August 2002 Archives

You know, having a head cold in August really sucks. The only thing that doesn't suck about it is that the weather got cool and rainy right at the same time as I got my cold. Which is actually kind of nice, because having a cold in hot, sunny weather is horrible. When it's cold at least you can lie on the couch with a blanket up to your chin watching TV. So it's kind of nice in a way that the weather chose the very day that I came down with a cold to turn dark and rainy and cool.

Although I am feeling kind of hot and sticky right now. I think I might be a little feverish, because earlier in the day I was FREEZING so I put on a sweatshirt and socks and a sweater over the sweatshirt. Which seems like a lot of clothing to be wearing in August. It is cool out, but not that cool. Just now I took off the sweater but I'm still kind of hot. So maybe if I had a fever it broke or something.

I got fan mail to my show on Monday! Well, maybe. The DJ after me is also named Sarah so we're not 100% sure which one of us he meant. The other Sarah was sick so I ended up doing about half her show, which makes me think it was probably me. But no way to know for sure. Anyway, he wanted to find out the names of some of the songs I (or the other Sarah) had played, so he checked the web site for online playlists, didn't find one because we're not that high-tech, and then wrote to the programming director to see if he could get in touch with me (or her) directly. How cool is that?

Haven't taken any more photos since the gardenia. I didn't feel up to it and besides, it's been dark and rainy every day. I did talk to my boss about getting roof access because our building has a nice view of downtown Chapel Hill. He said he didn't think it would be a problem but he wants to go up with me because there's no railing. Which is fine of course, but I might be up there for a while. Oh well, I guess he can go back down when he gets bored.

I got a couple of calls to my show this morning, both asking me to identify something I had played. Those are my favorite calls, I think, especially when I can tell they're writing it down. Because that means they enjoyed it enough to want to buy it, and you can make a case that promoting independant music is a primary purpose of college radio. So that always makes me feel good. (In case you're curious, one of them was asking about Lamb, and the other about Frank Black.)

On the way home I stopped at Wellspring to pick up lunch for Georg, who was home sick. Had a funny exchange in the parking lot with an older Japanese couple who were admiring my car. They seemed to really like the car, but spoke almost no English. So they communicated their enjoyment by pointing at me, pointing at the car, laughing and saying "Yes!" The man also spread out his arms and said "Happy! Happy!" Which really made my day.

When I got up close to them I saw that their car was parked next to mine and the hood was up. I tried to ask them if they needed help, but since (as I mentioned) they didn't speak English, it was a somewhat strange conversation:

me: (pointing to open hood) Are you having car trouble?

them: (nodding and smiling) Yes!

me: Do you need help? Do you need a jump?

them: (nodding and smiling) Yes!

At this point a Japanese man in coveralls walked up.

them: (smiling and pointing at the man in coveralls) Yes! Help!

me: He's helping you?

them: (nodding and smiling) Yes!

me: So you're OK?

them: (nodding and smiling) OK! Yes!

me: Bye!

them: (waving and smiling) Bye bye!

I'm really glad the guy in coveralls showed up, because I'm not sure I would have been able to help them on my own. It seemed pretty clear that they had no idea what I was saying to them. So I'm glad they already had help on the way.

But at the same time. I'm a little puzzled by the appearance of what seemed to be a Japanese auto mechanic on the scene. Where did he come from? I'm sure there are Spanish speaking mechanics and tow truck drivers around, but Japanese? Is there some kind of Japanese shadow economy lurking around Durham? Or maybe it was just a friend of theirs. And how did they manage to grocery shop without speaking English? It's none of my business really, but still it was a strange and fascinating encounter.

After a dry spell, deck orders from my website have started to pick up again. Which is nice! I had started to think that pretty much everyone who wanted one had already ordered it. Luckily, I had already broken even on the wholesale decks before the orders dried up. But still I'm glad to be selling a few again.

In other news, my tripod arrived! I got it from Ebay. I had done a lot of research and had finally managed to find one for less than $100 that professionals spoke well of.

Not that I'm all hung up on having professional accessories. I've found in my product research that professional photographers can be a little, how can I put it, snotty about their equipment. Some of them have an attitude that decent photography is impossible without thousands of dolalrs of equipment. I'm sure professionals do find that expensive equipment makes their job easier. That's true of all professions. But that's not what I need at all. All I want is a decent camera and tripod, and I've got that now, so I can start practicing and learning.

