Spring slowly springing

 It was in the high sixties today, and nary a cloud in sight, so we circumnavigated Big Seven Lake.  After so many false starts, I think the leaves are scared to come out.

Thomas's not so secret side

Because Thomas runs only if burning the candle at both ends and in the middle, being a full time student (and for Thomas, being "full time" means "speeding through a four year program in three years") fails to challenge him adequately so he took on the job of "adjudicator" for local (Chicago) high school debate teams. He started this last Fall for something to do on Saturdays and to earn a bit of scratch. He sent me a photo of this with these words a few months ago:

"I judged for a HS tournament today and got nominated for and won the best adjudicator award, this gift card." Thomas claims that this if further evidence of the power of his "do gooding." I am just glad to see he is wearing the purple cardigan I knitted for him this past winter (with a zipper--if only he had any idea of what a pain it is to install a zipper into a knitted cardigan!!)

And then THIS happened: It's good to be appreciated, that's for sure.

Third time's the charm

We had a CB ball in downtown Flint for decades (Citizens Bank).  Then it was bought out by Ohio-based First Merit, so they changed it to FM.  Then last year THEY were bought out by Huntington's, so...

Guilty

In honor of his being found guilty on all 3 counts (and because it's my best picture - I won't turn this into a forum for my drawing, I promise)

Painting our bedroom

Unable to stay out of Thomas's beautiful new library, we decided that it was about time we painted our bedroom--which we had never got to when we moved here (which will be 19 years ago in two months). We argued long and hard about a color and finally settled on something that I think of as vanilla ice cream.  It took a whole day to move everything (except the bed) out, clean the walls, baseboards and floor--a truly shocking experience to see how much filth a person can live with.  Simon gets the pleasure of painting the walls and ceiling (ice cream on the right, the original fluorescent white on the left).

This room is odd shaped (all the rooms upstairs are odd) and so there are little crevices to get into, plus three windows and two doors to deal with.  We also found a lot of old cable cords and telephone wires stapled to various parts (walls, floors, baseboards) and those had to be stripped out, too, since they have't been used in over a decade (or, in the case of the telephone cord, several decades).

I clean the ceiling fan once but it is still grimy, so that will have to get cleaned again when we finally get near the end.

So the painting is done and now I get to paint the trim--which is the real art.

It took about 5 hours to paint all the trim with a first coat yesterday.  Today I am going to do a second coat (if the day goes as planned).  Then comes the window washing (it's a lot easier to wash the windows inside and out if there aren't any dressers or beds in the way).  THEN I want to make new roller blinds, as I did in Thomas's bedroom--only ours won't be royal purple.

Art Class

So I took an art class this Spring, on illustration, whose last class was today.  There were only 3 people in the class (see last picture) and it was very free-form, and I didn't really know what I wanted out of it, until the teacher, Alla (a nice Russian lady from whom I've taken life-drawing classes before) introduced me to these fancy markers that come in shades of grey (and different KINDS of grey) grade by 10% points from 10 to Black.  Then I rediscovered my love of drawing faces (that has lain dormant lo these 40-odd years).  Observe my progress:

This one's the first one, on 26 March.  It's James Baldwin.  The greys are "cool"

Columbo (AKA Peter Falk).  I really think I caught his likeness, but the cigar disappeared somehow.

Samuel Beckett.  Glasses are hard, and this one looks particularly amateurish, what with the squished head and all.  However it's the first one in "French Greys" which I ordered online.  (More sepia-ish.)

I did this one before the above, still in cool greys.  It's Bessie Smith, but the picture I was working from was too small and blurry.

Now we're into April and I "honoured" Martin Luther King with a portrait on the anniversary of his death.  I like the shadows but his head was a funny shape and his ear ended up tiny.  I remember the film we were watching (all but the first were done at home while watching telly) was "Jabberwocky".

This is probably my fave in terms of not making him look more alien than he does already.  It's Tom Waits.

I think this looks okay, except the hair was way too dark.  It's Billie Holliday.  It doesn't look like her, but at least it looks like a person.

