I Need to Make Something

I need to make something.
I haven't made something in sooo long.
I've made things.
I've been programming.
I've been knitting.
I've been drawing a bit.
I've been writing a bit.
I've been planning a bit.
But I haven't made something.
I haven't made anything that upon completion I felt like...
I had filled a gap. A hole. A nook.
A place where something had not yet been.
I need to paint.
But you know what?

It feels good.

Small Yellow Gourd

No More Drawing with the Touchpad for Me!

Wooh! My tablet came in the mail! Now to try some digital stuff.

This kind of looks like me.

I started blending the colors on the bottom face. I'm not actually invested in finishing this. I just wanted to try it out. More to come...

Getting Off The Brain Crack

Finally getting to those things that I've been telling myself I've wanted to do for a while....

Like drawing self-portraits!

I have no idea what I look like.

No, seriously. I have no idea.

Also: I made a finishing stamp! That's my calligraphic rabbit 兎. The symbol's been integrated with my signature for a while. The stamp is basically a signature to declare "It's done now". It's pretty fun to use. But I need an ink pad. I've been inking it with markers... and I need more markers....

eraser + pocket knife

After I adopted the character 兎 as mine I learned it can be pronounced 'to' as in Toledo.  Which is just sweet.

Don't think you've seen your last photo of an clementine peel.

There's art in here somewhere

More playing with clementine peels.

It's a flower!

They're looking at you.

hmm...

I really like this one.

I took a lot of these...

Doodle Painting Fildi

Started doing some stuff. Ink and water color.

finally some paint

swirly... might do more of these

It's been storming a lot lately.

Also I've been eating clementines.

I took a lot of these...

Where I am right now

Things are going well...

Turtle

The more I read it the less it looks like a word

45 Years Since Loving v. Virginia

It's day's like this that I'm grateful to be alive.

To imagine a time when my parents would be persecuted for being my parents, when my very existence would be seen as abominable, and when the law agreed with that perspective, I don't know if anything can make me tear up faster. My parents were born before this court case and they were only children when it happened. They probably had no idea how important June 12th, 1967 was when it happened. I really can't imagine living before then. It's painful to think about.

Unfortunately some people still don't have their Loving Day. There are still couples who are persecuted for loving each other, children who are seen as abominable, and laws which say that's "okay". It breaks my heart. It really does.

Happy Loving Day...

Copied from Wikipedia

On June 12, 2007, Mildred Loving issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision. Her statement concluded: 

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God's plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation's fears and prejudices have given way, and today's young people realize that if someone loves someone, they have a right to marry.
Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the 'wrong kind of person' for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Some Earth Drawings from September

Yeah so I should've posted these in September. Anyway, one day I was rather stressed out, because I hadn't made anything in far too long. So I shuffled my feet.  There's this patch of small white gravel that I've been wanting to do something with for a while so I did something.  I got mostly weird looks (I probably looked a bit creepy, shuffle, shuffle) at first but eventually someone made a connection to Zen sand gardens.

completed view

Half hour later someone added a penis

Some time after that it was replaced by a heart.

So the shuffling was fun. I then wandered around a bit trying to find something else to do. I came upon a wooden pencil and this area with benches and pebbled ground (plaza?) and decided to draw some spirals. This is actually a less trafficked area so it was a while before anyone started interacting with the drawing. Anyone who actually wanted to walk across this area without stepping on the drawing would have a hard time. I was surprised at those who took the effort. (As long as they weren't running it wouldn't have been really damaged anyway). I was rather dizzy by the time I finished.

The Pencil

Both of these together took maybe an hour and a half to two hours to make. The first lasted a good few days, the second maybe a week, which I was satisfied with.

September - March (My attempt at grad school)

Grad school...

Inspiration.
Lots of writing.
Discouragement.
Lots of reading.
Inspiration.
Lots of grading.
Discouragement.
Short deadlines.
Discouragement.
No time for...
Inspiration.
More of everything.
Discouragement.
I've been in school for too long.

In short, I'm taking a leave of absence until next spring.
I guess I should have seen this coming

A bit more from Puerto Rico

You can figure out how the rest of the trip went from the pictures.

I'll try to rotate the sideways ones later...
(hey I actually did it)

So Here's What Happened

Here's the post I had intended to make the day following the last Puerto Rico Post.

---

I slept on the couch last night. Typically there are two or three ants that wander up there and I can simply remove them. But last night my bed was covered in ants. They were on the comforter, on the sheets, under the pillow, on the baseboard. =/
Yesterday we went to a botanical garden. It was nice, though a bit wrecked up from the hurricane.

See those trees? That's Bamboo. I've never seen it that big.

 Afterward we went back to Old San Juan. We hung out in one of the plazas for a while.

I was sitting on that bench until the people behind me started throwing down bird seed.

Doggy

I went into a shop and this guy was under the counter.

We wandered around a bit looking for food and found a park that was named after the number of pigeons it has.

Pigeon holes.

There were several of these cast shoes in this park.

We eventually found a place to eat by the park. And it wasn't a fast food chain! It had traditional Puerto Rican food (And there were a few vegetarian options). I had stuffed green plantains in some kind of tomato ginger sauce (I think that's what the sauce was). It was really good. After, we went to the mall and wandered for a bit. They still had a Borders. We got a few cheap books. I was kind of sad to see the place go.

Spent a while in there.

Hanging glass bulbs in the mall.

Animal Count: 5 lizards, 13 dogs, 5 horses, 1 (field of) cows And cats go missing again

Wait for it....

...almost.