Daily Adventures

We had a little time with Jet between the Hawaii trip and the end of the Christmas break, which was nice and we had one adventure during that time that was pretty amazing. I'd bought tickets in October for the Monet exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, titled The Truth of Nature. The full photo album can be found if you follow this link.

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I’m adrift, still.

Still haven’t found a direction and a reason or a passion or a thing that I have to go out and do.

And I’ve been wandering for a while, and I realized, today, that it was all right.

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And going to BigBadCon at the end of this week.

I'm a little sad that I had to miss the last of Isabel's visit to our home to get here, but I think I really needed some time away to evaluate and think about things.

My art show had gone quite well, at Mimi's studio. There are photos of my show space on Flickr, and John and I helped Mimi and Paul clean out a beautiful little breezeway that had amazing light for the display space. It was small, and the paintings were pretty crowded in there, but people got to see them, which was the whole point of it all.

There was even a very nice little table/desk where I could put all my painting materials so that I could demonstrate how it worked or allow others to try out the ink, brushes, and paper. I had an outlet so I could bring a water boiler and make herbal teas and it was amazingly nice because the weather during the show was really rainy for Colorado, days of rain, which is really unusual. But it meant that a lot of people came to the show.

I sold three paintings, and nearly all the art cards I had made. They were just blank greeting cards with pictures of my art on the front, but it was like everyone could bring a small, portable bit of my art home with them. Several of the ladies said that they were framing their little masterpiece to enjoy it in their homes. That bemused me, but it was cool to know that they enjoyed them so much.

I also got leads for three art shows. One I hung the Friday before I left for here, at the Salud Clinic here in Longmont, it's a free clinic for low-income people, and they really needed some art and beauty for their waiting rooms and some of the staff's offices. Nine paintings went there that would otherwise just gather dust, so people are enjoying them.

Another show will be for the Denver Taiko group when they come to the Longmont Museum. I get to hang half a dozen paintings, bring my art cards, and demonstrate before and after the performance. It'll be exposure to people, and some small sales, perhaps. The third show will be at our church, which should be fun, as always. There is a registry at ARTS Longmont that should allow for more such endeavors, and I now have the paintings for them, what with getting ready for this show.

The Saturday before leaving I was at a Women's Retreat with the women of our church, and it was really good, but I, and two of my carpool mates, had to leave a little early so that I could get to the 4:30 performance of Jet's marching band. They'd decided not to do a competition in order to practice the whole show all the way through. So they did that, and I got to see it and eat at the taco bar after. *laughs* That was worth doing.

On Sunday, I met up with Simon Bisson and Mary Brascombe for breakfast with my family, here in Longmont, at Lucille's. It was so amazing to get to see them and talk with them! And even better Mary pointed me at a Cloud of FPGAs that can be rented, accessed, and reconfigured on the fly. That will be interesting to explore. The rest of the day and Monday was mostly taken up with packing things, playing with the gamer boys as I was able, and dealing with a surprise snowstorm, which shouldn't have surprised us 'cause whenever Isabel visits it snows. But I had to close up the bee hive, to keep the drafts down, and so that the girls could keep themselves warm. I also found that the hive was so heavy with honey that I couldn't even think of shifting it into a sunnier spot, which was probably for the best.

So I'm kind of tired, still, and trying to catch up in hotel rooms, which isn't terrible, but isn't that easy, either.

Carl, as always, has been an amazing host and we've planned things down to a T using a wiki page that we've changed and edited as plans have formed up. Yesterday I got in, which no problem on the flight, and we went to eat at Chef Chu's with the usual suspects, in this case Earl, Cat, Trip, Chrisber, Christy, and Theo. The food was, as always, amazing, and the company was fun and lucid on many subjects.

From there Carl and I headed to Santa Cruz, and we stayed there last night in anticipation of meeting up with Gretchen and perhaps Brad today.

