I received bad news today.  A friend’s husband had gall bladder surgery late last week.  He handled the surgery well, but collapsed the next day and never regained consciousness.  He’s on life support and the family is gathering in preparation of taking him off  support over the weekend.  He’s 35, with two children.  Thirty-Five is pretty darn young to lose everything.  Ten and twelve years old is too darn young to lose a Dad. 

I’m holding them in my heart.  Even though you don’t know them, if you could do that too it would be a good thing.

Well, I’m certain I’m back in Michigan now.  Temperatures outside have gone from the balmy thirties to windy single digits that feel like subzero.  The wind started at midnight, waking both me and Katie.  She barked.  I groaned.  The power to our home went out at 1:00 a.m., causing flickering lights and clunking noises.  Katie barked.  I groaned.

Having to be at school by 9 this morning I got out of bed in the freezing cold, found a flashlight, checked the time (5:06 a.m.) and decided no school was worth going outside in the howling wind and went back to bed.  At 7:00 I woke and recognized that the house was colder and that there was heat in Ann Arbor.  So I struggled into my freezing jeans, ate some raisin bread, packed a suitcase in case I decided to stay in Ann Arbor overnight and headed out.

The windshield washer fluid wouldn’t flow out of the wipers, and soon I had trouble seeing, so I stopped along the way, grabbed the windshield washer bottle and began to douse the windshield.  All of the fluid immediately flew back into my face, the wind not allowing any to reach the windshield.  Sputtering I got back in the car and drove the rest of the way to Ann Arbor, squinting through the mire accumulating and obscuring my vision.

In class, listening to our guest lecturer all I could taste was windshield fluid.  It doesn’t taste good.  During a break I washed my face, but the taste, or memory of it, remains.  Now I’m at work, trying to be pleasant when I feel scruffy from lack of shower and sleep.  So far patrons don’t seem to notice.

Lesson learned:  I am glad I am not a pioneer without running water and electricity every day!

This is one of the pieces I didn’t have time to finish while at the water color pouring workshop in Tucson.  It’s a pot with bogenvilla spilling out of it.  The concept is to draw the image, then pour paint over the image, mask off some of the light shades, then pour again.  At this point it probably has about four pours.  All the paintings look great with the masking on, but when it comes off you can be disappointed because the colors are lighter, as the masking gets covered over again and again with paint.  I had this and one other which is at a similar point shipped home.  The teacher says I need at least one more pour (I think I did two more after this picture) and then I can scrub off the mask and see what’s there.  I don’t know if I want to know! 

My flight home from Tucson was long and in some ways eventful. The twenty minute flight from Tucson to Phoenix ended up almost an hour, causing me to sprint in Phoenix to catch the flight to Detroit. I was the last person on the jetway, the door slamming behind me. My seat, against the window, was next to a very large man who slept splayed out the whole trip. By the time we got to Detroit I could barely move my neck and right shoulder. Waiting for my luggage, which I knew hadn’t made it onto my plane, my back ached and I was starving as I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. By 8 p.m. it was obvious, even to the US Air representative, that my luggage was not there and she finally allowed me to fill out the paperwork. I arrived at my Aunt’s house in Ann Arbor after 9, with nothing but my backpack, computer and books. Luckily she had a toothbrush for me!

So this morning I sit at the UGLI (Undergrad library) to catch up on homework. But I miss Tucson. A lot. Warm skies, beautiful colors, relaxed atmosphere. The painting class was wonderful, though I don’t know that I am that good at it. I took some pictures of work in process that I will put up when I get home. The concept is to put your drawing on the paper and then pour watercolor over the page, letting it mix where it will, then mask sections and pour again, with increasing amounts of pigment in the paint. Artists skilled in pouring can do the entire picture with pouring. Sometimes they add a bit of enhancement or highlight or detail after they take off the mask. I am not skilled, and was disappointed in my first piece, but learned a great deal from it. Wish I had time to continue the experiment. I have two more pieces in stages of development and I’d like to start another now that I get more of what’s going on with the whole process.

So enough about a wonderful vacation weekend. Time to get down to work and figure out what in the world this html code is doing so that I have a chance of doing a bit of it by myself without help come the midterm.

But oh…how I miss the southwest.

Hello world, from sunny Tucson. It’s January and the sky is blue, the mountains purple, the air is warm, and I am spending three days at a water color workshop. What fun!  There is something about sunshine glinting off of red tile roofs that makes my heart sing.

Tomorrow is day three of our three day workshop, lots still to do. Even though it’s been a lot of work it has been so much fun. Though we went to bed by 9 last night, asleep from sheer exhaustion we’re trying to stay up till at least 10 tonight! We’re in class from 9 till 4 every day so there hasn’t been time (or energy) to explore further here. That’s a shame as it looks beautiful!

Sunday I fly home…a long flight I’m sure. I’ve been working on my web design homework, though to be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing. Mostly it’s working, but I’m just copying what the book says to do. I don’t have a clue why any of it is done the way it is. So I have a lot of studying to do before the midterm! That worries me, but I guess I’ll worry about it when I get home.