The tripod arrived on Saturday and the first thing I did was take photos of my dogs. The flash scares them so I experimented with not using a flash. With a 1 second exposure I got this decent shot of Lina lying down. Amazing that she managed to hold perfectly still for a full second, even her eyes didn't move. But then again, she's a really lazy dog so I shouldn't be surprised.

By accident I got this silly shot of Lina's head all blurred. Again it was a 1 second exposure, which was just enough time for her to move her head from side to side.

We've got a potted gardenia by the back door, and last night a single blossom opened up. So I decided to try my hand at macro photography (extreme close-ups). Following the advice of the book I've been reading, I took about a hundred shots, each time slightly adjusting the camera and writing down the settings for each. As you might imagine, I ended up with about a hundred really awful photos of that flower. But to my surprise a couple turned out pretty well:

a decent close-up of a gardenia

another okay shot of the gardenia

I meant to take a picture of the tripod but I forgot. It's a Velbon Maxi 343E in case you're interested. I got a pretty good deal on Ebay, but the package didn't include any registration or warranty information. The Ebay page said the warranty was included, so I wrote to them today about it.

Music recommendation for the day: Work 1989-2002 by Orbital. All I can say is, wow.

The Hermit from VTW is now appearing on a DJ Shadow album cover!

It's a CD single actually, for "You Can't Go Home Again" and a couple of other tracks from his new CD, Private Press. There's a collage on the front including several steel engravings, one of which is the Hermit from VTW.

Georg discovered it on the new releases shelf at the radio station. I took my camera so I could take a picture of it for the site, but unfortunately the music staff had stickered right over the image. The nerve! Actually they have to put the sticker somewhere, and the art is frankly unremarkable, except of course for having my Hermit in it. So I don't blame them for stickering over it.

So anyway, I couldn't get a photo of the actual CD cover, so I downloaded the picture from Amazon instead. It's pretty cool whenever I see one of the images from VTW show up someplace else. Especially something like a DJ Shadow album. Not that Shadow himself did the artwork for the cover, but still.

Speaking of which, Private Press was on the XDU playlist a couple of months ago and it's really good. I highly recommend it if you like that sort of thing.

We rented Ghost World last night. Now that I've finally seen it, I can hardly believe I waited so long. The realism of the two girls was amazing. They reminded me a lot of myself, actually. I spent a couple of aimless summers during college just like that. Of course I wasn't as hip, as well-dressed, as pretty, or as constantly, archly funny as they were (then again I didn't have a screenwriter putting words in my mouth or a production designer decorating my room and so forth). But the cynicism, the ironic distance from everything, the lack of purpose, flailing around trying to find an identity, having fun all the time but also wondering what was the point of it all, that rang so true. It's so rare to see a movie in which the characters sound like real people.

We got the application for the Durham christmas parade. Those losers! There's a $100 application fee for everyone except nonprofit organizations who only walk (i.e. no cars or floats). And every entry has to illustrate the parade theme, which is some lame platitude like "united together under the stars" or something, I forget. What do they think this is, the Macy's parade? It's Durham, for crying out loud. The christmas parade in a sleepy tobacco town. Let's try not to put on airs, shall we?

Georg found VRT for sale at a Korean website! There's even a customer review! I think they liked it, there was a "thumbs-up" icon and a lot of exclamation points. But I ran the page through babelfish and the review was completely incomprehensible. Here's what it said:

"With this other in domestic income will be thick did not know even in dream,!

"It drew with the black white clothe pen line, tus one picture thing with the one after another at this actual object transition of the field same actual object to be same with me letting the anger the work, is direct report, tus to call one misunderstanding and get up and and be sour phul, when doing, the soft impression it is not like that but the Victoria tearoom waitress the mountain flag which it will carry ppum made me joyfully with double.

"That the possibility of learning frankly easily it is under thinking position it is not but to cuddle the joy of major general call leyk it will sprout with this other which gives the impression which moves a British history neatly with to other to minutes, enough, lu the well lin the company also as one great work thinks.

"The picture it is neat and tidy too much.. In addition the positive.. With Victoria tearoom waitress or other inside.. The pocket it listens to with high-class other, iss answer ni all! It is pretty magnificently,! Also the joy which one has the pocket more with high-class other tries to be rancid!

"mam It holds,!

"Special recommendation!"

