She’s beautiful.

On vacation in Laguna Beach, California for a few days. Looking forward to some uneventful beach lolling and gallery strolling.
So far the people watching is almost as good as the car ogling. And that’s all the -ings for today, since it’s 11 here but 3 a.m. our time, and we’ve been up since 5. [...]

The other day we had a kid here in the studio with us: Abby, 9-year-old niece of my sister-in-law. In addition to being bright, friendly and astonishingly energetic, Abby reminded me of something I’m embarrassed to admit I’d forgotten.
She was drawing with Penny, exploring all the paints and supplies at the art table. She eventually [...]

Now, even though our art is far better than it was when we started — when we loved to create it — it’s not good enough. It doesn’t look like the real thing. Sometimes at this stage we notice that other kids (like Penny) can draw a convincing bird, or truck, or mountain, and we get discouraged.

We decide that those kids are good at art, and we’re not. Our artistic career is over before it started.

You might not know this, but I’ve got a broken index finger. On my right hand, which I do favor. It’s healed now; don’t get me wrong; I wouldn’t want you to think I was typing this with a crippled appendage or anything, but the fact remains that it was once broken, by Penny in [...]

I saw it right away, there on the Lucky Charms box: NEW MARSHMALLOW.
It said they’ve added little hourglasses now, though why anybody would want to gaze down into his breakfast cereal and contemplate a bobbing reminder of time’s inexorable march to oblivion is beyond me. Perhaps marshmallow yawning graves didn’t test well.
Still, I was excited. [...]

I like things that do things. It would be more complete and more accurate to say I like things that do *extra* things, things that are beyond the original things’ primary purpose or reason for being, but which are still nice things to have happening.
It’d be more accurate still to say that I like things [...]

Sun + Prism + Nothing = Rainbows.

Well, I’ve been on the lookout for more of these “collateral benefits”, in which an object or action has a byproduct that’s as desirable as the primary intent.
Wow, that was not a very well-phrased sentence. I’d better go eat one of those grapes over there, as an incentive to start writing better.
Ah. What I’m trying [...]

For the past two weeks I’ve been living in a hotel room. I’m here in Raleigh, North Carolina on assignment, and it’s been great to get to work with all my new cohorts in person before I go back to Columbia to work from home.*
I’m even getting the hang of hotel living, sort of. It’s [...]