Meanwhile, what a treat to be in the sunny, warm southwest spending entire days painting. I am so lucky!

Another exciting commute into Ann Arbor this morning.  Recognizing that two inches of snow would significantly slow the early morning trip, I set out at 6:30 a.m.  I needed to be at work when the library opened at 9:00, and you’d think that there was plenty of time.  Not so.  The combination of snow and the morning rush hour turned both the side streets and US 23 to stop and go the entire way.  Never driving above 30 miles an hour made the normally one hour trip turn into over 90 minutes.  It was touch and go whether I’d make the 8:12 bus, the one that gets me downtown by 8:45. 

I made the bus, barely, but only because it was running late.  And the further we got along the route the later we became.  Arriving in downtown Ann Arbor at 8:55 I got off one stop earlier than normal so I could sprint through slush filled streets to make it to work by 8:59.  One small goal for the day accomplished, arriving at work and to public desk as we were opening.

Tomorrow after class I fly to Tuscon.  I don’t think there is snow there, and I am glad.  I am staying with a friend and attending a three day water color “pouring” class.  It’s irresponsible to be leaving town during the semester, but I remember how short life is, so I’m cutting loose and going to enjoy a warm weekend.  I’ll be back Sunday. 

By then I hope all this snow has melted.  I know, foolish hope, but I can dream, can’t I?

So here’s Katie.  I’m almost sure I have figured out how to upload photos to this blog site now.  Almost.

I have just submitted my second assignment for the dreaded web development class.  I worked on it most of Friday and some on Saturday and cleaned it up today.  Not without a lot of help again I have to say.  Though I am beginning to figure some stuff out for myself.  Even stuff I haven’t asked anyone about yet!  Of course those computer people out there that have come to my aid won’t know about the stuff I figured out on my own.  They will merely roll their eyes at the basic information I need from them.

After a morning full of mind boggling web design (well, it’s not THAT good!)…husband and I went to Detroit to see Andrew Lloyd Weber’s latest show, “Whistle Down the Wind.”  Webber wrote the music to “Phantom of the Opera,” “Cats,” and many others.  He wrote the music to this show, and Meatloaf (yes the Meatloaf of Rocky Horror Picture Show) wrote the lyrics.  It was a somewhat strange and sometimes unsettling show, set in 1959 in Louisiana.  The premise is that a family with three young children has just lost their mother.  It’s just before Christmas, there’s a convicted killer escaped from the local penitentiary, and there is the beginning of racial strife in their small town for the first time.  Outsiders coming in to look for the escaped killer add fuel to the simmering racial fire.  Meanwhile the daughter finds the killer hiding in their barn, but mistakes him for Jesus Christ, come again.  He lets her think that and also lets her believe that if she helps him he will bring her mother back from heaven.  I’ll let you wonder how it turns out.

I  think if I had known the story line revolved around a mother who dies just before Christmas, and the regrets of so many people in the story, talking about what they should have done, could have done, but the moments pass, well, I would have brought some tissue!  After the show there were several groups of people talking about their own mothers, now gone.  Some were in tears.  I managed to get through it with only a few tears, though I can certainly understand the need of the daughter to believe that the man in her barn could bring her mother back “if only for one day.”

After the show husband went to work and I came back and worked on web homework, finishing it off with great relief.  So the day feels disjointed.  Concentration, schoolwork, entertainment, tears, concentration, schoolwork…a little distraction…some memories…a bit of sadness over Mom…a bit (ok a lot) of gladness over the assignment being done.

Time for bed now.  Katie retired a long time ago.  She’ll be up early in the morning.

Katie and I have been up since 5:00 a.m. And by “up” I don’t mean just up and about, but UP AND ABOUT! She has been excitable since before the sun came up. Deer in the yard; must alert the household! Mom outside scaring deer away from dark morning yard in 20 mph wind and bitter temps; must alert the household! Printer noisily warming up; must alert the household! Mom yelling at me to be quiet; must alert DAD! Phone ringing. Dreaded telemarketer! VERY VERY important to alert the household! And the neighbors’ households! Mom yelling again. Louder this time. Wonder what she wants. Drop tennis ball on her foot. Guess that is not what she wanted. OH NO! Birds on the bird feeder! Must alert household! Maybe should ask Mom to go outside and pee. Hmm… barking does not seem to be getting her attention anymore. Just squat. THAT DID IT! Happy happy, joy joy! Outside in nice freezing windy weather. Sniff sniff…follow deer tracks. Mom wants to go inside; silly Mom.

I’m still figuring out how to get photos here.  Apparently I got it right.  But of course I don’t know exactly what I did to make this work.  Stay tuned, you never know, I could figure it out again soon!  Or not.

This was a sunflower that a chipmunk planted next to my front door last summer.  Today as we head into a frigid weekend I think I am beginning to miss summer.