Like I said, they seemed to like the deck but it's really hard to tell what they actually said. The only detail I could make out was that the phrase "Victoria Regina Tarot" seems to have been translated as "Victoria tearoom waitress." In the ordering information higher up on the page it was translated that way too.

I think that's what I'm going to call the deck from now on. "Victoria Tearoom Waitress" or VTW for short. I like it!

The programmers in my office are playing Halo in the conference room. They brought in an Xbox and set it up on the projector and invited their programmer friends over to all play together. Whee, I feel like I'm working in a pre-bust dot com or something!

Actually they're not playing yet, they're trying to configure everything, figure out who gets which quadrant of the screen, so on and so forth. They set it up for me to play with them but I don't have the time today. Besides, I'm kind of afraid of this game being as good as they say it is. I really, really don't need another video game addiction. Last year I played Diablo II until I had to quit because of lingering pain in my wrist. I could have been using that time so much more productively! I don't regret it though. That was a really fun game.

[Later] Okay, now they're playing. I sat in the conference room and watched for a few minutes. Couldn't stay for long though. It reminded me too much of being in high school and watching boys play video games. Ugh! Anything that reminds me of being a teenager must be stopped immediately.

In retrospect, I wish we had spent more time talking with other artists after the parade. There were a lot of people there that I wanted to meet. But at the time, all I could think about was the heat, the noise, the crowds, etc. I'm not really into crowds under the best of circumstances, and being tired and hot makes me cranky. So by that point, I was probably no fun at all to be around.

OK, Artscape. When I left off, I was just saying how nice it was to double back and drive past the other cars. It gave us a chance to check each other out, and gave us a little taste of what the parade must look like to spectators. After that was time to park the cars. And that, I have to say, was the only part of the event that seemed poorly (or at least inconsiderately) planned to me.

Finally I find a free moment to write up the end of Artscape! But first I want to mention that I got my packet yesterday from Charlotte Shout. It's very exciting! The packet came FedEx, wow so official. Turns out that it's not just an art car parade. It's a big Labor Day parade with floats, marching bands, all that stuff, and art cars. I hope all the art cars drive together! I'm sure we will. It wouldn't make any sense for them to spread us around. We'll have more impact as a group.

I'm still listening to my happy fun CD in my car. Although, I think it says something about me that a "cheerful" CD includes Nick Drake. But that's part of the mellow set in the middle; the CD is still overall very cheerful. Besides, I don't think Nick Drake's music is depressing. Heartfelt and melancholy, but not depressing. Maybe that's because I can't make out most of his lyrics.

I know that "cute kid" stories can be annoying, but I overheard something hilarious yesterday. I was at the post office dropping off some letters before the last pickup. This is the kind of post office where the clerks are all inside this room with a big glass wall, and all the automated stuff (like stamp machines and mailboxes and the mail drop) are outside that room.

Anyway there was a long line inside and this little boy was standing by the mail drop with his face pressed up against the glass, reading the signs inside. I guess he was keeping himself busy while his parent waited in line. He was spelling out the words on the signs: "W - I - N - D - O - W - H - O - U - R - S. Window Horse! 8:30 to 5:00!!"

He sounded so excited. Like he thought there was a horse there every day from 8:30 to 5! He looked all around, I guess trying to see the window horse. It was all I could do to keep from laughing until I got outside.

Today's lesson is: Don't get a store credit card. Ever.

See, this past spring I bought some clothes. I don't buy clothes often; I tend to go clothes shopping two or three times a year and get everything I need at once. So my clothing bills are infrequent but large. When I paid, the clerk told me that I could get 15% off if I opened a store credit card and used it that day. Why not, I thought. I'll use the card for this one purchase, pay it off and cancel the card.

Unfortunately but perhaps predictably, in all the hubbub I immediately forgot about this transaction. When the bill arrived a few weeks later, Georg assumed it was an ad (I am inundated with them) and tossed it aside. Some time in July we started getting odd phone calls. Someone was calling at the same time every night -- right around dinner time -- but never leaving a message. After a few nights of this I answered the phone and got a friendly fellow from the store, wanting to know if there was anything we could do to resolve the matter of this outstanding bill?

