Victory! (Again...)

What I needed was a syntax checker -- it's 'forms[]' and not 'form[]', and now my paypal buttons with dynamically generated email addresses are all working.

Onto the next thing -- tonight was the critique group meeting. Once a month comes around more quickly than I think. Last time, I came home with Rachel's stitched together window envelopes -- you know those envelopes for bill paying, that people don't use anymore because they're paying their bills online.

I was originally thinking a peekaboo dress, with the windows in strategic spots. But then I ended up making teeth for their gaping mouths. Here's the sewn/glued together envelops, and there are 2 types of teeth -- rounded and pointed -- that you can see already in place.



Close-ups of a set of teeth.



I took a picture of the finished 'thing', but the camera somehow cut it in half, with the other half being some older photos. I guess I'm just having trouble with technology this week.

AAAARGH!!#%#@$#%^

Excuse me while I go bang my head on a wall...

OK, I'm back.

Spent most of the working day still trying to figure out how to hide email address in paypal buttons using javascript. For some reason, MY email address would get shoved in the 'payee' spot when it should be my CLIENT's email address that gets put there. Yes, I've invented a new form of money embezzling -- by web site designers.

Finally, victory was mine. I had it working! In fact, I was so pleased with how it worked that I decided to change my web pages to hide MY email address in MY paypal buttons too. And now when I click MY 'Add to Cart' button, my CLIENT's email address gets shoved in the 'payee' spot.

Like I say, AAAARGH!!#%#@$#%^!!

No strawberries, but I have flowers

The neighbor brought over some fava beans from their garden a couple of weeks ago; I was going to return the bowl filled with strawberries. Yes, my mama taught me to never return an empty bowl. But remember that someone stole all my berries? Well, I still don't have any, so the bowl sits on my counter. Then the same neighbor brought over some blueberries yesterday, in another bowl.

Hey, at this rate, all their dishes will be at our house and soon they won't be able to have supper! So this was my solution:



They got this and their empty bowls back. Probably not as good as really good strawberries, but it'll just have to do. Those deep red cabbage roses smell really, really good.

Spent the morning updating Alice's web site with her new work. Then the afternoon was back to figuring out how to hide the email address in the paypal button with javascript. I thought I had it working, and indeed it worked, but just in Safari. In fact, I can get it to work in either Safari or the other browsers (Opera, Explorer, FireFox), but not all of them. And I'm too tired to keep at it tonight.

I am not who I appear to be

Or is that 'whom I appear to be'?

Turns out, underneath this demure, feminine, 47 year old exterior, I am really an 18-34-year-old-male waiting to bust out. That's right, I thought Transformers was fabulous! No, wait, make that awesome! Or is that supposed to be cool? Hot? Phat? Skinny? What, what's the operative word? This 18-34-year-old-male neeeeeds to know!

I love the noises they make when they do their thing, all that clinking of metal snapping into place! It was great! (Now that's something you don't get from the toys.) There's something very satisfying about pieces fitting perfectly together like that...sort of like sewing, or making an artist's book...hey, I think I'm onto something here, I bet there's a whole segment of the population, outside of that 18-34-year-old-male thing, that would get it -- seamstresses, quilters, book artists, collage/assemblage artists...and I'm NOT just saying that so I could mention 'art' in this entry.

And one more thing -- I thought it was better than Casablanca.

When we came out of the theater and into the parking lot, everywhere I looked, I saw transformers. We drove off into the sunset -- well, ok, to dinner -- in my transformer disguised as a little white Saturn, whom I now shall name Snowflake. Or maybe Dirty Snow.

Well, no studio work was accomplished today. I did do a few chores, and hit the weight room, cut Mike's hair, contact the potential violin instructor in Seattle (after a bit of searching on the net). And of course, go to a matinee.

Quick trip to Bend

Spent most of the day in the car today -- driving over to Bend to see my mom (she fell again) and driving home. It's about 3, 3.5 hours drive each way. So a long day in the car. She was bright and cheery when I arrived, but 2 hours later, was pretty tired, so I left. It wasn't quite 5pm yet, so I decided to go check out the galleries in Bend. I don't usually go into town when I visit, so haven't really looked at the galleries there. And since the hospital is not too far from downtown, I decided to go take a quick look. Found mostly Western art -- native Americans, horses, buffaloes, bronzes of majestic animals, paintings of majestic animals. One place with kitschy stuff (and it wasn't very good kitsch either). So most are not a good fit. There was one 2nd floor gallery that showed contemporary art, that was probably the best choice, if I were going to find a place to show there; I'll need to check out what they say on their web site.

Always learning...

