm on the wiper broke though. But if it rains I can go out and fix the wiper with a Bic lighter and some tape.

We stopped at another RV place in Pensacola, and asked if they could tell me how to fix the drain so we could hook up to water. The girl came out & looked at it, then went in and got one of the mechanics, and he showed me how to do it. The girl, though, when she knelt down, ripped her pants seam. They weren't going to charge me anything for it, so I made the girl take $20.

So now we're stopped at a KOA east of Pensacola. I hooked up the water and a few minutes later, water came pouring out of the tire well of the RV. Went in and there was water spraying out from the back of our brand new toilet. The idiots at Shorewood didn't do something right. So now we're back to using jugs of water to flush the toilet, and no hot water until we get this fixed. I'm going to try calling the RV place in Pensacola and see if they can get us in in the morning.

Things have to start getting better eventually, don't they?

More of 2/13/07

2/13/07
Meanderings, now that I've settled down. SW Arkansas: 90% of the houses are about the size of a small trailer house, and half of them look like they're abandoned, and the other half look like they should be abandoned. The ones that are abandoned don't have lots of trash in the front yard. Very poor part of the country, but not as poor as Mississippi. Lots of people in Arkansas raise cattle.

There must be a lot of political power playing in their transportation department. The road we were driving on would be potholed and narrow for a few miles, then it would widen up with nice new tar and wide shoulder for a few miles, then back to old and narrow, etc. That went on from Mena to the Texas border.

There is a lot, LOT, lot of uninhabited land in Louisiana. From Shreveport to Alexandria to Baton Rouge, once you got out of town, there was maybe one truck stop/casino. Then it was miles on miles of pine forests, no houses, ranches, small towns, just forests.

2/13/07

Tuesday, 2/13/07
This has been the trip to hell. Well, maybe not that bad, but today when I hooked up the water, and water came pouring out underneath the RV, I came in & sat down and cried.

The generator started acting up in Arkansas, and then quit altogether in Texas. I think it's just a circuit breaker or fuse, but I can't tell. And without the generator, Lukas can't play his games while we're driving. Then we got lost in Texarkana trying to find the road to Shreveport. We eventually got to Shreveport, but it was raining so hard we couldn't find a campground, so we just got on the freeway to get to the next one. Then the driver's side windshield wiper quit working. We pulled into a truck stop/casino & tried to figure out what was wrong with it, but couldn't get it figured out. So we spend the night there. We finally got down to Baton Rouge and into a KOA. That's when I sat & cried. I hooked up the utilities, turned on the water, and water came pouring out the drain under the RV. I called Shorewood RV where we had it winterized and they said that when they winterize they leave the drain plugs open, but the idiot couldn't tell me how to get them closed. So we called around to some different place to try to get everything fixed. Camping World said they could do the drain plug thing Friday, but couldn't do the generator or the wipers. Another place couldn't do the generator until the 22nd. Called another place & they can look at it Thursday. Oh, and I got to unplug the toilet today, too. How fun! I really miss Lukas' toilet seat with the wash feature. This summer I'm going to see if Scott can get that hooked up in here.

And in the meantime, I'm looking at these $200,000 rigs parked next to us, and have major RV envy.

Oh, well, it was 80° here today, and I'm barefoot and in a sleeveless shirt. It could be worse.


Sunday, 2/11/09
It's hard to believe that just yesterday when I woke up it was -19°, and here we are in southern Arkansas, 49° and having spent several hours driving through mountains!

I love mountains! I LOVE MOUNTAINS! Did you hear me, I Love Mountains! There is something about them that just brings a smile to my face and makes my heart sing. Especially when I didn't expect them. I did not realize that this area of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas has mountains. They're dry mountains, but even so, they're tall and blue, and when you come around a corner through the trees and see those tall blue images, your first reaction is "Are those mountains!?!"

I'm glad I didn't know they were here; David would never have wanted to come this way, and I had resigned myself to not seeing any until next year. So for me, what a wonderful day.

We've put in 2 long days of driving. I finally saw a coyote, in Iowa of all places, in a corn field by the freeway. Last night we stopped at a rest stop in Iowa (I really like Iowa rest stops; they all have free wireless), but the problem with stopping at rest stops is that truckers do to, and they leave their trucks running, and every so often the truck releases air pressure or something like that; not very conducive to sleeping. So we started out this morning at 5:30. It's 8:40 now & I'm very tired and I'm going to go to bed. Lukas and David are going to stay up a bit longer, since Lukas slept until 10 this morning.

Love you all,
Betsy

Feb. 7, 2007

Only 3 more days before we leave for Florida!!!

I am so ready to leave; it seems that it’s been just one thing after another for the past couple of months. Our Internet has been up and down a dozen times a day, and the telephone company says it’s our router. Well, today after work, Christian and I are going to buy another router (again), and if that doesn’t work, I don’t know what to do. And then last weekend, the furnace started acting up. The guys changed the furnace filter and that didn’t work. Monday morning it was down to 51° in the house (it got down to -25° that night). David went down and reversed the filter, and it’s worked fine since then, thank goodness! Amber went lame again, so she’s back on bute. And this FRIGID weather! It all just wears you down after a while.