At this point I had no memory of opening a credit account with his store. I had had a card several years ago but I had closed it, and as far as I remembered that was the end of it. So my attitude with him was basically "what are you talking about? I don't even have a card with your store and you're saying I owe you money?" I got the phone number of customer service, who he said could tell me where the purchase was made. And I don't want to mess up my credit rating so I assured him that I would pay the bill immediately if it was a legitimate charge. He told me that nothing had been recorded against my credit rating and he would put a note on my account. He also said he'd have another copy of the bill sent to me.

As soon as I got off the phone I told Georg about it, full of righteous indignation. At this point I was concerned that I had been the victim of credit card fraud so I was pretty ticked off as you can imagine. Georg got a sheepish look, rummaged around in a pile of old mail and found the bill. Oops!

I sat down that minute and wrote them a check. I figured that would be the end of it, until I got another call five days later. Different person, but same cheerful tone, just calling about your outstanding bill, we still haven't received payment, wondering how we can resolve this?

I told her that someone had called me the week before and that I had sent a check already. She informed me that regardless of what the first guy had told me, he had not put a note on my account, there was no record of his having talked to me, they hadn't received my payment, they were about to turn my name into the credit bureau and there was no way to prevent it except my going down to the store immediately and making a payment in person.

This is the one part of this sorry chain of events where I screwed up. I really should have gone down to the store that day and made a payment. I had the money; I just didn't have the time. It was only a couple of days before Artscape, I was frantically working on my car (in fact I had been in the middle of that when she called), I simply didn't have time to drop everything and go to the mall. Besides, I had already sent them the full payment. I thought they'd probably get it the next day.

So I let it go. Which was, of course, a mistake. I had just been thinking that I ought to call them and make sure they had gotten that payment, when we started getting weird phone calls again. Odd times of day, like dinner time or nine o'clock Saturday morning, but no message. This morning I answered the phone but the stupid autodialer hung up on me. This afternoon Georg picked up and actually got someone.

She, like her predecessors, was all friendly concern and really wanted to know what could be done to resolve this outstanding bill. I told her that I had written a check a month ago, but they had never received it. She told me that nothing had been done to my credit rating yet, but that it was going to be reported in the next day or two so I needed to make a payment immediately. Then she offered to do an electronic payment over the phone.

??? Excuse me? If they can take my payment over the phone, why didn't the first guy do that on July 18th? Why did the second woman tell me to go in person to the stupid store, if she could have taken my stupid electronic check over the stupid phone?

I asked her this question (in a much nicer tone of voice of course). She didn't have an answer but at least she apologized. You know, an apology makes such a big difference. Even though I know it wasn't her fault personally, her willingness to apologize for the incompetence of her coworkers made things go so much easier.

In any case, the payment was finally made. I hope. I've got to remember to call them back tomorrow and make sure my account is settled. While I'm at it, I might also want to get a copy of my credit rating and see if they really did turn me in or not.

On top of everything else, I had to pay a late fee that just about equalled the 15% I had saved by using the darned card. Well, at least I didn't end up paying more.

Did you ever have one of those days where you just feel great, for no particular reason? Where catching a stoplight feels like a gift from the traffic fairies? And by golly, even the fruit cup at lunch is like the best damned fruit cup ever? That's the kind of day I'm having today.

First thing this morning I had to go to a client meeting which I'd been dreading, because it's a big project and they're somewhat exacting, besides which I really like them and I want to do a good job for them. And the project is huge but on a very tight deadline, so everything is moving really fast. And to be honest I wasn't even exactly sure what this meeting is about. So I didn't feel very well prepared but all I could do was show up with my layouts, hoping that what I thought I was supposed to have done is also what they thought I was going to be doing.

As it turned out, the meeting was great. They're great, the layouts are great, they love me and we made a lot of progress. The primary client (the communications director) actually told me that she likes one particular page on their existing site so much, sometimes she loads it up for no reason, just to look at it! That made me literally blush. Then when the meeting was just starting to drag, as big production meetings often do, everyone realized it at the same time and declared the meeting over! I walked out feeling like it was the best meeting ever.

On the drive back I rolled down the windows and sang along with the radio, really loud. Nobody can hear you on the highway, so who cares? We've had a break in the heat but it's still sunny, so the weather has been just beautiful the past few days. Perfect for driving with the windows down. Honestly I think my good mood is largely due to this CD I just made. It's all kind of cheerful, peppy rock. Which is normally not what I listen to -- I'm much more into electronic music -- but anything that inspires a mood this good is worth repeated listens!

