June 2006 Archives
My scanning abilities are about as great as my beginner watercolor stabs so I had to resort to taking pictures of some of my sketches the camera, thereby degrading the quality of the sketch that much more. But because I've been all penis and vagina about my watercolor classes, I thought I'd share. Remember, I'm a BEGINNER. Patience and understanding would be appreciated.
The news around these parts is all about the flooding of NY, PA, and NJ. 14 people so far have been killed by the Delaware River and surrounding brooks, creeks, and other assorted waterways. For anyone in this area, this is now the third "biggest flood ever" in the last year and a half. The biggest flood before that was in 1955. It's awesome and scary at the same time. Our house, while on the Delaware, is actually up on a hill so we were told that should the river ever crest at our door-step, Philadelphia would be complete submerged. This bring a little hope to us that we won't have to deal with floods but little comfort for the surrounding areas. Most of the roads leading into and out of Barryville are still closed. The Barryville Bridge just opened this morning, after having been closed all of yesterday, forcing Jeff and I to load the cats into a laundry basket and carry them and our stuff across the river and up to our home last night at the end of our commute from the city. I can tell you that walking across a very old, soon-to-be demolished bridge over these raging waters wasn't exactly a picnic
Picture 1 | Picture 2 | Picture 3.
Last night, the never-ending exploration of our relationship took Jeff and me to heights. After eleven years and so many months together, I finally found out where Jeff hides things from me. Not the attic at the house or the wherever it is he stores the cleaning supplies ('cause why the hell would I need to know where the cleaning supplies are stored?) and not even in the dark recesses of his heart where one hides their most personal, secret secrets. No...last night I was able to get a pen, a dollar bill, a penny, AND our wedding band all into the crack of his ass...AT THE SAME TIME. Lord, it's like free storage that travels. Litterally, I was grabbing whatever was laying about and working it into the crack, Janga-style, waiting to see how much I could get in before the whole thing collapsed. I believe Jeff was slightly amused at my ingenuity until I decided all the sudden to go to bed because I was tired, leaving him to fish out the booty. I kept calling from my pre-somnomulent haze, "did you get the penny? Did you find the penny? Don't leave the penny in there." That's when his patience with me ran rather short. Imagine!
I had to skip watercolor class last week because I was in Boston for work so I was anxious to get back to it last night and walked in greeting the instructor and a guy who hadn't been in the class before. Just like a few weeks ago, this was all about doing watercolors of a nude model though this time, instead of vagina, it was all about dick. Yeah for the gays! Unlike before, I had no internal high-school giggle moment and got right down to work. I kept thinking what it would take to be a nude model for this kind of class and for men, apparently it's a big dick. Who wouldn't want to stand there naked with that kind of sway hanging between one's legs? The kid was nice enough, albeit a bit nervous and less in control of the room then the chick from a few weeks ago (though I figured it out that she held great disdain for everyone in the room which gave her the suitable amount of distance to be in control. This kid was friendly and rather chatty which opened him up to a kind of nervousness).
Ultimately, while my sketches were acceptable last night, I still think I did better work with the female model than this male model. We were learning new techniques last night that I wasn't at all comfortable with (wet on wet has absolutely zero control in my hand) and my instructor was growing bored with my monochromatic washes in blues and violets, forcing me to dump in a ton of secondary and tertiary color that I wasn't really feeling.
When Jeff is out of town, such as he was this weekend, I'm left to my own devices meaning I get to cook whatever I want, just for me. Since Jeff is not a fish-lover, I picked up a couple Red Snapper fillets on Friday and following Ms. Ray, produced a rather nice late night dinner for myself. Unremarkable in and of itself except that I've never made fish before. I'd admit the caper and white wine sause wasn't exactly top quality...too many flavors that stood out instead of blending, but the fish was cooked and it wasn't difficult so it's a winner.
On Saturday, I jumped from Rachel to Giada Di Laurentis's Italian Picnic. I have sort of a love/hate thing with Giada. She's amazingly beautiful, her cooking is so easy-looking and relaxed, but she's got this italian thing when she speaks that sort of disrupts the whole image for me. That being said, the recipe for the Caponata Sandwiches sounded too good to be true so I whipped up a batch yesterday and it was awesome. Full of flavor, sweet and sour, it has it all.