One of the interesting things was that when I first started down the competitive path, I lost about 15 pounds of weight from my high of about 172 lbs, during the worst of the stressful days of moderating. Then, over the course of the six months of competitive, I got down to about 150 lbs.

I'm not a small woman to begin with, I'm 5'9", and I did and still do construction, so 150 was kind of frightening. The only time I'd ever hit that weight since my late 20's was also during my moderatorship, when I'd gone four months on extreme stress and got to the point where I came down with vertigo before I could actually stop and rest for a week. I regained my weight fairly quickly with actual sleep and food.

I did that again.

Within two weeks of quitting competitive, where I was cooking again, lifting again, and went from doing about 3000 steps on average per day to doing about 7500 a day now, I got back up to 155. Now I'm at 158 and steady with the usual daily fluctuations as I had been before all these adventures. The interesting thing is that even with the weight gain, I still fit into my skinny clothes, so I suspect that a lot of the weight regaining was mostly muscle mass that had atrophied when I wasn't moving around all that much and forgetting to eat. I went from getting breathless just going for a walk to being able to do my usual three mile walk easily.

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This day was an amazingly long day, but worth every bit of it.

It started in Columbus Circle, which is at the southwest corner of Central Park. It's where all distances from New York City are measured by New Yorkers. Right off the plaza was a beautiful mall, also called Columbus Circle and within it was the first of several performance arenas all connected with the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, including the Fredrick P Rose Hall for Jazz. It's a beautiful little venue.

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I want to start by wishing everyone a very very Happy New Year, and to thank you for your support, friendship, and time. I am very grateful.

I'm not a fan of the New Year's Resolution, as I think if I'm going to resolve something or promise something, it really doesn't matter what day of the year it is. *laughs* But I am hoping that this new year will be good for everyone, and there are a few things that seem to be coming together for me in the coming year, and I shall do my best to make them work out.

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Been wanting to do this for a while, as there've been a lot of artists that have done amazing work for both demented_dee and I for David and West.

So we've now opened a CafePress store for all the characters that Prism and I have created together. At the moment, it's mostly West and David, but we have a few pieces that are coming down the pike for the H.J. Raine and Kelly Wyre New Amsterdam boys and stories. We had a lot of fun talking with the artists who have already contributed to the gallery on Y!Gallery, and got their agreement to open a store.

It's kind of cool. Just click HERE, click on “West & East” (New Amsterdam merchandise, etc. coming soooon!) and follow the rabbit holes to buy amazing things from Grimmalkin, Rah, Haslin, Kyuubi, Imlikat, and others. All the art is work safe. Buttons, t-shirts, pajamas, keychains, journals, necklaces, cards, commemorative boxes, and the list goes on.

Half the profits go to your resident creators, and half go to the artists who help make our creations come to life.

Buy, share, tell everybody where you got the cool stuff.

Much love and David PJs,
Liralen Li and Demented D.

( If you want to JOIN us in our madness or give us feedback on something you'd like to see added, see details here. )

Portland, the City of Roses, or more prosaically known as Stump City, proved to be a delight. We had natives guiding us to where the magic was alive and well, and it was a real treat.

It's been a few years since I've stopped in Portland. Maybe even a decade or so, for all that there are lots of people John and I knew that ended up here, one of John's brothers used to be there, but moved back to New Mexico. But since I got involved in fanfiction and the communities and sites that are devoted to it, though, I've gotten to know more people. And I made a concerted effort, this time, to get to see aetherbox, whom I know as Grimmalkin and Morgan/ieatyourbabiez on this visit.

So much of this trip was dictated by John's family, by his brothers or his parents, agreements he made that I'm supporting and following through on as part of the Clan and I'm happy to do that.

Still, all of that made being able to visit with these two a big deal for me. I'd planned my visit with Grimmalkin since March, and asked Morgan if she'd be available on the 19th as soon as I knew we'd be in the city. We were very lucky that she was able to take some time off from her second job to meet up with us and tour the city with us for all that she'd been up since five in the morning for her morning job. We were very grateful.

( And the plans worked out beautifully. )