Last night I discovered that I had completely screwed up my pajama pants. I sewed it together the wrong way. I'm going to have to rip out every seam and do it all over. Argh! I guess my sewing was more rusty than I thought. So I put it away and made a CD for a friend instead.

This morning I was listening to the CD on my computer, just making sure there weren't any major goofs before I sent it off. Last time I made this person a CD, after sending it I discovered one song was screwed up & had almost a minute of dead air at the end. Dang!

Anyway I was listening to the CD, and just on a whim I pressed the "Radio Tuner" button in the iTunes window. I'd noticed it before but had never bothered to press it. Well it's amazing! It's a directory of web radio stations, at least a hundred stations and probably more.

I never got into web radio because I thought you needed to listen to them with Realplayer. Which, not to put too fine a point on it, sucks. It used to crash my computer all the time. And they don't even make a Realplayer for system X, so I couldn't use it if I wanted to. (Nice, huh? The most common software for web streaming and they don't support any Mac made in the last two years.)

But this iTunes interface is great! Why have I been working in silence for the past two years when I could have been listening to cool music? Right now I'm listening to a station called "FlareSound JazzyBeats." The description says "downtempo, nujazz, futurelounge and funk." Just a minute ago they played something from the Victor Duplaix DJ Kicks album. I love that album. This is amazing!

We had a sales tax holiday over the weekend. No sales tax on certain products for three days. It was geared towards "back to school" so the tax-free categories were clothes (up to $100 per item), school supplies and computer equipment (up to $3,500 per item). I'm surprised they would do this when the state government is so desparately broke, but I guess the idea was to encourage retail business. I guess it worked because stores were really busy over the weekend. I heard on the radio this morning that business was close to pre-Christmas levels.

Georg and I did our parts, and went clothes shopping. Unfortunately I had had to replace our router just a few days ago. It would have been nice to pay no sales tax on the router, but a few dollars wasn't worth going a week without net access.

While I was clothes shopping I found myself admiring a pair of comfy summer pajamas. It was a knit top with loose pants made of lightweight shirt fabric. I could really use lightweight pajamas -- the ones I've got are all heavy knits which feel awful in this weather -- but the price tag was $50! I'm sorry, but I am not paying fifty bucks for a t-shirt and drawstring pants, sales tax holiday or no sales tax holiday.

I haven't sewed in years although I used to be quite handy with a needle and thread. Well, I'm tired of wistfully thinking "I could make those, except that I don't sew anymore." So I went to Jo Ann's and bought fabric and a pajama pattern. These drawstring pants are so easy you practically don't need a pattern, and I figure I've already got plenty of t-shirts.

I have this problem in the fabric store: I get so wrapped up in the moment that I tend to forget what I'm there for. I went in fully intending to buy lightweight cotton for my pajamas, and somehow I ended up with this thick waffle-textured cotton instead. It was the softest cotton in the store and will make wonderful pajamas, but it's not exactly summer weight. It's more like thermal underwear actually. So I went back and found some nice light striped cotton. The fabric store was having a sale (by now I should realize that fabric stores are always having a sale on something) so I'll end up with two new pairs of pajamas for about $15.

Of course, that only works if I actually sew them. The reason I put away the sewing machine before was, well, because I had stopped sewing. And then I stopped pretending I was going to start again. Meanwhile my fabric trunk got so full of great fabrics that I was going to use real soon now that it overflowed.

But this time it's going to be different. I mean it! I hauled out the machine, cleaned the dust off it and set it up on the dining room table. (unfortunately, my sewing table has long since been given to the stereo.) Cut the fabric while we were watching a movie on Sunday, and started sewing last night.

It felt really good. I had forgotten that I didn't sew just to save money or to have better fitting clothes, but because I enjoyed it. It's genuinely fun to take a sheet of cloth and slowly turn it into something three dimensional. Maybe making these pajamas (which are so darned easy, even I can finish them) will encourage me to start sewing again for real. That would be nice.

I just got my traffic reports for the web site. I have to say, it really ticks me off (so much that when I first wrote this sentence, instead of "ticks" I used a word that would get me blocked by cybernanny type software) when people steal bandwidth by copying graphics of my deck to use as clip art on their web page or bulletin board post.

I have no problem with people using images from the deck to illustrate a review or article about Tarot. Why would I? The exposure is good for me. In fact that's why I don't deface the card images on my site with a copyright notice, because I want to make it easier for people to use my images if they are writing about my deck.

