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September 26, 2007

Robbi Paints

It has been a long day and a strange day. We drove to Baltimore this morning to sit in on a training session for the new Adobe Creative Suite. Then we returned to Chestertown, all set to relax on the couch with Subway sandwiches and an episode of Season Three of guilty pleasure Grey's Anatomy when suddenly the power went out and we were left dazed, empty, adrift, and utterly confounded as to what to do with ourselves. We could not watch tv, play nintendo, surf the internet, use the computer in any other way, make phone calls or drill things with the power drill. It was a helpless, helpless moment. Eventually we realized that the new camera had batteries and was thus free to operate without connection to the grid. So we went out into the sunshine and walked around Chestetertown taking photos.

This was not a pleasure walk, even though it was pleasant. No, we were on a mission to photograph key buildings that will appear in the panels of our work-in-progress 2008 Chestertown calendar. This calendar will be humorous, irreverent, and non-factual and will have a George Washington theme. It will be full of inside jokes for the benefit of those from Chestertown, but we will make it available for purchase on the Idiots'Books Web site if, as a groupie, you just can't get enough.

Eventually the power came back on, the universe came back to balance, and we watched our episode of Grey's.

For the last few hours, I've been trimming copies of Volume 10, which is called, by the by, The Clearing.

While I trimmed, Robbi futzed around with a program that lets you paint on the computer. The stylus of one's Wacom tablet becomes the brush and the "paint" is applied in a pressure-sensitive, highly contoured way. It's really pretty nifty. Here is her first work.

I think the guy looks a little like Wario.

In other news, the Boston Red Sox are just two games (or two Yankees losses) away from clinching their first American League East title in ten years. This is exciting to me. In general, I try to avoid politics and sports on this blog because there is nothing less interesting to someone who doesn't care about politics than politics and nothing less interesting to someone who doesn't care about sports than sports. But I am a Red Sox fan and am gratified that after nearly blowing a monumental mid-season lead over the hated Yankees, they seem to have righted the ship. But perhaps I speak too soon. There is still time for grand calamity. I digress into sports talk because I had a moment of human sympathy for the cold inhuman Yankees today when I saw this photo of their four rookies, dressed thus by their more veteran teammates on the occasion of the final road trip of the year. It's kind of cute in an evil franchise kind of way.

I'm kind of hurting right now because tomorrow I must go to Texas, and friends, if there is any place more loathsome than Connecticut, it's Texas. I won't go into the reasons, in part because of the self-imposed politics embargo I mentioned above. Texas has somewhat redeemed itself of late by virtue of the enormous spider web that seems to be happening outside of Dallas. Have you heard about this? Apparently the spiders are cooperating in a way that is antithetical to all tried and true spider behavior.

What is the explanation? I cannot say. Perhaps the spiders' motives are political. Perhaps they are just tired of working at cross purposes. I will get nowhere near the spiders, as I am heading to Austin, which is, by all accounts, a relatively inoffensive part of the Lone Star State.

Posted by bogenamp at September 26, 2007 08:42 PM

Comments

Posted by: Brian Slattery at September 27, 2007 10:32 AM