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Mask:  First Night, hand-made, clay wall sculpture with amethyst and redwood, 12"t x 7.5"w x 3.5"d, by Tammy Vitale $145

Yesterday’s pictures with white and dark background elicited a lot of comments from folks who, much like me, liked both slides, but in the end, the dark background won out.  Thanks for you opinions.  It will help me as I choose photos in the future!

I’m getting ready to go away for a week.  Can someone please tell me why that becomes a job all in itself?  Yesterday I felt like I had more on my plate than I have had in a long time, even when I was working the part-time job.

But I made it through the day, and one of the things I came away with was my very on IPod.  Ladies and gentlemen, I am getting SO connected.  I wouldn’t have done it except I want to be able to listen to all this marketing information I’m downloading from Alyson Stanfield and One Coach.  First I thought CD, but apparently a CD only holds 80 minutes and almost all of my podcasts and other downloads are over an hour.  So Husband says:  IPod, Honey.  And went and researched it for me.  I gave him his for his birthday a year ago.  Well, for less than I paid for his, I got 50 more gigabytes (and I finally think I’m getting all the ‘bytes straightened out in my head), i.e. 80 gigs.  Which I may never fill up.  Even if I put all our CDs on it.  So, even as I type now, I am "listening" – I figure, since audio isn’t my strong suit, much of this will just pass directly into my subconscious which will then put it into use.  I’ll also have it while walking the beach, and while finishing up my load of kilnwork today (which I plan to take with me:  write off! because I will be visiting shops.  Which means more work:  photographing everything I take with me.  Sigh).  I’m not quite finished packing either.  I pack.  Husband gets the vehicle together for me.  Nice breakout.

At any rate, because I can now listen away from the computer, I feel very productive.  And I’m freed up from some time constraints (be here at this time and sit and listen on the phone, which isn’t exactly my cup of tea).

In case any of you have missed it, Shan (formerly Thick Paint) of Simple Beauty is back from her hiatus on posting and working on 100 works, 1 a day (there must be something about this 1 a day thing – we all recognize somewhere inside that it really pushes us to create, create, create).  Today she an ethereal picture of a money plant posted – had them all the time when I was growing up.  They bloom every two years but my Mom had them staggered so we got them every year.  Go visit.

Must get back to my todo list.

But before I go:  anyone have a good kaleidescope software program they’d recommend?  I tried a download but didn’t seem to have much control over it, even though it randomly made some spectacular individual prints.  I want one where I can control the picture input explicitly, and the rate of movement, etc.  Any ideas?

thought for the day:  We tell the stories we have to tell, stories of the tings that draw us in – and why should any of us have more than a handful of those?  The only work really worth doing – the only work you can do convincingly – is the work that focuses on the things you care about….In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make your happy, or not giving it your best shot – and thereby guaranteeing  that it will not make you happy.  It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty.  And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.  David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art and Fear:  Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking