Here's Looking Back at You, Kid

Three locations, five pictures:

1. Paris, France

2. Baltimore, Maryland

3. Austin, Texas

Susan is Gagging

A beautiful day today, sunny, dry and 87 degrees. The kind of days in Texas where bugs decide it's Spring Break and they get together and party -- in our house. All of the sudden we had an ant invasion. Big ants. Big. Like nearly 3/4" long (we grow them big down here). No, they aren't termites. They weren't there at lunch and all of the sudden 2 hours later there were hundreds of them swarming around and in one window. Susan's yelling at me to bug-bomb them (sorry, PETA) and I'm sweeping them back out onto the deck to get rid of them. Once they were gone I went crawling down underneath our deck to be sure their home base was wiped out. Whoa! A mound full of ants! The sissy ants hiding out there are now history and it's been a few hours with no stragglers showing up so we're good for the time being. This type of invasion happens once or twice a year at our house, mainly because we live near a creek and have a large wooded backyard. Nice for our view but nice also for critters and bugs who are thirsty.

Speaking of critters. . . .
As I was crawling around under our deck near the outside of our lot I spotted this fellow. He has now been moved to a prime spot where I can watch him from the kitchen window. I'm thinking some of the nearby foxes or raccoons will carry him off even though he is totally dry. He probably bit the dust last summer when it was very hot and dry and since we're in a prolonged drought period he had plenty of time to work on his tan without anyone getting a whiff of him. I got a lot of good pictures and will take some more later today. Hope you find this possum as interesting as I do.

Susan, the Blog Wrangler speaks:
No. No way. I am not putting all these disgusting pictures up. Don got to pick one picture and I have posted it without really looking at it. Gross. Interesting, my eye. That thing had better be gone by tomorrow morning or I'm not going in the kitchen. Want food? Get it yourself.

Peevay

Peevay is the name of a character in a book I'm currently reading (English Passengers). His head lifts off at the dotted line and inside is a small ceramic shape with writing on it. I can also put things in the opening on the front. I'm heading off into a direction where I am making small shapes, writing on them and then wrapping them. On this shape I wrote some lyrics from a new song I'm liking (The Littlest Bird by the Be Good Tanyas) from a CD Susan put together.

Size Might Matter

This picture was taken in the grounds of a museum in Sicily where we heard a good talk about Sicily being in the middle of a number of trade routes which resulted in a lot of culture being dumped on it. I'd tell you more but the visit to the museum happened after a big Sicilian lunch and I do know how to nap standing up.

Me: This is the picture I want on the post. Can you fix it?

Susan: Looks fine to me. What's the problem?

Me: Can you make me look like I didn't eat so much in Sicily?

Susan: You ate too much in Sicily.

And I have Photoshop Elements 2.0 and it won't work to make you look skinny.

But we could get a better version of Photoshop and maybe a Wacom tablet and I might be able to do it.

Me: How much would that cost?

Susan: Total, maybe about $600-700.

Me: You're right, the picture looks fine.

For the record, the official ceramics name for a pot this size is "Big-A** Pot".

Disintegration

Seth at The Altered Page has set up an interesting project: Disintegration Collaboration. Not being much of a social person meant that I ignored his general invitation but made the mistake of mentioning it to Susan. She immediately remembered the certificate I had started to distress a few years ago with my daily used coffee filters. They did a good job of staining the certificate but then what was I going to do with it? It waited for me to decide while Susan stuffed it away in a pile of papers. Disintegration, Susan said, was now the solution.

The next question was where to put it. My back yard had the perfect answer: Inside this nameless welded sculpture. Nameless, like I was to the corporate headquarters who knew me only as a 6-digit employee number. Inside, where I held back the knowledge that I did have, that I had been tested on, that I knew backwards and forwards, but inside where I kept it because few people trusted that I really knew what I was talking about. Inside the gut of this sculpture because every day for 32 years I started out with a knot in my gut, hating what I did for a living.

The certificate was rolled up and pushed up the middle. Symbolic? When I let go, it was held in place by the tension of the paper unrolling. More symbolism? How long will it take before nature takes my piece of paper away from me? Seth set a general endpoint of May 1. We'll see.

Little Dudes

One is supposed to be a Dude but somehow it looks like . . . . What is the female equivalent of Dude? I bet you think I made them. Nope, they came off that meteor that landed in West Texas this week.

Late update: Thanks to Sherry, I now know I have a Dudette.

Valentines for You

Susan is in love with her new CueCat and fast becoming obsessed with LibraryThing, thanks to J of OWOH. The bad part is that she says it is almost, almost as good as Amazon books and she spends too much time on it. The good part is that she can't buy books at LibraryThing.

In the meantime, while Susan scans everything she can find, I have been working. These little guys are BabyBuds and the ears have been eliminated on them. It was starting to get just a little too . . . cute. Hey, I'm a guy!

This photo shows some glazing, the photo above it shows pieces that are pending glazing and the clay looks darker because it's a new type I'm experimenting with (Laguna B3).

Two Winners and Mr. Goofy

He's from my old welding days, made of metal roofing scrap, the first and one of only a few pieces I cut with a plasma cutter. He's on the outside where we can see him from our kitchen window.

For the OWOH giveaway we created our random numbers by adding up birthdates, time, the year, etc., to come up with two winners. Congratulations to Nicky Linzey and Carol Stocker -- please stop by their blogs for another look at their work. And thanks to all of you for your thoughtful comments.

Susan Opts for Cheryl

Susan speaks:

Robyn's Bug posts came to mind just about the time I was looking once again at some of Cheryl Finfrock's work. These just have to be pictures of Bug!

Cheryl's new show opens March 7th, if you're in the area it's worth a look-see. I love that her work seems so free and loose but I know that effect comes only through hard work, not happenstance. Her work always makes me smile. And so do the titles.

Oops

Oops, this little guy should have been Part Two. His true name is FubiniDos.

Note: If you've been commenting because of OWOH, many thanks for all the encouraging words.

All Ears, Part 2

This little guy has already found a home. His name is FubiniBTB, which stands for Fubini's Big Tall Bunny. Fubini was a famous mathematician and Susan (who usually names my pieces) thinks that using names like his will ease her math anxiety. And mine. In our house we go around muttering "Percent means big into little, percent means...."

One World One Heart Giveaway

One World One Heart is an annual event when bloggers all over the world get together and visit each other and give a door prize to one of their guests. Sort of like an Open House but you don't have to get dressed up for it. If you click on the logo above or here you will be taken to the One World One Heart blog where down the right side are links for all the participating blogs. Click on any (or all!) of the links and leave a Comment to be eligible to win the giveaway described on each blog. You don't have to have a blog yourself to be eligible to enter, just comment and be sure your email address is included. Note: The deadline for 2009 entry has passed

Why? Here's part of what the sponsor of this Giveaway said:

". . . .the connections. The whole idea behind doing this and trying to get as many as possible to join in, was and is to meet new and wonderful people."

What You Need To Do To Win My Giveaway (Two Winners were selected, will be notified by email): The deadline has passed and Comments are closed. Check OWOH for future giveaways.

Please take a look at the blogs of the winners that were randomly chosen:

Nicky Linzey

Carol Stocker

What Was Won in My Giveaway: One of the small books (small as in the size of a credit card) shown below. First winner randomly selected (Nicky) got the rust book, the second winner (Carol) got the green book. Front and backs are ceramic clay with acrylic paint. Center is accordian folded paper. The book pages have bits collaged on them.