ArtChaser

Plumbing Thanksgiving and Chritmas... I missed another blog post last week, but let me explain: Ever since getting into the new house, one month to be exact, we have been experiencing major problems with the plumbing which was discovered by the welcoming sight of water all over the laundry room floor while running the washer. This led to a WTF moment of muddy water coming up and standing for days in the kitchen sink. Everything that requires water on that side of the house has been unusable (including the dishwasher).  With added bad timing of this happening Thanksgiving week and now with a tunnel under the house (missing pier and beam right about now), the yard a muddy mess and Christmas a week away I have been continuously stressed out but trying to get it under control. N o mindset for blogging but I thought I  was starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I didn't realize it was a train. Friday I came home after work, Hubz tells me the plumber said the ma...

Moving is such fun.......NOT! The past week is the first time since starting my blog that I missed a posting. I felt terrible about it but couldn't be helped. We were mid move from our home of almost 5 years, it was Thanksgiving week, I didn't have a post at the ready and was surrounded by chaos. We used movers for the first time and even with a couple of small issues and the cost, I highly recommend it. They arrived early, packed our entire life in their truck and moved us in one trip. It was amazing how they could maximize every square inch of the truck, very much like a game of Tetris. Unpacking was supposed to be in my mind, easy peasy. I'd taped a labeled piece of colored paper on both sides of each box with corresponding areas/rooms so each box had a designated spot. Well, I'd budgeted for 5 hours which one would think is plenty of time but since most of that time was taken up packing, the download had to be a bit more efficient. I had to make a run to the ATM...

Best friends rock! Even more so when you're married to him. I love it when Hubz and I get to spend the weekends together. Often times we go get mani/pedis, have a nice meal and end with an on demand movie. We also have what we call lazy Sundays, where we stay in bed and watch movies all day. Not very productive but we like it. We make each other laugh, still after 17 + years and no one knows me better.  We decided to spend Labor Day weekend with a trip to Las Vegas, neither of us having been before. Hubz is a certified workaholic and convincing him to take time for some well deserved R and R was no small feat. If I haven't mentioned in previous posts, we are a great team, this trip was no different. We landed without incident after a super cramped no frills flight on Spirit Airlines aka Soul P lane (the return trip was not as fortunate which included battling bridesmaids).  O ur reservation was at Caesar's Palace, something a few people advised us against.   They s...

This past weekend I discovered retail hauls on YouTube. I realize I'm the last to the party on this, partly I think because while the ladies whose hauls I found myself binge watching were all lovely and extremely entertaining ( Patricia Bright , Glitter+Lazers , Tiarra Monet ), were much younger than my demographic, a woman of a certain age, namely over 50. Our figures, mine especially aren't the same as when we were 30 (thank God!) and I dread going to malls because on top of everything being either hoochie or dowdy, I've recently lost weight and at a weird in between stage. I went up from size 6 to 10/12 and now down to, what I'm not sure. This is why I've resorted to online shopping for most of my clothes, still, not an exact science and I'm struggling with finding something that's right for me. By scouring YouTube I did find hauls for women my age but Christ Almighty the clothes for the most part were, dull, drab, no color to speak of and completel...

This past weekend I went to my first life drawing class Keep in mind I haven't tried to draw or sketch anything in quite some time, well over 25 years and even then, I didn't do people very often, opting instead to stick to still life's, animals, etc. I struggled with faces, noses in particular. After a very long hiatus, I decided it was time to get in touch with the artist that's been lying dormant inside me for far too long. In the past I appeased myself with other various creative endeavors, I'm a decent photographer, the occasional sewing project, not bad in Photoshop, picking up CAD here and there (mostly there, if you've read any previous posts), and until earlier this year was trading computer time with a friend for piano lessons.  I've been wanting to dust off my artistic brain cells and possibly exceed where I left off so many years ago. Now that I've been art blogging for a year, I felt it was time to start  creating again. I realized due ...

