6-30-99

We had a trailer hitch put on our mini van today. My boss and I were discussing yesterday how difficult it is to get teenagers to go on vacation without their toys. George, my boss who raised two teenagers, thought my son might be more likely to go if we brought his BMX bike. Ever since we got the new 96 Windstar we haven't been able to use the complete Yakima roof top rack system we bought for the old minivan which had gutters. Today we got the trailer receiver put on. Now, we have to decide which rack to buy. I need to do some shopping and educate myself about that swing down kind of bike rack. I found some decent prices at REI. Good old REI! I have been shopping there since they were a little hole in the wall store downtown Seattle on Pine. My number is under 6 digits. 1968 vintage. Of course, having a low co-op number only means one is growing old. Not too much glamor in that. Climbing is for young men. I would still go but my family won't go. Now that I see them every day during summer I kind of wish my old climbing buddy Dave would call. I could call him but he is such a turkey I would almost rather stay home and paint.

My daughter Lisa and I have been scanning family photos and making them into poster boards for the upcoming fiftieth wedding anniversary of my parents. The scanning and organizing is cutting into my sleeping and painting time. Of to bed I go.

6-27-99

Thursday before work I took the college entrance exam at Clover Park Voc Tech. That was pretty scary. They have the only class I can get exited about, Web Design, and was worried that getting up early for the last two days would have made me too dumb to pass. The questions got harder as each of the four twenty five minute tests wore on. I haven't taken any kind of written test like that for at least 2 years so I was initially confused by the format. Then, as I started to figure it out at about the twenty minute point, she says, "5 minutes left". I got better after that and ended up passing just fine, well over the minimum marks for the course I was interested in. I am now officially registered for the class although they don't have any openings for 13 months. Not much else to report. It is just another windy June weekend. I am headed out to tinker with my still life drawing. I need to complete it so I can begin another one.

6-24-99

I had a great day. I just finished a pencil still life out in the garage. I've been working on it, a couple hours a day, for ten days. Tonight I drew for a solid 4 hours. Pencil is so touchy. I first started this set up in color but threw that away. The last ten hours I've worked on this rendering has all been subtle shading. It was a collection of white porcelain animals and a magnifying glass on a white sheet of paper. Since it was almost all in white, the highlights were extremely hard to draw. How do you put a white highlight on a white swan? It was a challenge and I loved it. I usually only do pencil when I am scared of color. After the block I had this winter, I most definitely am being cautious with my muse.

While I drew I listened to an excellent and moving talking book about a 'good woman wronged' on my walkman called "Promises" by Belva Plain and published by Recorded Books. There is something transporting about working and listening to a story. It silences the critic in my mind. I can look at still lifes I have painted out in the garage and remember what was happening in the story I was listening to as I painted them, no matter how long ago it was. Conversely, I can't paint outdoors with a walkman. I need to hear the wind.

I visited Cloverpark Voc Tec today and talked to the instructors for a couple of hours. Just me and two other people were there for the orientation. The computer animation class looked compelling. They had animated robots walking around in 3D space that they had created from scratch. However, that class is 2 years long. I can't work swing shift and go to school that long. I think I can make it one year. Their web design class is now up to one year from six months and looks excellent. The teacher is a real dynamo. I know, from running this page that I like html and JavaScript so it should be a good fit for me. I plan to take the entrance exam tomorrow and get in line for whenever they have their next opening which could be up to a year from now. Until then, I will focus on art and slowly upgrade this page as time permits. How's that for a life plan?

6-20-99

It is dark and rainy outside as I sit here and type this at 11 P.M. I am halfway through a brake job on my old Toyota. I have made a hobo's lean-to out of some poles and a sheet of plastic so I can work dry, out in the dirt driveway. I started this project around 5 P.M. but keep interrupting it for silly reasons. This time it is a strange calling to wax eloquent about the joys of a brake job. Those Japanese engineers are so clever the way they pack all those springs and little interconnected levers together into a brake drum the size of a meat pie. As my wife was pressing on the brake pedal I was kneeling in the dirt marveling at how her foot action was transferred through the hydraulic brake fluid into an outward movement of the two brake pads. I don't know if it truly was fascinating or whether I just took too much LSD as a troubled teenager. Certainly I am easily entertained. I would like to think it is my artist's curiosity which enables me to appreciate the simple things, but my boss thinks it is just a sign of a simple mind. Ah well, screw him. Back to work...

Finally finished at 2 A.M. Now I have to cut a double matt for our driver at work with an extra cut out window in the top matt for some calligraphy. I need to stop doing cheap framing for people I know. Sure I can do it at a quarter of the cost of the frame shops, but it takes too much of my time. And the pay off is just not worth it.