Margaret asked about hiding her email address, so I had to do some research (that's something I've never worried about, figuring that it's a lost cause). Looks like people do use javascript to dynamically generate their email addresses, or use html encoding, but both seem to me just stop-gap measures. It would be pretty simple to look for the encoded '@' for example, or to look for 'javascript' and find the function that generates the '@', and then go from there. Yes, this would require a more sophisticated parser, but doable.

Several Portland Open Studios artists were having their opening receptions tonight, so I went in for First Thursday. But the show I enjoyed the most was the show at Rake, a painter (Noel Nelson) and a printmaker (Garret Price). And earlier in the afternoon, picked up the remaining pieces from the show in Hillsboro. I was doing fine until I had to drive out to Hillsboro in the heat. By the time I got home, I really needed a cup of coffee. And tomorrow, more driving in 100+ degree weather -- I'm headed over to Bend for just the day, and it's gonna be 104 in Bend!

Almost finished with Margaret's web site

Hey, even at a snails pace, we're starting to get pretty close. Added the paypal stuff, went through the last round of replacing dumb quotes and apostrophes with the smart ones. I haven't uploaded the whole thing yet because I forgot to ask her how she wants to handle shipping charges! Otherwise, we'd be done already.

Got ready to send out the Sense & Sensuality postcards to everyone who contributed eye shadows, and also local folks who might be able to make the show.

Spent the morning pulling out 5' tall weeds in the backyard. It's so bad you almost need a machete. I should've taken a before photo, but the worst is already dealt with...although you still can't exactly walk through from one end to the other.

Q2 quarterly report

OK, from April 1 through June 30, I put in 383.25 hrs working, that's either in the studio, doing admin stuff, working on a web site, teaching/taking classes, or PR related stuff. That works out to be about 29.5 hours a week (counting 13 weeks). Doesn't include snack breaks, phone interruptions, etc. etc. I can live with that.

Went grocery shopping early afternoon, and came back to find the refrigerator so stuffed that I had to clean that out to put in the new groceries. One thing led to another, found some stuff that really needs to be used up, so made some onion pancakes. All these distractions took up most of the afternoon, but now I have a pretty clean frig and some onion pancakes in the freezer.

There are 4 artist's having exhibits/shows in July, all with openings on this Thursday, so had a lot to write up for the Portland Open Studios blog this afternoon.

The movie tonight was La Vie En Rose (yes, Transformers was on the list, but it didn't get picked by the Random Selector). The actress playing Edith Piaf is impressive.

Oh, heartbreak!

Transformers, the movie I've been looking forward to for months, got trounced in this review in the NYT..."a movie of epically assaultive noise and nonsense." Wah!

On other fronts -- what better way to ease back into serious art making again than to meet another artist...for breakfast! Horatio just got back from a 6 months teaching gig in France and we met for a bagel breakfast this morning. He's getting much more focused on doing public art and in fact just won a pretty stiff competition to do a piece in a new building going up in Seattle. Congrats to Horatio! I also got some good pointers about writing grant applications.

Finally got off my butt and started working on helping Daniel Heyman finding an appropriate space to exhibit his Abu Ghraib work. He was invited to sit in on interviews with some Abu Ghraib prisoners. One trip to Jordan and a 2nd trip to Turkey. He made etchings and watercolors during the interviews, and later at home, produced a couple of artist's books and an installation. I first saw 1 etching at a Blackfish exhibit back in Jan/Feb, and got in touch with him. When we did the book arts show in March at Print Arts Northwest, he sent 2 books for the exhibit. Anyhow, I've been procrastinating in scouting out appropriate locations and contacts. Looks like the Portland Art Center deadline has just passed (drat), but we'll see if PNCA or Reed would be good/available/interested.

Who knew earwigs would be THIS popular?

Indeed, who knew! I've had people come here googling for 'earwigs' (ok), 'women squishing earwigs' (rather specific and kind of weird), and 'woman covered in earwigs' (truly yucky visuals). ??

And on another similarly weird topic, this Simon Shaheen CD is now going for $215.21 on Amazon. ??

Speaking of CD's, I finally remembered to pick up my ME music CD's that I loaned to Print Arts Northwest for their April exhibit of Middle Eastern prints. And since I was going in anyhow, spent a bit of time helping them paint the new print racks. (I had to get that in, since it was the only art related activity for the day).

And yet another weird entry:



This was Mike's dinner plate after dinner yesterday; I found it visually interesting. For some reason, I just liked the way the brown sauce wrapped around the elephant. (I take no responsibility for the placemat though.)

The movie last night (which continued on into this morning) was Ratatouille; I hardly need to add my 2 cents and say it was wonderful, but it was. But of course, I'm into rats, and rats in the kitchen don't bother me one bit.