A Little Color to Perk Up My Day

It’s always fun to throw some paint on the page. After spending several weeks to draw some simple characters using the Paint Studio Pro EX bezier pen, I feel that I deserve a little amusement before I continue working on with this page. It’s the drawing background scene that’s going to be hard — there’s going to be a crowd of Moai leaving the soccer stadium.

Thank you, Color, for making my day. Oh, I should mention that my work load at my contract job just tripled. It’s part of the job. That’s life!

Chore day April 10, 2022 --- Life hands you a lemon and you feel gratitude

Not a life-shattering lemon. Just an annoying lemon. This time the unsavory fruit is a refrigerator that won’t refrigerate. The buggy machine has been a hassle for years, and now it’s just giving up being useful. I spent most of the day trying to get the defroster to work. I learned about arcane error codes and about pressing two buttons simultaneously for three seconds, and when all of the magic incantations had been studiously applied, the refrigerator still wouldn’t refrigerate.

So now I’m scouring the Internet in a mad dash to learn about refrigerators so that I can buy one that won’t torment us with annoying antics. And guess what! Every refrigerator that fits my requirements is out of stock, back ordered, or not available for delivery until August (it’s now April 10).

Then I think that my problem is trivial. It’s annoying. It’s an inconvenience. It’s just a matter of waiting a few days and all of my petty irritations will evaporate. It could be so much worse. Then I begin to feel gratitude for all that I have, my family, my dogs, my friends, my job, my health. And I send out a few words of kindness to all the suffering people and animals I will never meet.

May you be happy and content. May you be safe, protected and free from inner an outer harm. May you be healthy and who to the greatest degree possible. May you experience ease of living.

April 2, 2022 Family Day

Today was family day, with the Californians in town. I cooked up a whole food, plant based feast of ragu and spaghetti, spicy buffalo wings, steamed veggies, cheesy sauce, oatmeal cookies. All simple pleasures for a simply lovely day. Tonight we’ll be visiting them at the the Airbnb they’re staying staying in.

It felt great to give my family copies of my two books. It was an awesome day.

Chore Day, March 19 -- A Day of Spinning My Wheels

Besides the usual chores, which I won’t bother to mention, I spent many hours trying to get my Wacom Intuos Pro L working on my Mac. This giant tablet is my go-to tablet when I’m not using my Cintiq. It works perfectly on my Windows machine, but, alas, I can’t get it working on my Mac. The only reason I’m fretting about this is that I want to try Art Studio Pro on my Mac. It’s an awesome app on my iPad — I’m wondering if the magic will carry over to the desktop. I’m also wondering if the developers at Lucky Clan are putting as much effort into the desktop as the put into marvelous iPad app. By the way, the desktop version costs just $20.

If I can’t get the Intuos working, I’ll hook my Cintiq up to the Mac. It works flawlessly — at least it did several year ago.

Double chore days this week

Besides the doing the vacuuming, laundry, and yard work this week, I also did the cooking. Today I cooked up a cauldron of ragu, made some gigantic millet meatballs (yes, there are reminiscent of meat meatballs), and baked a tray of apricot-fig pastries that were supposed to be classy fig newtons. The recipe called for a quarter of a cup of date sugar and a quarter of a cup of maple syrup. Unfortunately, they turned out a bit sweeter than I expected. Next time — if here is a next time — I would leave out the sugars altogether and let the apricots and figs have the stage all to themselves.

I tried to draw a little today, but my mind kept telling me to take the day off. So I did.

Chore Day, March 5, 2022 -- Doing research about cataract surgery and lens replacement

Besides doing the laundry and vacuuming, I watched a shit ton of Youtube videos about cataracts and lens replacement. With my set of physiological needs (myopia and severe astigmatism), I’m thinking that I’ll be getting monofocus lenses, which means that I’ll still be wearing glasses.

One of the virtues of monofocus lenses is their price. The cost of treating both eyes is about $5,000 cheaper than with tri-focal lenses. I’ll need glasses for intermediate and close vision but I’m okay with that.

I’ll be glad when I get this surgery worked out. Then I can think about something other than my eyes.

Real Life Makes Itself Known as Cataracts!

I visited my optometrist yesterday and got the news I’ve been expecting for some time: my cataracts are at the point that my vision cannot be corrected. She recommended cataract surgery. The idea of having eye surgery has always made me feel queasy. Youtube to the rescue!

I’ve watched dozens of videos about what happens in cataract surgery, what can go wrong, how long it take to heal, which kind of lens is best, how much it will cost, how long the surgery takes (15 minutes), what my insurance will cover, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Then I made a firm decision: cost should not even be considered. Over the last 60 years my eyeglasses have cost me hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars every few years, and my vision still deteriorates. The upside of lens replacement is that it’s a one time deal and I’ll be able to see better than I can see with glasses. I’ll be able to read, drive, draw cute animals, appreciate colors better, and admire the distant mountains of Southern Oregon without glasses. Awesome!

Busy day at work, which means, not a busy day at the art studio

It looks like my contract work will be expanding in the fall, with more work than ever. That’s a good thing, as it means I’ll have a solid income, but it all comes with a punch in the gut warning — all of the contract employees may not be given work, depending on what the high-level managers decide fits in the budget. This back and forth rush for being employed to being laid off has been going on for the last ten years, and I’ve got a plan B that will keep a roof over my head. Call me crazy, but I believe that I will someday replace all of the contract work with the income I make from drawing cute animals.

The future looks bright to a cockeyed optimist.

Working on the floating tabby cat/volcano demon

I’ve been stuck on this cat for days. Just when my contract job has eased up, other tasks fill the calendar, and I end up with just a few minutes to work on page 61. Today I extracted the tabby cat from the rest of the scene so I can put her on a later of her own. Page 61 is getting cluttered and it helps me focus if I can blank out the rest of the scene.

One more inch for page 61

Husband: What’s happening? Wife: That little kitty is waking everyone up!

I worked late today on a five-part technical document and still had a half hour to start cleaning up this painting. I’m happy. Every inch makes me happy. Sometimes even an inch of progress is a miracle.