“Where there is a sea there are pirates.” ~ Greek Proverb

For the longest time I wanted to learn to draw. Now I want to learn to render.

I’ve been stuck on the wrong stuff. I can draw. Not perfectly, but I can get the job done. My weakest skills come after the drawing, and those are what I need to spend the most time on now.

So yesterday afternoon I took a couple of hours and drew a Magnificent Frigatebird (Fregata magnificens). I worked from a photo in a bird calendar (because we don’t have Frigatebirds in the Inland Northwest). I started by using a (non-repro) blue pencil to do the initial drawing and then worked with a ballpoint pen and colored pencils.

I chose the ballpoint pen because it’s unforgiving. If I screwed up (and I admit that this isn’t a great doodle) I had to own it.

Frigatebirds are known for stealing food from other birds… they’re pirates.

“Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.” ~ Dave Barry

I made something recently that I hated. I mean, I ate it because I was hungry and it was dinner, but because it had basil and garlic in it the comparison with pesto was there in my mind (the word “pesto” in the recipe’s title didn’t help). The red flags: very little olive oil and no nuts of any kind. It was one of the few things I’ve tried that Dana didn’t finish. It was so, so disappointing.

I figured I had some making up to do after that kitchen nightmare, so I made pesto. Real pesto, with pine nuts and olive oil… and miso.

I know, I know. Loads of folks will look down their noses with disdain: “you can’t make pesto without cheese.” Well, to those folks I say, “suck it.” When a member of your household is, ahem, “dairy limited” (nothing from a mammal, thank you very much), you have to find ways around that particular challenge, and believe it or not, substituting a light miso for parmesan works very well in this application.

In addition to making the pesto (which, aside from toasting the pine nuts and letting them cool doesn’t take very long), I made some dough, oven roasted some tomatoes (at the least the kitchen was warm all afternoon) and made some cashew cream… pizza!

Good stuff.

“In order to keep a true perspective of one’s importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him.” ~ Unknown

I’m taking a short workshop right now, and one of our assignments was to draw some buildings in perspective.

This isn’t anything I haven’t done before, but I’ve never done it particularly well. At least not from a freehand perspective. You see, I’m not really very good at drawing straight lines… enough said.

So for our last assignment I pulled out an 11×17 piece of paper and did it the old fashioned way, with a ruler. (You can see the lines going off to the vanishing points at the sides.)

And it’s NOT from life. It was raining cats & dogs so I stayed inside and drew from a photo.

Here’s the ink version.

It’s not finished, but the assignment was to do some sketches.

Despite its imperfections, I enjoyed this doodle a lot. I forget how much I like perspective and rarely get the opportunity to look at buildings this way.

I should change that.

“I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.” ~ Laurence Olivier

It’s easy to forget, being bombarded by television and movies, that there are a great many talented and experienced actors who don’t work in Hollywood, or on Broadway.

I had the privilege of living in New York for almost a decade, and in that time I got to see some great theater. But most of the Shakespearean plays I’ve seen were staged at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, a Tony-winning regional summer stock company. Last summer in Nova Scotia we went to see a lively fundraising revue at Chester’s playhouse.

Spokane gets travelling Broadway shows, but the venue they use has awful acoustics, so if you’re even a little bit off center, you can’t hear what’s going on. (Consequently, Spamalot sounded as it would if you were driving through a tunnel listening to it on your cell phone. Disappointing.)

If, however, you hit some of the local companies, you won’t be disappointed.

A couple of summers ago, I got to see The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee performed in Coeur d’Alene by a regional summer stock company — it was hilarious, and the theater (at North Idaho College) was great.

And last night we went to see Tuna Does Vegas at Interplayers, Spokane’s professional resident theater.

Hilarious. And it was another fun venue — you can see and hear everything from almost every seat in the house.

Here’s the best part: we got to go with some friends, so not only was the show entertaining, we got to spend some time with some lovely people. After the show we stopped by the restaurant around the corner for drinks, snacks and conversation.

That sounds amazing, doesn’t it?

“Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Today’s (well, yesterday’s) amazing thing: I paid my state business taxes.

It would be mostly true to say that the postal service made more on the stamp than the state did from my business income. My business income last year was very, very small. But there was a little bit of it, and now it’s been reported and the state taxes have been paid.

It’s not big. It’s barely significant. But it was the right thing to do, and for that reason it’s today’s one amazing thing.

“Better to do something imperfectly than nothing flawlessly.” ~ unknown

I have to admit, I’m kind of in a funk.

It’s winter, and that’s a part of it for sure. I’m not an “outdoorswoman” in the strictest sense of the word, but I’m a person who really likes to go outside for a little while every day to go for a walk. That gets a little bit more difficult when it’s safer to walk in the middle of the street dodging traffic than it is to walk on sidewalks because they’re so snowy and icy (although I have to admit that I love my Yaktrax.)

Part of it is spending too much time keeping up with current events. Bummer.

And maybe part of it is coming to the conclusion that what I thought I wanted to do with my life, I don’t actually want to do anymore. I’ve got all of these skills that I’ve spent years gathering and working on, and when it comes right down to it, I love the discipline but don’t care for the work… so now what?

Now I find a new path, one that is amazing.

Rather than crash around blindly, my new anti-blue-funk strategy is to do one amazing thing every day.

Let’s define amazing, so nobody gets the impression that I’m talking about scaling Everest. No, I’m talking about doing something that makes me feel happy, or enlightened, or like I’m making a contribution to the world, or something that makes me feel exhilarated or appreciative. Something that, when I think about it, I would admire if another person did it. Something that would make me think, “hey, I should try that.”

Or something that I don’t enjoy but need to do because it’s part of what it means to live like a grown-up… like going to the dentist (which I did yesterday, thank you very much).

Most of these things won’t be big, or even significant. But they will require a decision and an action.

My first amazing thing: take a bellydance class.

Painting depicting a bellydancer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme, via wikipedia.

I’ve been wanting to find a dance class for a while. I danced all through my teenage years, and I enjoy moving to music. I’m not a teenager anymore (and haven’t been for a really long time), my knees aren’t in the greatest shape — and, truth be told, neither am I — but I found a beginning bellydance class through the parks department, and ta-dah!

It’s so much fun, and a huge challenge. Imagine having to figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time, only you don’t have the skills required to either walk or chew gum… it’s kind of like that. I’m so bad it’s got to be comical (or pathetic) to watch, but the teacher is lovely and very skilled, and since we’re all beginners we’re all in the same boat.

And because it reminds me that it’s OK to be a beginner (and to be really bad at something), it’s my first amazing thing.