Careful What You Wish For

I will be just plain gone from cyberspace for about 3 weeks. Not even e-mail, I think. No blog posts, no blogs, no comments. The CD Cover mailing project will have to wait - I will finish that up later. Probably no painting.

I got the go ahead on a big hairy wonderful project at work, involving a lot of travel for the next few weeks and nights and weekends of work. Very tight schedule at the start. I've been pushing for this for nearly a year and I got a green light Friday. Happy panic.

So I love you all, I will not forget about you, I will be back, but I won't have PC time for anything but work for the next three weeks...

Gotta go to bed now - getting up at 4:00 AM to catch a plane.

Painting Large Again - and Asheville

Tonight was life drawing night, but I was too tangled up inside about my day job to go. Then I talked to Dearest for an hour and was better. Too late to go, by then... So I took Daughter to dance and worked some more in the car on my laptop while I waited. That also helped me to feel less overwhelmed.

Then I got home around 8:30 and painted this in two hours (it was white paper with some pencil lines when I started). Watercolor, 18 x 24. Fast, for me. Not done, but a long way from the start. This felt really good to do. I haven't painted large in weeks.

This weekend we left the guys at home and went to visit UNC, Asheville. Here are some photos. A scene on the street of Asheville (Catholic basilica downtown). OK, so it's more about the tree - what do you expect? A shop where Daughter bought a yellow beret (on her list for a while, but we hadn't seen berets anywhere until this hippy town) and Dearest let me twist her arm to try on a dress which I later persuaded her to buy. And the last photo is of my girls, seen from inside a shop they had just left - with huge amaryllis in the window.

Oooog. Wiped Out

We had a wonderful whirlwind overnight trip with Daughter to Asheville, NC to look at the college of her choice. I want to go back to school and go there. Can I do it over again?

It's about four and half hours drive, and I did it in the rain yesterday to get there, and then back again in the rain today after meetings and tour... I am wiped.

And tomorrow I leave at 6:00 AM to drive four and a half hours to Columbia, SC... Spartanburg SC on Thursday... I'll get a day without travel in Columbia on Wednesday. Shame about the location. I like some people in Columbia, very much. There is a wonderful zoo and garden there. There's a good SC state museum there. I think that's it - the rest I would gladly never see again.

Hopefully it's not raining during my drive tomorrow.

This will not be a good week for art, I'm thinking. But I did at least post progress on that painting from Life Drawing. This is as far as I've gotten with preliminary watercolor. It's slow going - I don't know what I'm doing, which is the fun and frightening part all at once.

CD Covers - The Drawing - C'est Tout

I am writing in the tres official capacity as auditor and judge of the drawing of names for Etienne's CD Covers. I will describe the proceedings so all may know the results were fair.

First, Etienne wrote the names of anyone who had requested a CD Cover on comments since the posting of the final eight images. These were numbered for convenience and calculating the odds. Oui, we post the probability of being drawn on each successive reach of Etienne's hand.

Odds for each successive placement:

1st place 0.0588235
2nd place 0.0625000
3rd place 0.0666667
4th place 0.0714286
5th place 0.0769231

You can see your bon chance increases with each drawing. Etienne gleefully pointed out the appearance of his favorite repeating decimal on 4th place (regrettably rounded by the calculator), where a multiple of seven worked the magique. No doubt Lisa's cheri, the Man of Math, will perceive deeper meaning in all of this - upon me it is mostly lost. Etienne says that grenouilles, being unable to see their own digits, never acquired a desire to count. To this I merely shrug.

Here you can see a dramatization of the first drawing done before the first grand shake-up. It was confirmed that there were no slips lurking in the shadows of the edge of the beret. Etienne did each real selection blind, scrambling the slips further with his fingers with his eyes closed, and reshaking and reconfirming no loss under the edge between each draw. I made sure there was no peeking. Etienne's long Italian lashes were firmly down upon the Magyar bags beneath his eyes.

Here are the slips, pulled in order but unopened. The suspense was like the aroma of fresh baked baguettes, pervading everything. Etienne prolonged this moment. He told me he was pondering the possibilities, and who might have been selected. Then came the moment of truth, and we unfolded the slips.

