Cad you ted I habba code? It would be easy to say I caught it at the Prairie Art Alliance reception March 3 — SUPER event! — but akashally (as 43 might say) I fet di early germ scouts reconnoitering my sinai (plural of sunus?) Sadderday marnin. Let me grab a Keedex fom the sylish Gardenias Chocolate box . . . .
(SSSSCHFFF!!) That’s better.
It’s been a busy week with four art gallery receptions: Robert Morris College’s Outside the Box student art hoedown on March 1, the March 2 RMD Gallery and Framing Studio’s meet & greet for featured artist Craig Anderson, brother in law of Sam B. Davis (both pictured at the top of this entry), and Hoogland receptions on Saturday for Sangamon Watercolor Society’s featured artist Kathy A. Lisle and finally, Prairie Art Alliance’s reception for Life Cycles, featuring my friend Sonia Lang and retired SIU School of Medicine professor David A. Sumner. Well, not quite finally: Sam’s art is featured at Trout Lily Cafe this month. He didn’t have a reception, but his obvious talent with a brush strongly suggests he will have a reception some day, and by golly, you can be sure I will attend with camera.
I’ve wanted to write this blog since Sunday, but I wanted to post pictures first. “Duty before Ditty,” I often think to myself. Sunday I could hardly wait to get started. But since it was SUNDAY, I decided to relax . . . and processed pictures for only four hours after the news shows. And I relaxed in the model workshop the rest of the day. When I settled down for a long winter’s nap, I was a satisfied fellow; more so than I’ve been in MONTHS, thanks in part to support picked up at the receptions and my easy devotion to my various causes.
Worked on the reception pictures about six hours Monday, thanks in part to WSEC Public TV’s fund drive pre-empting their usual programming. I had no interest in enduring their tin-cup lament, at least not until I’m at least 80 years old and can appreciate the special programming they infilict on an innocent public on these occasions — what about six a year, now? So thanks to the station manager Gerald Grovel and his randy onslaught of nationally produced and canned laments, I was happy to hunker down until Charlie Rose came on with a fantastic interview with the majority leader of the US Senate.
Tuesday, as I write this I’m decompressing ater the final eight hours required to post the reception pictures. It’s not been the happy romp I anticipated because though the five hours of fine tuning content, captions and page layout was a breeze, the three hours I spent deleting content to make room for it all on the web server was tedium maxiums! Deleted the Fortune Cookie fortunes page, a few pages from my Vachel Lindsay coverage, and a few dozen visual arts pics, mostly from Visual Vibes Vignettes.
To view the results of the effort, visit http://www.civag.com/artslinks.htm
At Writers’ Bloc Saturday morning, a friend asked me (for the 10th time or so) if I had visited the car muffler place wtih the $100 coupon he gave me last September. I explained I had not because I had not been arrested yet for driving without a muffler (which gave up the “ghost” about four years ago, and I’m more interested in getting my sink drain fixed (so I can wash dishes in the kitchen instead of my bathroom) and paying some overdue bills. When he explained his concern over the clear and present danger of my nodding off to the next dimension while driving a 21 year old car with no tailpipe, I was touched by his concern for my health; the second sentiment of its kind shared in a week. The other incident was on the heels of my ‘xplaining I am not worried about the tainted Peter Pan peanut butter news. I said I had not checked the production numbers on the top of the jar and that even if I got a little from eating it, the experience would be a welcome break from the usual daily routine. My friend said she thought my outlook seemed suicidal, and I declared it was not intended to be (true) and that I was feeling pretty good about life (not true). I wanted to tell her about a New Yorker cartoon that I enjoyed: two fellows are looking down from an open window of a tall downtown building. One says to the other: “Harold wasn’t suicidal; he was migratory.” Great cartoon.
So Monday afternoon I did as I promised Saturday and visited the muffler shop with the coupon and got an estimate for a new muffler and tail pipe and to replace a nasty leak which HAD been emitting carbon monoxide fumes about four inches from my right foot. I intend to get the work done Wednesday.
Since I’,m almost done with the cited jar of Peter Pan crunchy, I decided to look at the product code on the cap. It begins “222….”
So here I am letting my sinuses (sinai seems too Hebrew and Hezbollah to me) train into a cereal bowl with a Kleenex in the bottom of it. I’m exercising my right (here at home in the office with not even a peeping Tom interested as far as I can tell) to the nostril pinch instead ot to blow. I was blowing most of the day Monday, and all I have to show for it are two chafed hostrils. YES I have some SudaFed antihistamine tabs in the medicine cabinet, but as long as I’m not out in public blowing away, I’m okay with the private pinch. Anything to break up the usual daily routine.
Live long . . . . . and proper.