6-19-99

Had a big disappointment yesterday. I found a course that looked perfect for me. It was a 9 month web master course at Cloverpark Voc. Tech. (CPVTI) in Tacoma, which incidentally is where I learned printing 24 years ago. The content looked fascinating since this web page would have given me a head start to make up for my slow learning style. Everything looked bright and sunny until I called them and found the course was booked until fall of 2000. I surfed around for couple hours today looking for a similar course in a tech school nearby without any luck. I still haven't gone out and done the necessary informational interviewing of Web masters. My schedule at work is so unpredictable it is hard to make plans. I actually only worked 3 days last week. We are slow.

I've been seeing a lot of the family which is great.My wife Sue and my daughter Lisa and I all went out for a walk on the Power Line road through the woods tonight while my son Clint was out digging more BMX jumps. Lisa seems to really miss her old dad during the week. Tonight she fell asleep against me on the couch while I read to her from the Community College course manual. I feel so fortunate to have such a creative, calm and affectionate daughter. I sure hope she doesn't have my wild blood in her veins.

6-17-99

I had the day off yesterday unexpectedly. I wish that would only happen on sunny days so I could work on my outdoor painting. Instead I ran errands and worked on my web site. It was nice seeing the family. They are all excited about the last week of school but it is just another week for me. Tonight I had a gravy job on the press. When I came home I ripped up the still life painting I had going out in the garage. I restarted the piece on a sheet of Arches hot pressed 90 pound. That is my favorite paper for pencil drawings. I am overdue for a carefully rendered pencil drawing. I am off to a decent start on a rendering of a three dollar porcelain goose I got at the Good Will. I also have a porcelain bull dog and a black printers glass. They are all white arranged on a white surface except the jet black glass. I have high hopes. I enjoy pencil because you don't have to sweat the color. A good pencil drawing seems to have color in it. I am not sure how that works. Something like how a black and white photograph still works in this day of color everything. Tomorrow I plan to try and talk to some professionals in the web master business before work. I want to find out if they like their jobs.

6-14-99
I actually did some on location painting today! After driving around for an hour I finally settled on a painting spot under a bridge near my house. The view across the small lagoon is of an old barn built out over the water. It is supported on a spindly framework of poles set into old cement barrels. The wood of the barn is faded almost to blond in spots. It was great to feel myself begin to paint again after this long block.

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6-12-99

I went to an ear, nose and throat specialist Friday. As often happens when something screws up on this tired old body enough to scare me into a doctor, by the time I get an appointment I am completely healthy. The gremlin who has been living in my left ear for the last 18 months apparently heard I was seeing a doctor and moved out of my inner ear into my central nervous system, giving me a nice case of the heebie jeebies. The doctor diagnosed me with an inner ear disorder which can be treated by cutting down my salt intake. I am really, really going to miss my Cheeto's. My hearing was perfect. If it gets bad again he said to come in right away. Then he could make a "for sure" diagnosis, and, if needed, give me some anti-water pills (diuretics) to cut down on the inner ear swelling.

I printed Friday night for about 3 hours then came home early and worked for 5 hours out in the garage framing some prints for Deb at State of the Arts gallery in Olympia. I have sold about 11 of the limited edition run of 50 on that image. It is funny how well I painted two years ago when I was unemployed for a month. I had waited 20 years to have more than two weeks off in a row. I drove up to Mt. Rainier one morning when I saw the good weather coming. I hiked up the Skyline trail and painted the image seen here. I couldn't afford to stay in a campground so I slept at the end of an abandoned road outside the Park. I slept very poorly in my old beater Toyota, worrying about monsters and goblins and not having a job. In the morning, after coffee and bagels in Elbe, I painted this image standing in the early morning October frost. After some Top Ramon and tuna in the parking lot I hiked up the Skyline Trail again and painted my third piece in 24 hours. All three pieces sold. Two of them to the same lady. And the first one lives on in prints. There is a desperation that comes with extreme living which really brings out the best in me. I remember feeling that same elation in tight spots on the cliffs. All the garbage that usually fills my mind get shoved aside by the intensity of the moment.

