Stuff

Oh, what a busy day (I'm being facetious here). Lotsa playing catch-up on stuff that's been on hold until after the opening of my show. I had to take the Land Rover in for some routine maintenance today. "It'll take about an hour" ... NOT! Two and a half hours later, I'm finally filling out the charge slip. At least the dealer's mechanics are good. They always explain what's going on, what needs to be done, and what can be ignored. They're not cheap, but our Discovery has 128,000 miles on it and still runs and looks like new. Well, almost like new. The sales people have finally given up on trying to sell me a new LR3. "Oh, him again ..." They were always trying to get me to take an LR3 for a test drive. I figure, if I don't drive it, I won't want it. It's a philosophy that has worked so far.






Then it was time to collect the dogs from the studio, visit with fellow artists there, and head home. The dogs were overdue for a bath, so I gave 'em one, then took 'em for a walk to dry 'em off. Come to think of it, I've never posted pictures of my lovely little daughters, have I? Time to fix that. So here they are. The top one is Indie and the bottom one is Soozee. Whaddaya mean, you can't tell 'em apart? Shih Tzu's are the sweetest dogs in the world. Very smart, very loving, and when you have two of 'em, more entertainment than a Playstation.

Okay: bath done, walk done, dinner done. Dogs are napping (for the moment, anyway). Time to finish updating my web site. I changed some things around: got rid of the "giftshop" page since nobody ever used it, put in a section for my Forest Nymph photos, changed the photo of the Arts Council reception so Janis won't get mad at me, and made a lot of other nitnoid fixes. I think it looks pretty good.

One thing I didn't do today is artwork. I've found that if I don't get started on artwork by about 1 pm, then I won't get started on it, period. So I usually try to cram all my "stuff" into one day and then spend as many days as possible in the studio before needing another "stuff" day. So tomorrow is a STUDIO DAY! At least, that's what I'm planning.

General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker gave their testimony to the House today. I haven't paid much attention to the reports, but it seems like it was pretty much as expected. The military surge is working to keep violence down in some areas, but the Iraqi government has its collective thumb up its ass. Petraeus says we can have a token withdrawal soon, with the full surge being out by next July. Umm, excuse me, but doesn't that mean the surge would have lasted eighteen months? I believe that's a lot longer than originally advertised. And at the end of that time, we'd still have over 130,000 troops in Iraq, while some troops would be on their fourth or even FIFTH deployment. Unsatisfactory. I stand by my earlier statement: time to start pulling the troops out.

I keep hearing stepped-up noises that the Bush administration wants to go bomb Iran. This was evidently making the rounds on the internet over the past few days, and was even on NPR this afternoon. It would be absolutely the stupidest, most foolhardy, counterproductive, asinine thing that could possibly be done. I can't tell if they're really that dumb or if they're just letting the rumors fly in order to pressure Iran at the negotiating table. Given that Dick Cheney is still on the job, I wouldn't bet on anything. Time to write your congressman: no military action against Iran!