WIP #1*

"Randolph! Sit! Stay! I need to take your photo!"

Y'all know I love my dog, right? I mean, you've seen the "I love my dog (and yours is cute too)" tee that I wear to death. For the past couple of weeks, I've been half-heartedly trying to snap a photo of the silhouette of my dog to then blow up and cut out on coloured paper.

Today, I stumble across this photo from Cut Arts. I'm now even more determined than ever to make this work.

*WIP = Work In Progress

printed matter

So, I'm torn. Which of these should I get?


The snoozing bear in the bottom right corner just did it for me. From Apak


Heart-broken pink bear, who can resist you? From Ghost Ghost Teeth


It's not a coincidence that all the prints I've chosen are sorta this shade of sea foam. From Alicia Bock


I used to doodle stuff like this, before I was convinced that I couldn't draw. Maybe I should just draw something on my own instead of buying. From Benben

be nice to the little people

My love for all things miniature should be well known. Check out this Little People website, where little handpainted people are left in London to fend for themselves. At 150 pounds for a print, though, the price tag is a bit too large for me.

feeling it

I love it when you call
I love it when you call
I love it when you call
But you never call at all
So what's the complication it's only conversation
I love it when you call
But you never call at all
~ Love It When You Call, by The Feeling

The upbeat soundtrack to my Sunday, which played on while I placed bricks in semi-parallel lines in my front yard in the morning, watched sweaty Ikea men wrestle with a Klippan, a Lack, a Lindved and an Expedit in the afternoon, and endeavoured to paint a hospital green wall butter yellow without success.


It's incredible how many books one Expedit can hold. Good thing I bought more shelves, much to the dismay of M. Now that doggie has graduated from obedience school, I can get him to stay down and pose for photos.


Round 2 and 3 of painting tomorrow after work. After an exhausting Round 1, it was still greenish. My room is filled with fumes so I have to share M's bed tonight.

smell the roses

I have so many items on my To Do List, it's crazy. It's my own undoing of course, since I elected to repaint one wall of my room, have new furniture delivered and write a procrastinated travel piece all on the same day tomorrow.

But in the meantime, I'm taking time to stop and smell this website, with its smells of the beach in summer, the field in winter, even the musk of libraries.

This is what the perfume creator wrote about Winter 1972:

A field of untouched new fallen snow, hand knit woolen mittens covered with frost, a hint of frozen forest & sleeping earth

I remember, one December when I was much younger, sitting alone at night in a field. There were no tracks in the fresh snow other than my own and no sound but my own breath. Occasionally I heard a twig snap in the pine wood that bordered the field.
The air was perfectly clear and nothing was visible except the small cloud of my own breath between me and the infinite stars. All of them were visible, sparkling silently against the endless blue of space. I can remember nothing in my life so beautiful as the sight of the sky that winter night.

I recall clearly the scent of that winter air. It was not at all a pine scent and had nothing to do with cinnamon or spices. It was the blue frozen scent of fresh snow and silver stars. It was a scent that spoke to my young brain of remembering what was and realizing what will come. It was the sleeping scent of spring now frozen beneath the snow.

Winter is still like that for me. It is a time to rest, a time to remember and to look forward. Winter is a quiet time to watch the stars and have hope.

Christopher Brosius 1994 (Revised 2005)

I'm so intrigued by this blend of scent and prose that I'm tempted to order it, just to smell if it lives up to the beautiful promise.

fabricated

Excursion to jersey warehouse last week. Pancake stacks of cloth, noisy graceful forklifts, and doing business with a bare-bodied man for the first time.

top dog trainer

Doggie came in third in his class, beating three golden retrievers, one husky and one border collie who was having a bad day. All credit, however, goes not to Randolph but to the top dog trainer who woke up at 6am every morning to whip him into shape.

As a reward, I took doggie to his fave park, a derelict [say it like Zoolander!] playground with stone tunnels and slides from the 70s, this morning.

He loves to frolic in the overgrown grass when I take off his leash, but today, he just sat attentively next to me, running around only when I did. He's so well-trained now, he doesn't remember how to play.

pink prank project

203m of pink wrapper was used to transform a messy apartment into a pink oasis. More photos here.

happy belated birthday

I'm a bit late. But you can read all about Tony's birthday here and here.