Artsy Fartsy

It’s been a long time coming.  Six weeks ago, 46 days, to be exact, my PDA died and I’ve been waiting for July 1 to hurry up an get here so I could upgrade my phone to the new Treo 755p.  As of Sunday I will be eligible for the phone upgrade credit that should make this baby a bit more affordable.  I cannot wait.  We will be there when the Sprint store opens at 11am.

I’ve said this before and everyone thinks I’m exaggerating, but my PDA was my external brain.  I kept everything in there - phone numbers, appointments, birthdays, passwords, my check register - everything.  It was a great system, life was humming along all organized and simplified, and BAM!  She dies on me.  Since that dark day, six weeks ago, I have missed an appointment, showed up late for another, probably forgotten somebody’s birthday (sorry), not had anyone’s phone number when I needed it, been locked out of three different websites for not knowing my password and guessing wrong too many times, and bounced a check for the first time in my life.  It’s been hard!  But not for much longer.  Two more days… I think I can make it.  Now my only decision to make is - blue or burgundy?

Check out what I made!  Well, I didn’t make the sunglasses, Zenni did, they’re just there for scale.  Here are three new bags I’ve made between last night and tonight.

Cute, huh?  The brown polka-dot one is mine and the other two are for my sister to pick from.  I think I might be getting the hang of this sewing thing!

Because I am the #1 world’s greatest dog-sitter EVER, and also because I don’t have any vacation plans this summer, I am lucky enough this week to be dog-sitting not only my two favorite greyhounds, Bentley and Peanut, but also my mom’s dumb-as-rocks dog, Aimee.  I’ve been calling it Dogapalooza but that seems dated.  Should I call it Doggaroo?  Dogstock ‘07?  Either way, it’s a nonstop party.  See how crazy it gets:

Wow, makes me tired just looking at her.  This is Molly’s station, no more than two feet away from me at all times.  Especially in the kitchen.  Aimee has no clue, and Bentley and Peanut have no interest in carrots or zucchini, but Molly insists on guarding the kitchen area so that she will be the only one to receive the veggies I toss to her as I cook.

Here’s Aimee, trying to figure out where she is and how she got here.  Aimee is cute, she looks like a sheep, and she’s sweet, but she’s got this stoned, vacant look in her eyes all the time and it looks like she has no clue what’s going on.  If you’ve ever seen the character Towlie on South Park, that’s Aimee.  To be honest, I’m not sure she even noticed that Bentley and Peanut showed up last night.

And here are the real troublemakers,  Thing 1 and Thing 2.  Look at how rowdy they are.  Please disregard the miscellaneous clutter and, for some reason, Luke’s pants hanging over a chair.  It was hot yesterday.  Too hot for cleaning up and apparently too hot for pants.

And speaking of pants, it occurred to me with four hot dogs in the hot house, that Molly does not pant.  I don’t know why.  She’ll breathe heavily for maybe a minute, then flop down on the cool ground and that’s it.  The other three are nonstop panting machines and I felt so bad for Bents last night that I dug out a fan to blow on him after two straight hours of panting.  (Paula’s rolling her eyes right now because she thinks I spoil them, and I do.)

Now everyone wish Paula and Karlo a big bon voyage as they leave today for an amazing trip to Croatia.  I’m so jealous, I think I might just teach Bentley and Peanut the joys of sleeping on the couch while they’re gone just to spite them.

Well, not really, but here it is. My final for the 2007 Four Town Fair catalog. (And, a little aside here, is it just me? I cannot spell “fair” correctly ever. Thank goodness for spell check otherwise I’d be showing you the Four Town Fiar illustration. It’s the same with “because”. I always, always spell it “becasue”. Very irritating. OK, continue admiring…)

There will be a chocolate chip cookie-baking contest this year, hence the cookie theme. The blank background is waiting for the title and text. The spooky weird shadow behind the boy is courtesy of The Force, or maybe it’s just my scanner. Now who wants a cookie?

Today I was going to tell the story about how I got a call late last Tuesday about a new illustration job, and how I had to sketch frantically to get some ideas out before my sister’s birthday party, then sketch into the wee hours of Thursday to get the final sketch in for approval before I left for my weekend trip, then come home from the trip, unpack my bags and start painting because the final was needed Monday morning. But, dummy that I am, I forgot to upload the scan I took before I handed the final off. So I’ll have to tell you that story later.

What a great weekend. We’re back from our three-day weekend and we don’t want it to end. The weather was perfect, the riding was fun, the campground was beautiful, the people were so nice… it was fantastic.

We left Friday around noon and took a lovely ride, mostly route 44, heading toward New York. Every time we’ve traveled that way, up around Winsted I’m always amazed by two things. First, I always thought that Winsted was this hick little town with nothing around. Winsted is huge and booming. Andover is the gum on the bottom of Winsted’s shoe. And secondly, I always think to myself that you can forget how beautiful Connecticut is when you live here every day. It really is gorgeous. The hills, the little towns, the scenery - it’s amazing. We found Wilcox Park, our camping area, around 2 or so and were pleasantly surprised at this fantastic park.

Here’s a link to a video I took from the back of Luke’s motorcycle of the road into the park. This is from the entrance to the camping area at the back of the park - about a four-minute ride through trees and twisty roads, past ponds and lovely picnic areas. What a nice park.  Click here to watch it.  (In case you’re wondering, all of the rear seat photography was taken on our trip out to the air show.  They had told us that motorcycle parking was tight so some of us went two-up to save on room.  Not my favorite way to travel anymore, but hey, at least I got to take some pictures!)