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6-11-99

I have a new rule, no computer when I get home from work until I paint for an hour. I've stuck to it for 2 whole days in a row. My still life is making progress. I am not exactly sure what broke my 4 month block. It might have been picking up my Martin. I rarely play it anymore. There is something about making ones own music that reaches down into the soul, or whatever one calls that dark squirmy pit where deep, unknowable feelings lurk beneath the calm workaday exterior. I love to play sad ballads. "Come Monday," by Jimmy Buffet is one of my favorites. It is easy to play and sing as is "The Captain and the Kid," another favorite that never fails to send a tingle down my spine. And feelings are what makes my art happen. I get the same kind of thing when I am on location looking at a breathtaking view, getting my paints ready.

My boss and I had a nice talk today. We are talking about how I might work a shift more resembling days so I would have more time for family and painting. I told him how I really didn't want to spend all my savings to go to school and learn one of the computer fields. I already hate printing. 2 years at a computer would make me hate that too. I am a painter. Everything else is just marking time.

It is so nice having a boss I can level with. I even told him I was considering asking for August off if I couldn't get on days. I would paint full time and just come in as a vacation fill in printer, then try to get hired back on in the fall. I think he truly understands where I am coming from. We both believed printing would carry us through our whole lives. Now, we see it for what it is. We are both stuck in it. At least I still have my dreams. If we do work out something like three thirteens, I could paint morning and evening light every day on my days off. That would be awesome.

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6-10-99

Nice 3 hour interview with a federal grant agency today. Richard from the Educational Opportunity and Resource Center (EORC) gave me and 2 other guys an Interests test like Meyers Briggs but something else. They are funded by the Federal government. Pretty cool. All their services are free. They have a huge library and computers as well to examine careers in detail. The phone number is (253) 572-5960. I will need a while to absorb it all. I plan to go out and do some informational interviews with web masters. He said that most of the webmaster jobs are going to 4 year degrees in the Puget Sound area. Too much competition from all the geeks drawn here by Microsoft I imagine. I am not at all sure I should retrain anyway. It would only be a delaying maneuver until I once again realize I really just want to paint.

6-8-99

I got sick on Friday. I got to work and had some kind of a weird seasickness attack. I was dizzy in the car, everything was spinning if I turned my head fast. My old inner ear gremlin was ringing like a bell. I couldn't work, walk or drive for four hours and, just like the poor sailors on a tossing ship, I lost my lunch, several times. I have made an appointment with a ear, nose and throat doctor to get to the bottom of this problem. It was completely better in 12 hours. Most of my spare time recently has gone into creating my new page "easel places".

6-3-99

I called an old friend of ours tonight at lunch. Mary got her first job as a computer type back in about 1979 and now works for Boeing. She recommended I study to become a web master as a way to get my foot in the Information Technology door. She mentioned some other stuff also like C++ or ...well it doesn't matter since it is all Greek to me at this point. Apparently one can learn those exotic computer languages and do contracting work. Her best suggestion was that I go to a place in Tacoma that hands out grants to people like myself who want to go back to school. She asked me whether I was missing a thumb or anything which would make me more eligible. I wonder if having multiple personalities would count.

Later I was reviewing my career changing notes on my ten minute smoke break. I glanced down at my stop watch and was surprised to see I only had 2 minutes left. Quickly I got out my snapshots of my babies for some sentimental musing. As soon as the first photo of my painting of Kalaloch popped into view, my inner child began whining:

"Don't forget you promised to paint for a solid month before you decided to go to computer school."

Yeah, Yeah, I remember.

"No, really, don't get so carried away with this school mumbo jumbo that you forget what a gift you have. You don't need a school, you taught yourself to paint. You just need a month of full time painting and you can approach some big galleries. Hey, it might work!"

Yeah, Yeah. Now shut up, I have 4 more jobs to print tonight.

And that is just the artist and the printer, on a good day.

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6-1-99

Memorial day was tame. We stayed home for the first time in 20 years. We had a nice canoe trip with my Dad in Olympia at Boston Harbor Marina. My wife, my daughter and Dad and I rented a $3000 Eddy line two person sea kayak for $40 for the afternoon. He brought his old beater canoe. We paddled a couple miles North along Puget Sound. I got preoccupied staring at all the mansions lining the sound. It used to be that you could paddle out there and only see a few houses here and there. Now, as far as we could go in an afternoon, it was solid mansions. Even where the bank is falling into the water there are mansions built right on the edge of the bank. I know I shouldn't be jealous of the wealthy people. They earned that money the hard way. Somehow, though, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was walking through a BMW car dealership. One guy had a mansion right on the water. He had a garage level with the water and a boat ramp leading right up to the garage. We figured he had an amphibian that he drove to work. The rest of my free time was spent rollerblading and overhauling this web site. I got rid of the download hogging navigation mouseover buttons and went to a simple frame format.