Here is the photographic evidence of the drawing. The number to the right, off the slip, indicates the rank in the contest, and the order of choosing. The number on the slip was merely written for counting and calculation of odds. So the following blog personalities may now announce their preferences in e-mail to Etienne (instructions below).

1 - Summer (Phoenix Berries)
2 - Alex (A Markhov)
3 - Genie Sea (Reality Insanity)
4 - The Gypsy (Fadwa's Inspirational Blog)
5 - Odd Chick (Passions of an Odd Chick)

Etienne noted that two of these may be hand delivered, but that is balanced by the one which must travel all the way to Dubai... That will be Etienne's first art sent outside America. Oui. It is time to infect another continent.

The winning bloggers should now indicate to Etienne their first and second choice in e-mail. If all goes well, and no one ahead of you in line chooses one of your first choices, then Etienne will announce who is getting which in a blog post. If someone ahead of you has chosen so that neither your first nor second choice are available, Etienne will write with that sad news and advise you which covers remain. The winners later in the list will have to wait until all above them are settled before their selections are secure.

Send also your mailing address (mail d'escargot) in the e-mail, if your CD cover will not be hand delivered.

Voila, Etienne's e-mail address is (broken in little pieces to elude the spam crawlers) "arnly" followed by the numeral for seven "7" then the tres chic symbol for e-mail (the a encircled by the curlique), followed by "yahoo" immediately succeeded by a speck plus "com". This address is also available on Etienne's gallery page, which can be reached by clicking the image in the banner at the top of this blog.

For those who did not win today, there will be three covers left at the end, and one of those may be achieved by simply asking in comment, after Etienne posts images of the three. Only one per blogger, so the five winners above may not request one of the three remaining.

Eh, bien! Greetings and congratulations to those who won. We will soon see what they choose.

au revoir,

Grenouille

GRRRROWL

Spent most of the evening on the main house PC battling some kind of DCOM problem - possibly a trojan or malware. It took most of the evening to get a good boot-up, so I could attach the 1/2 terabyte external I bought for backups and get a more recent dump of photos and other precious items. Next I have to see if repairs are possible or if it will require a reload...

So no time for other frivolity tonight. Before it happened I cut the boys' hair, and I started the last work on the taxes. Some fun night, mm-hmm.

Going to bed now while the PC does a Spy-bot sweep (first of several tools I will use). It's already found a win32 malware item (win32 was involved in the boot failures) - could be the culprit, could be just the tip of the iceberg.

Provence Cloth and Daffodils

Etienne's cheri loves bright table coverings from Provence. Here one is creating a perfect background for the yellow narcissus. And for moi, as well. The photo is tres jolie - you should perhaps click on it to zoom your enjoyment. And then you can better see the sweet happiness of these little yellow blooms.

The clock changes in this house have led to some deep sighs of content. It feels as if we will have all the days of March, but we may pretend that they will happen with the sunlit evenings of April. Then April will come and be as bright as usual, as well. Tres riches heures du soleil. For these people who feed on photons, this is a gift, and they are grateful. It has inspired worship, thanks, and praise from Etienne. Gloire a Dieu.

Encore - Etienne is giving away the CD Covers, here, and if you wish to get your name in the hat, leave a comment there saying so.

Au revoir,

Grenouille

And I (Etienne) will add that I just saw over at Liberality that she gave me the "Love Ya" Award. Many thanks to her, and I have noted it in my sidebar with a link to her blog. You should go listen to the Kate Bush song she has up on her recent post about Big Sky.

Cat TV

Oui, I know you can hear the approaching soft pad of the cat coming to say I look tres ridiculous in Etienne's red beret. But how seriously can one take this when the judge is one of the pair in the photo below? Even a small child addicted to cartoons will not propell himself against the television as these two at the glass of this cat TV.

Au revoir,

Grenouille

PS - Etienne is giving away the CD Covers - if you wish to get your name in the beret, comment on his post, ici.