This one's meant to be John Coltrane.  I went overboard on the shadows.  He looks a little bit like Ike Turner.

Iggy Pop.

I didn't have my laptop so I used my album of "Bookends".  Poor Paul Simon got his eyes squished together.

Again, this looks like SOMEONE, just not Cary Grant, whom it is supposed to be.  It''s a bit Leonard Rossiter-y somehow.

This is the main actor in a film called "Fists in the Pocket" from the book that came with our box set of Criterion films.

I realized I hadn't done enough women, mainly because I worry that I make them look unattractive.  So I picked one where that wasn't a problem.  If you've watched Presidential press conferences, you might recognize her.

Now we've switched to "warm" greys, because I used up the 10% and 20% of the French pack.  (Meanwhile they give you 3 blacks and I never use them.) I was really pleased with this one when I finished it, but then I held it up and it's slightly warped.  I think because I draw at an angle on my knees.  Still, it looks like Mifune, at least.  Also I regret the dark corner of his mouth, which was gilding the lily.

We were watching Night of the Hunter, so here's Robert Mitchum.  Again, I think I caught him, but his face looks a bit wonky.

I think it looks like Bogart but it looks, I don't know, cheesy somehow.

Jean Paul Belmondo.  With ever-so-slightly wall eyes.  But compare it with the first one and I think I've made progress.  (However, looking at them all laid out here, I don't feel as proud as I did before.  Maybe they look better on paper.  Anyway - YOU try it - it's HARD!)

Here is Alla's rendition of the three of us.  She nailed us, I fear.  (Although I like my hair - a bit less sparse than reality.)

Reminds me of my scalp

OH COME ON!

Street food in Michigan

Saw this place in Clarkston (where I was visiting a class in the High School for boring reasons):

There were actually people eating in one of the bubbles.  (Who says it's "street food"?  Why HONCHO itself!)
Another sight to see in beautiful downtown Clarkston:

Winter's last gasp?

SURELY?

Look who's back!

This guy.

Leading to a standoff:

The Return of Sassypants

Apparently hibernation is over and large rodents have a hankering for our chicken feed:

Thomas's Library

Here we are nearing the final stages of revamping Thomas's room.  Finally we have painted enough blue to cover that old lime green and that other color we uncovered, a color that has no name and has surely never appeared anywhere else on this planet ever before.

Much better.  What you can't see in this photo is that pulling those shelves away from around the door left raw plaster where baseboards and wood trim should be.  So I had to make yet ANOTHER trip to Home Depot and rig something together.

And now the shelves get assembled.  Enough jokes about how impossible assembling IKEA furniture is so I will set those aside and simply join the chorus and say, "IVAR ain't fun."

I took pictures of Thomas's shelves before I took them apart so I could put them together exactly the same.  Then, somehow, an extra shelf load of Wii games magically appeared while I was putting together the shelves and shot that plan to shit.  Isn't that always the way.

Nearly done now.  And I left Thomas with two empty shelves for some of the stuff he is bringing home from Chicago next month.

Here is a new shelf to hold the books that used to be on two of the purple shelves that go taken down.  (And where are those shelves?  Who put them up into what bedroom in this town?  I hope the room is lime green so they fit in.)  Note, too, how I made sure that there are three empty shelves for all of Thomas's millions of cds, which go everywhere with him--back and forth to Chicago, on a 9500 mile trek around the country.  He will be buried with those cds!

And now the second new shelf set (and which completes Thomas's current library), which now holds books that were in the built-in green shelf thing (which also go snapped up by someone!).

Now I just have to finish a few more coats of paint on the doors with windows (painting around the 15 little glass panes is 15 big pains) and hang up some curtains over the balcony door to keep out the elements.  (As the weather warmed I wondered if that was really necessary but the recent ice storm blew right into Thomas's room so, yeah, the door needs some serious sealing/insulation attention.

Not the Easter Bunny

Yesterday I discovered the hens' secret stash of eggs.  I THOUGHT they hadn't been delivering as many recently...

...or maybe not funny...

Yesterday it HAILED

...and today we woke up to this:

It's funny because it's true