I've been trying to expand my cocktail experiences and started looking for my summer drink, other than strong white wine. While in Boston last week having drinks with Ron, I discovered that I love a good gin and tonic. Cool and refreshing, it is perfect for me. Then along came the NYTimes article on their summer cocktail contest winner, The Cuke, which is a horrible name but a compelling recipe. I whipped up a batch of them last night and they were awesome. I'm not sure if I'd make them for just myself, but having friends over (Nick and Steve gave them thumbs up last night, too), I'd throw a pitcher of them together and share.
Last week was such a short weekend because of being in Ohio, I didn't even get my camera out while I was out in the garden. This week though, things continue to grow but with no rain during the week, everything seems to have slowed a bit. That being said, the tomatoes are coming along nicely and I'm getting blooms already that will soon grow to be the fruit off the vine. The cucumbers are finally starting to strech out a bit so I got them started on the string so they can start growing up. The beans are taking off rapidly and I expect produce from them in a month or so.
I celebrated my 36th birthday this week with some kick-ass spinach dip at Houston's and a movie. This might seem relatively mellow to some, but it was a night out on the town for me and that's better than the norm of heading home after a long, weird day at work to get fat in front of the TV. I was a huge fan of the old tv show 'Thirtysomething' and now that I'm there, I think "holy shit".
In the second of six watercolor classes for beginners I'm attending on Monday nights, I had barely gotten over my debacle of the previous week where I learned that, contrary to my own beliefs, I can't paint, only to be confronted by Vagina. Seriously, nude modeling for beginner students in the second class? Holy fucking shit. And, bang! VAGINA!
On the other hand, the chick was gorgeous in a great curvy way, had great tattoos, and was of some Asian ethnicity, my favorite in gorgeous women, so it was kind of joyful. But better yet, the previous week of failing to create a green, glass bottle from a still life arrangement with watercolors was put behind me and I produced some watercolors last night that I was pretty proud of. Who knew? Vagina makes me creative. Woot!
I'm back in Ohio where I grew up and came into myself, for a short visit while Jeff is off working somewhere east of here. So far my trip has included mostly forwarding Very Important Emails from my work account to people I work with/for from a touchy dial-up connection while simultaneously having someone who works for/with me read off email addresses on my cell. There have also been some coffees, lunches, and dinners between all that fun, zaniness.
I'm beginning to believe time away from work, coined adorably as a "vacation" is nothing of the kind...it's just more work except that I don't have the confort of sitting behind my big important desk and being able to boss people when I'm feeling slight and insignificant.
Also, for as dry as New York is, Ohio is that much wetter. I was driving to dinner last night to a place right out side of Xenia, which is the site of the famous 1974 Xenia Tornado, a climatic weather event so large and important in Nowheresville, Ohio, it's still thought of as the door-knocking event of the coming Apocolypse to Ohio residents. So as I'm driving to Xenia, the massing thunderheads and rolling blackness of some horrible storm gathering in the west was not providing comfort and I could, quite clearly, see the movie of the week about the returning of Xenia Tornado 2 with me in it, voluntarily driving TOWARDS the impending site of destruction. It was an ironic moment when I was able to mentally step outside myself and think, "what the fuck are you doing?" Still, dinner was awesome with the Aunts.
Left to do on this trip: visit Mom in the cemetary (perhaps guerilla garden a bit with some butterfly bushes or purple-spiked salva), make some Paula Dean Danish Swirls (almond and lemon), cook out with the brothers and family, see if the place where my grandmother goes to have her Marcel curls done has actually heard of eyebrow waxing for a quick clean up on these caterpillars of mine, and potentially meet up with the only blogger in Ohio whose email address I have.
I didn't post pics from last week because I was tired of just shooting dirt with some sprigs of green. All the better to wait until this weekend after a week of rain. The garden is bursting out, growing like, well, growing like weeds, I guess. Here are some comparisons from last week to this week:
Beds of tomatoes last week and this week.
Pole beans last week and this week.
And an overall, this is where I was a month ago, this is where we are today.
Yowzer!
