Small parts of my region of Toronto are still without power — unpleasant, with the cold weather we’re having! We drove Caitlin most of the way to work since the subway around here was closed, and it was really odd seeing what had power and what didn’t — the grid is a really chaotic structure I suppose. We also had a major fire alarm (with fire engine and all) here today because some of the pipes froze during the night since there was no heating in the building, and when the system started up again they busted and blew out enough steam to trigger the alarms. Very annoying since it meant a high volume siren playing over the building-wide intercoms for 20 minutes.
I wasn’t sure if she’d “get” it, but I got Nefarious playing Crayon Physics (I have the full game — it’s totally fun) today… I was amazed that she was completely able to solve even the more complex physics puzzles and had a great time doing it. Plus of course it’s a game that’s good mental exercise… It’s always a crapshoot which games will be a hit. Because her hand-eye-mouse-gamepad coordination isn’t the greatest yet, that tends to be much more of a limiting factor than game complexity, which I’ve found isn’t really an issue (and modern games are pretty well designed and have intuitive interfaces).
I did a little more work on “The Abyssinian Maid” as well.
Last night at about 10pm the power went out for large parts of Toronto — I don’t know yet why — and didn’t turn back on here until about 7am. Nefarious’s school is still without power so that’s been canceled for the day, which sucks because I was going in for pizza day. But it’s a good weekend — Nefarious has trapeze class and a friend’s birthday party, and then we’re all going to the monster truck rally, woo woo!
Before the power went out last night I drew these two shirts, just for fun.
I had a great morning today at Nefarious’s school — I was called in to read to the class so I spent about an hour half reading a mix of favorite books from both here and the school’s library. Tomorrow I’m back at school to help out on pizza lunch day. If I wasn’t 99% sure that my tattoos would preclude me from employment I’d really consider early childhood education as a job — not that I have any regrets… I just love dealing with kids of that age.
I started painting on the Kubla Kahn series for the mini-book project… I’m doing them big, which will let me work much, much faster and more freely. I’m going to do the Abyssinian Maid first (scene eight of ten in the series).
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
Anyway, I’m just beginning to rough it out.
I know it looks amateurish but it will become much more as time passes. There’s going to be a lot of post-processing (a la Fool’s Mate) so I’ll have to be sure to use a drop cloth… Although one of the good things about this apartment building is that every time someone moves out, they redo the floors, so I can literally destroy them if I feel like it. That said, it’s also a bad thing, because right now they’re redoing the apartment below us, and it reeks of solvents in here.
Now I think I’ll go pick up Nefarious at school and see if she feels like sledding…
Edit: No f’ing interest… she’s too obsessed with her “Littlest Pet Shop” figurines… I suggested to her mother, who’s headed on a trip to Italy this weekend, that she take one along and snap photos of it along the way and then give that all to her as a special present… I think she’d get a huge thrill out of it.
I’m working on a new project — a series of ten paintings based on the poem Kubla Khan (A Vision In A Dream) by Coleridge — a short book. I am a little dissatisfied with how ‘graphic art’ some of my latest pieces have been so I think I’m going to rewind a little style-wise to something that’s a little more focused on the nature of the medium. Anyway;
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
The breakdown of paintings is — Miles of Walls and Towers, The Cavern of the Sacred River, The Chasm and the Wailing Woman, The Fountain, The River Maze, Prophecies of War, Sun and Ice, The Abyssinian Maid, The Warning, and The Taste of Paradise… It’s one of my favorite poems and I feel I can relate well enough to the poem, to Coleridge, and to how the poem was written — and interrupted — to do it justice.
It’s far from a “Photoshop Disaster“, but I was a little amused when this image (from the comic about the Chrome browser) still had the “ONLY FOR REVIEW” watermark on it… Ooops… I guess because of the light print getting a proper for-print image slipped through the cracks. Haha.
Things I like a lot…
This Oasis “Anitoxia” drink, a mix of grape and pomegranate that tastes a lot like blueberry juice is by far my favorite juice… I highly, highly recommend it. I assume it’s healthy, but either way, it’s delicious. I’ve drank gallons of the stuff. That said, I’ve also drank gallons of my second-favorite drink, TANG, so who knows, maybe my advice is not to be taken.
I’ve been unusually sore the last half-week — practically bedridden, so I’ve been doing very little so as to conserve my energy so that I can give 110% for the times that Nefarious is here (ie. not at school)… It’s always my priority if I’m feeling down to save what I have for her, which makes me feel bad because I don’t have enough left for Caitlin but it’s a lot easier for her to understand and wait for a better day than for a five year-old. I think I’m doing well enough now for sledding or skating after school tomorrow — we’ve been playing a little too much Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe!
Anyway, I played some ROCK BAND earlier today to keep my mind off the pain, and I really have to reiterate that the recently released Country pack is brilliant — it’s a lot of fun to play, sufficiently challenging, and a nice change from rock and metal tracks. Even if you’re not a Country Music fan (and I suspect that few who read this are), if you enjoy ROCK BAND this really is one of the better track packs. I hope they release more of them.
Speaking of guilty pleasures, I think listening to Country music really makes me miss a sort of romanticized version of my childhood (note: as a teen I was a huge Skinny Puppy fan and wouldn’t go anywhere near country) — I was driving a combine before I made it to high school, and as far back as I can remember I was getting up before the sun to milk the goats and feed the cattle… Summers spent tossing hay bales and chopping wood.
If I didn’t know I’d end up in court for putting Nefarious into that environment (I think it’s safe to say that the court-appointed “review the family” dude had a serious anti-rural bigotry and me agreeing to stay in the city made a big difference in the decision to have Nefarious living here*), I’d be living on a farm already, because as much as the workload was brutal, it was a paradise.
* Seriously, that’s a story for another day, but what a headache that was to go through for everyone — dealing with a reviewer that had serious reservations about tattooed people, so he basically came into the process with a hate-on for both myself and Nefarious’s mother (and said some really unpleasant and invalid things to each of us)… Ack!