What bothers me is people who use my art as clip art that has nothing to do with my deck or with Tarot, without linking to me or even identifying the deck. Which means I get no exposure, and the value of allowing people to copy graphics from my site is completely lost.

What's worse is when they link directly to the graphic instead of copying it to their own server. So that even though the graphic appears on their page, it's actually loading off my server. Which means that in essence, they are stealing from me every time someone views their page. It's not an issue for me because I get free hosting with my job, but if I ever have to move my site it will become an issue. I've heard of sites getting shut down because so many people stole bandwidth in this manner, the site owner could no longer afford the hosting costs.

What is wrong with these people? Can they not tell the difference between an artist's self-promotional site and a free clip art gallery?

The bandwidth stealers bother me a lot more than the hate mail writers. I get a fair amount of hate mail because of the fundamentalism quiz, which I posted after Falwell and Robertson made their infamous comments about the World Trade Center attacks being our well-deserved punishment from God. To be honest, the hate mail doesn't bother me at all. They're all so silly and unoriginal. I mean, how many times can one read gleeful predictions about one's eternal damnation before they start to sound monotonous? There's also something ironic about a lengthy rant which tells me I must have too much time on my hands. Me? I'm not the one who spent hours composing a rant against some dumb quiz that was topical ten months ago.

Or the people who tell me that I must hate freedom, because if I truly valued the American freedom of self-expression then I wouldn't exercise it. And since I criticize Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell in public, I must be unable to take a stand on anything. But actually, my quiz is a thinly veiled defense of Osama Bin Laden so I must be in favor of terrorism. I kid you not, these are paraphrases from actual letters. Some or all of the above statements sometimes show up in the same letter. This is the logic of these people. What can you do but laugh?

Yesterday I got one from someone who wanted to let me know that it's stupid of me to call my site "funny strange" because it is not funny. Now think about it. The site is called "funny strange not funny ha ha." Which would tend to suggest that I am aware it is not funny ha ha. But this person, who clearly cannot read, thinks I'm the one who's stupid. Now that's funny!

OK, thank you for letting me get that off my chest. In other news, yesterday we got a nice big packet of reviews from Llewellyn. Most of them I had already seen because our publicist is really good about telling me about reviews as she learns of them. But there were a few I hadn't seen already. That was really nice!

I gave Georg a Swatch for his birthday. It has pictures of dinoaur bones on the band, which allegedly glow in the dark though we haven't tried it out yet. I thought he would more enjoy a "cute" Swatch than one of the sporty ones with eighteen different chrono functions and so forth. I was impressed with the variety of Swatches available. There are 350 for sale on their website! Later I found a site called Squiggly.com with much better prices. They even sell refurbished Swatches for under $20! Unfortunately they are in the Netherlands so fast shipping to the US is impossible.

It came in this insanely cool packaging. The watch arrived inside a plastic dinosaur. You pull the dinosaur's tail to open its mouth, revealing the watch on its tongue. I had no idea it would come like that! I thought it would just be in a box. So I guess the dinosaur was like a bonus gift.

It was so funny when Georg opened the package. He was looking at it with total confusion, like he was thinking "um, you got me a plastic dinosaur for my birthday? okay, now tell me the rest?" I thought about pretending the dinosaur was his present, but that would be mean. I told him to pull on the tail right away, so he wasn't kept in suspense.

The photos of the watch came out really well I think. This new camera is great at close-ups! I wasn't even using the "manual mode," these were the automatic settings. I don't have a tripod so I improvised by setting the camera on a pillar candle. I read that they are now selling a "ring light" that attaches to the lens for macro photography. It's supposed to make lighting extreme close ups much easier. I want one!

If anyone out there has been checking this page and wondering where in the heck I've been, I'm here. I haven't run off to Mexico or joined the bleeding choir invisible. I've let things get away from me for the past few weeks but I'm back, I'm on top of things now (knock on wood) and everything should be back to it's normal state of craziness.

I do want to apologize to everyone who ordered decks from me in the past few weeks. There is no excuse for not sending orders out right away but what can I say, I let things get away from me. Today I sent all the outstanding orders. If you ordered a deck from me and you haven't received it by Tuesday, please write and let me know.

Okay, well that's all for now. If you want to know what I have been up to, check the art car diary where I wrote up our trip to Baltimore last weekend for the Artscape art festival.

Also, please wish Georg a happy birthday today!