We spent Friday afternoon relaxing and talking with the people we knew.  The temperature went from about 80-degrees in the sun to 50-degrees in the shade and then down to about 30-degrees at night.  It was cold, but Saturday morning when we got up and it was so clear and beautiful, it was worth the cold feet during the night.  There’s nothing like climbing out of a dewy tent in the early morning and seeing mist all around as you set up the coffee percolator to make a steamy cup of coffee and start your day.

Saturday afternoon we went out to the Rhinebeck Aerodrome to see an air show of vintage planes.  There’s a museum and an air strip and they restore and fly Word War I-era planes there.  Unfortunately it was windy on Saturday so we didn’t get to see all of the planes in the air, but it was my first air show at it was fun.  It was such a nice day that any excuse to stand outside and look at the sky was good enough for me.  We headed back to the campground for the Saturday night festivities including an insane amount of food, bike judging, and raffle prizes.  After dinner we sat around the campfire and listened to Voyle and three others play their guitars and banjo and sing songs into the wee hours of the morning.  A perfect end to a great day.

Another cold night and another gorgeous morning and we were packing up and getting ready to leave.  I would have loved to stay longer, it was just so beautiful there.  We thought about taking the long(er) way home but decided to take the same route home that we took to get there since I had some work to do once we got home (more on that later), and we had another great ride up over route 44 again.I can’t say “great” and “beautiful” and “amazing” enough.  It was just a perfect weekend and I want to thank all of the Dead Horse regulars who are nice enough to take us in and show us around, and a big thank you to Michale and Karla Friedle who organize the Airheads at the Aerodrome rally every year.  This was our first year but it certainly won’t be our last.

(Click on any of the pictures in the Flickr block on the right to see all 54 pictures from our trip.)

My summer wouldn’t be complete without spending some quality time in the outdoors with a bunch of men (and some very cool women) with a passion for motorcycles and a questionable policy on showering.  Tomorrow, Luke and I are headed to Rhinebeck, NY to the “Airheads at the Aerodome” rally.  The “Airheads” part relates to the older model BMW bike and the “Aerodome” relates to the airport nearby.  It’s mostly a BMW campout but they accept all types and so we’re going on our Buells for two nights of camping and three days of beautiful weather, winding roads and great riding.  There’s an air show on Saturday, too, that should be pretty cool.  I’m looking forward to the whole trip sine Luke and I haven’t gone anywhere or taken any really nice rides yet this summer.

While we’re gone, we asked Luke’s cousin’s 16 year-old son, Nick, to stay at our house and watch Molly and the fish, oh, and the cat, too.  I always forget we have a cat.   My parents are going to be in Maine, and had asked us to watch their dog, Aimee, so she’ll be there at our house this weekend, too.  I don’t know if Nick knows what he’s in for.  Molly’s bad enough, insisting on sitting on either a lap or a pillow at all times and spoiled enough to know that its better to sleep in bed under the covers, but Aimee’s worse.  Aimee is like velcro. Very sweet, dopey-looking velcro.  All she wants to do is snuggle.  All the time.  And be pet, constantly.  It should be interesting.

So stay tuned for some beautiful new motorcycle pictures.  It looks like it’s going to be a perfect weekend!

Oh, and remember that cake from yesterday?  It was AMAZING.  Yes, I’m bragging about something I made, but if you tasted it, you’d agree.  It really was like a big devil dog and I used up all the self-control I had not to have seconds and thirds.  It was worth every last bit of the effort, and the chocolate chopping, and candy thermometer attending, and the egg white beating… man, it was good.

It’s sombody’s birthday today. She’s related to me, she’s older than me but she’s shorter than me, she’s my mom’s favorite because she provided grandchildren and I didn’t… Any guesses? That’s right! Today is my sister’s birthday!! Happy birthday Andrea! She doesn’t read blogs, not even this one, but I wanted to send her a cyber happy birthday wish anyhow.

Up above there is the cake I made for her last night from this Dorie Greenspan cookbook I recently got and highly recommend. It’s the recipe on the cover, although on the recipe page inside she tells you to smoosh the cake crumbs all over it and not leave that nice white top like on the cover. I can’t remember what she called it, but I told my mom yesterday it looked like a devil dog married a cake. After making (and tasting it) I now think it’s more like an oreo fell in love with a marshmallow. Three layers of moist devil’s food cake with chocolate bits inside layered with vanilla marshmallow frosting and covered with a coating of cake crumbles. Mmm… I can’t wait to cut into it.

But enough about the cake - yay Andrea and happy happy birthday to you!

The only thing I’m enjoying about Luke’s new schedule is the fact that I have more “alone time” to read. I almost forgot how to read, it had been so long. I breezed through a few of the books that had been staring at my from my dusty bookshelf and then my friend Flannery, the source of many good links, told me about a site called Good Reads where you can catalog the books you’ve read and review them. Rather than write out reviews as blog posts, I thought I’d link to Good Reads so you can read my reviews there. Click here to see my recent books. Also, Good Reads offered a cute little widget to put a link on this page of the books I’m currently reading . Look under the Flickr badge and you’ll see it. So… got any good books to recommend?

I got my new work computer on Friday - a beautiful MacBook Pro - sigh, I’m in love. Molly happened to be at work with me Friday when I was setting it up and since she likes to insists on sitting on my lap all day, this is what happened when the tiny camera above the screen turned on to capture my picture:

How cute is she?  Looks like she has little pigtails.  And speaking of pictures, take a look at my Flickr pictures over there on the right.  My dad went to North Carolina last weekend for the RA Rally and took some beautiful photos of the Shenandoah Valley and Deals Gap - I’m so jealous.  The pictures are from his camera, stolen for the benefit of everyone else who might like to see them.