To pick myself up a little, I decided to try doing oil painting again. It’s been 35 years since I’ve dabbled in that. I’ve got about a dozen ACEOs started, but I’m having to wait until they dry before I can work on them more. I’m going to have to look into how to do wet on wet so I don’t have to wait. It would be nice to just sit down & do one in a sitting. I also am trying gouache painting. That’s different working with an opaque watercolor.

Well, nothing more to post.

1/22/07

Well, do you want the good news or the bad news first? Oh, the bad news? Well, the RV needed new back brakes (the calipher froze on the rotor and ground it down, so the rotors needed to be replaced. I think I got the terminology right). $1,000. The radiator is leaking and there's an exhaust leak that's making an engine sensor come on. They want another $2,000 for that, but I said I couldn't afford it right now. Hopefully, it'll keep until this summer. Less than 3 weeks until we leave for Florida.

The good news? I finished another ACEO! There's a story behind this one. Last summer the Minnesota Zoo had to destroy a family of meerkats because a 12 year old girl got up a tree and over the fence far enough to try to pet one of them, and one of them bit her. Because the parents wouldn't let her have the rabies shots, and the zoo didn't know which one of the meerkats bit her, they had to put the whole family down. Shortly after that I started watching Meerkat Manor on the Animal Planet, and they are such neat animals, I decided to do the drawing and name it 'In Memory Of.'



I also fired up the kiln last night & annealed the latest batch of beads. There were some nice ones in there.

1/7/07

This weekend has not been productive at all, other than making 4 beads.

I'm trying to find a way to be more productive (i.e.: prolific) with my drawings, so I thought I'd try making some ACEOs with pen and ink line drawings followed with a watercolor wash. I tried putting the watercolor down first. That took about an hour (too much of a perfectionist!), and then tried to do the pen & ink over that. I'm trying to get away from doing everything in stippling (takes SOOOOO much time), so I tried doing lines and crosshatching. Well, that doesn't work too well. The watercolor clogs up the pen.

So I tried doing another one. Did the inking first (about an hour), then started on the watercolor. About half way though it, I noticed an imperfection in the watercolor paper, a indentation all the way through the length of the paper, which didn't show up until the paper had soaked up enough water to swell. So that one's down the tube.

So now I'm going to try doing one more. I'm starting on it tonight, and will try to finish it up tomorrow. I have to run the RV down to Rogers to get the oil changed and the brakes and radiator checked out. Less than 5 weeks until we leave for Florida, yippee!!!!

1/5/07

Well, I've jumped onto Artbyus to try to sell some of my prints. I'm doing OK on ebay with my beads, but it would be nice to sell prints of my drawings too. Here's some pics of a couple of my latest bead auctions on ebay. These turned out nicely.







I still want to do a watercolor wash on the Leopard Cub ACEO & see how that turns out. I'd like to try doing that with the ACEOs and post them on Artbyus.

12/28/06

Oh my goodness, the developers are getting closer, at least in my dreams. You see, I have a recurring nightmare, for 16 years now. In my nightmare, the developers have claimed part of my land, and there's nothing I can do to stop them. Last night, they took about a quarter of my land and put houses on it, and on another chunk they took, the house was 3 feet from my bedroom. And Scott (my nephew) had built me a horse barn and they took one stall (go figure!), and on the south side one of the developers kept parking her car and another vehicle by my house. The worst part of it was that dozens and dozens of people were lounging on my porch and deck on both sides of the house watching the buildings go up. Finally I went out and started chasing them off and told them to stay off my land. They were like swarms of locusts! They kept coming back. I had to go out and lock the doors of the car because little kids were going into it and playing with things.

Gosh, could Freud have a field day with me.

I called into work today and asked for the day off, but Lynn already called in, so I'm kind of on call. If they need me, Val'll call me. But in the meantime, I'm going to try to get something done. It's so nice and quiet, everyone else is sleeping.

I listed some beads on ebay last night. They had a 15¢ listing day, so I got Christian to come help. These are a couple of my favorites.

12/22/06

Well, thankfully the weather didn't get as bad as they thought it would. They were saying about 5" of snow, but we only got about 1" (so far). I didn't have to work today because it was early deadline this week (& next week too), so today is Monday for me.

I tinted a print of my Leopard Cub ACEO. It turned out OK. I did it with colored pencils. Maybe I'l try one with watercolors.


I've been in kind of a slump lately with my beads. I just can't get on a roll. I've been making some lentil florals. I'm going to make about 4 or 5 more so I have enough for a set to put on ebay.

I also started a Meerkat ACEO.

12/19/06

Back home and caught up with sleep.

Bob is recovering. The nurse said the first 24 hours were the most critical, and he's past that now. He will be in the hospital for a few weeks, then he will move to the 'transplant house' in Rochester, or rent an apartment in Rochester. He has to stay in Rochester for 3 months.

I finished the elephant ACEO, named it 'At Rest.' I'm going to start a meerkat ACEO. I've been watching Meerkat Manor, and have gotten interested in them. They're pretty neat critters.