I just realized that very soon I will have been blogging a full year! This is an important milestone, because when this was just an idea, I knew there was content for my love of art and sustainable, but wasn't sure I could make the commitment and keep it up for this long. There were times I was completely uninspired and the last thing I wanted to do was blog. Each instance, I persevered, never giving up, happy every time I saw it through and learned something in the process. 47ish weeks later, I have 6 followers, 2 people who comment regularly, and lots of social media likes. It's still a journey that I'm glad I started, have been toying with the idea of posting twice a week, although I have no clue where I'll find the time but still wouldn't trade it for the world. I now have a skill I didn't posses before and couldn't be more proud. I've also received numerous compliments on my writing style, something I never anticipated. I'm pretty sure the m...

Where is it? Once again, I find myself discovering something strange with Blogger. Oddly, one of my February posts is missing! Thank the stars, all the others are accounted for. I'm unsure if it's something I did, or if a glitch (because Blogger is tres glitchy), either way, it's gone. I can't say what compelled me to go through all my posts. It was an interesting discussion about the origins of Pulp Fiction art (I thought it was interesting) how it was designed for lower income youth and young adults with some fun covers. Many of the characters and authors went on to become famous. I keep all my content on a flash drive, but not the copy. I will definitely start backing everything up! Sadly, the flash drive died a month or so ago and I can't retrieve anything! If I rewrote it, the date would be incorrect and would throw everything off so what's the point?

Happy Birthday! I had so much fun with this week's post, finding famous people born in April. Unfortunately, I had to cut it off at 17, it was much more than I normally include when covering topics of interest. It might have been a bit off from the usual but I felt compelled to list the ones that came closest to being mentioned: Bessie Smith Jane Mansfield Elizabeth Montgomery Booker T. Washington Duke Ellington Chance the Rapper Tony Romo Buddy Ebsen Eliot Ness Muddy Waters On another note, I'm happy to report I'm making progress managing my diabetes. The key was getting a second opinion. It turns out the first doctor was over medicating and a little too anxious to put me on insulin. The second one, a diabetic specialist lowered the dosage, which made me feel worlds better, and I'm learning to find a good balance with food management and medication while still being true to me. It's a process yet I have to admit food just isn'...

This past week was one of the toughest of my life. At 55 years old I was diagnosed with diabetes. While all of my immediate family have this disease, I was caught off guard because of all the blood work and doctor's visits of the past  few years, no one ever mentioned issues with my glucose levels (in spite of me alerting them of my family history). Never mind the fact that I wasn't displaying any of the alleged tale tell symptoms. So much for the "practice of medicine". My dermatologist of all people discovered it. The whole thing was overwhelming because I went from feeling great (for my age) to shock, sadness, confusion, fear, etc. I know that I'll get a handle on this, since it's very common and people live long healthy lives with diabetes. The worse part was the medication:  Janumet (very expensive BTW), made me progressively sicker each day. By the fourth day, I was nauseous all the time, weak, tired, and felt faint with no motivation to do an...

Content is king This long weekend caught me completely off guard and I forgot about posting the weekly blog. Worse yet, I was clueless about what to feature. Luckily I'd already started one last week and after a few tweaks it was done. I've posted about 30 weeks now, it's so exciting.  On one hand,  sometimes I struggle and question how I'm going to keep this up indefinitely. But on the other, I'm always happy with what I come up with and learn something in the process every time. I've got lots of drafts/ideas in the works but unsure about the message and execution of each. I recently got approved for adsense on artbong.net , it's intriguing and I'm learning about the clicks, estimated earnings, reports, etc. I'm getting a lot of likes and have gotten new followers in Instagram. When the blog is viewed through a social media interface (the most common), it doesn't count as views and I've gotten very few on the actual site which is a bi...

Learn CAD they said, it's not that hard they said... What's so hard about making a donut? When I first decided to start my blog I had all kinds of apprehensions but was still interested. But what to talk about? Well duh, the one thing that I've maintained a curiosity for, art. And now, I have ArtBong.net which I really enjoy, putting together art styles, deciding what to feature. But here, I can discuss what the journeys these experiences and new avenues do for me. I've always enjoyed learning new things and expanding my brain. After all, knowledge is power. Some time ago I thought I'd dabble into CAD ( Computer-aided design) . Long story short, I opened the software, took one look at the interface, freaked out and closed it immediately.  Sidebar: I used to be heavily into Second Life a RPG that's built by it's residents with the only limitations being the player's imagination. My real life friends and family who lived in other par...