Gonzai Gallery

As much as I can, anyway. Managed to escape babysitting Friday, because I had a show Saturday no one wanted me loading the van while stepping over kids at 5am. But didn't sleep well, and got up early for the show. Seems Annapolis has changed quite a bit in the last 6 years or so - it looked nothing like it did the last time I was there. Tons of new developments and business complexes, etc, which have kind of ruined the whole historic thing the town had going on. Anyway, my helper for the day was Cecil, who is my nephews' second cousin. He was a ton of help, and there were a few times I really needed it. The kids at the school were very helpful as well, I was completely packed and loaded out 20 minutes after the show ended. Awesome. Oddly, I sold out of...The Buffalo Bills, Detroit Lions, Oklahoma Sooners and South Carolina. Huh? In two shows, I've sold 1 Eagles and not a single baseball ornament. Weird. Ordinarily I'd have been thrilled with the sales - second best total I've ever had - except that the best show I ever had was last year in the same place, in the snow and rain, and I was down 25% from that show. All in all, I made very little money at arts and crafts this year and it's just as well I decided not to run it as a 'business' this year. The numbers just don't warrant it.

Got home and huddled, because I'm getting a cold and I was definitely overheated after the show. Watched Auburn/SC until it got out of hand, then the Merlin finale and some Spooks. Down to one ep of Spooks left. Slept 12 hours straight in the hopes of losing the cold, but I don't think it helped, I'm stuffy today. I took Mom to PetSmart for dog food, and the place was packed with critters. Lots of dogs including an incontinent Lab, a talkative greyhound a teensy husky pup. The adoption crew for the day was there trying to home rabbits. And the whole lot of them were completely upstaged by...a goat. Yes, someone brought a goat to PetSmart. Esther is a 7 month old La Mancha dairy goat with incredible calm. Even with dogs sniffing her all over, she dozed off. Talked to her owners, Esther was bottle-raised in the house after being ill when she was a week old, and even now she lives in a shed attached to the house and spends half her time in the house. She's so people-acclimated she's already going to nursing homes. She was our highlight of the day :)  We picked up some seafood (crabs!) and went home to settle in and wait for the Ravens/Steelers game. Was going to watch the last Spooks, but it turned out instead of having eps 7 & 8, I have two copies of 8. Eesh. So I indulged Mom's sudden crush on Matthew Morrison (CBS Sunday Morning did a segment on him) and played the Glee pilot for her. Now waiting, semi-patiently, for THE BIG GAME. Nervous now...

It was supposed to hit 103 today. Dunno if it did, but it sure felt like it. I went to the gym and the car's AC struggled to keep the temperature down to 104 in the car. It was so hot I went and bought a snowball. Haven't had one of those in 2-3 years, but dang it was good. (Blackberry, no marshmallow.) Otherwise haven't left the house...gave CJ a bath, cooked, and did most of the work on a commissioned portrait, while finally finishing the catchup on 'Spooks'. I assume the actress playing Sarah was actually British, because her 'American' accent was atrocious. More specifically, the region she was from changed scene to scene and occasionally line to line. Yikes. Although it is good to know the Brits can do American accents as badly as Americans do British ones. On to an extraordinarily depressing Damian Lewis movie, 'Keane'. May not make it to the end at this rate of depressing. But at least it's indoors.

With me not doing a whole lot. I did go to the Y and swim for pretty much the first time in 8 years. I expect I'll be in a lot of pain tomorrow. Felt good at the time though. Finally finished cleaning all the duplicate files out my ITunes drive, something I've been working on since February or so. Now I get to add the music I acquired since then into the ITunes folder, Also have to put all the stray files into their appropriate files, and double check the whole thing against my old drive. For some reason a lot of the music didn't copy, I think I found most of the missing files but I ought to make sure. Oh, yeah, also burned a bunch of DVDs, downloaded some things, played a lot of games online, made some prints, pulled the art for Shore Leave and did all the remaining paperwork, and mainlined series 7 of 'Spooks'.  Come to think of it, maybe I did get a fair amount done today...

The one good thing about the awning coming down - it's the only thing here that really could come down. The roof is pitched, and everything else around here has 4 points of support. We need that, because Mom dug a small pit in an attempt to get Roxie to do her business. Within an hour it was completely gone. I had to dig a new one so CJ could do her thing. Half an hour later it's almost gone. It's about 4 feet deep on the deck now. The van has disappeared again. No photos, because the awning blocks the steps - we can't get out. The kid who dug out us out Monday, I've asked him to come tomorrow. I sure hope he can, so I can get out Friday. But I'm giving up on Thursday already.

Oh, and Mom is sick of watching Spooks.

Re the check forging: We finally got new checks this morning, after raising a full ruckus with the bank over the matter. So today, we finally got paid (with a little extra for the lateness). No word yet from the FBI on whether they'll take the case.

The good ol' federal government, they'll bail out anybody - except Lehman Bros. I'll bet those folks are wondering what they did wrong. Meanwhile we the taxpayers get to foot the bill for money managers mismanaging. Sigh.

Got Pushing Daisies and Torchwood yesterday. Love the PD packaging scheme, and I got it at Target so I got the pie recipe book as well as the set. The boss has already borrowed the DVDs, hopefully I'll get to watch next week. Torchwood looks like the 1st season set, except lighter on the extras. Probably start watching it tonight.

Didn't watch The Fringe a second time after all - we had one ep of Heroes S2 left, and I decided I'd rather watch that. So there. Very impressed with Sarah Connor Chronicles so far - they're pouring serious money into that budget and keeping the storyline up at the same time. I'll keep my fingers crossed for them.

The good news is I haven't been roped into moderating an orphan panel at easternmediacon . But I have, for reasons I can't explain, volunteered to rescue an orphaned workshop. Looks like the Beginner's Art Workshop will now be a tag team effort by 4 artists, myself being one of them. This should be interesting. I may also be 'pimping' some shows, particularly Life, Pushing Daisies & Spooks. Waiting for a confirm on that.