Life in the arts

In my never-ending quest to make it appear that I have an interesting life, when in fact I mostly spend my time going for a walk, going to the gym, watching time disappear through my laptop, and eating at the same two sandwich shops, today will be a catalog of my artistic endeavors for the week.  Paltry though they are.

Sunday Lynda and I went to the Gem Faire and as usual, I got carried away.  I have possibly the most well beaded closet in the world, since mostly I buy stuff and then never make anything.  But I have fun buying.  Who wouldn't love this?

I did make a couple of necklaces after I came home, and got a couple of shoes for Babes, but mostly all the bead stuff is still sitting on the card table, where I have a working space of approximately 36 square inches (for those of you who don't do higher math like I do, that's a space 6" by 6").

My only non art event for the week was the fun trip we made to the factory stores at Vacaville to go to the prestigious Fresh Choice restaurant.  Well, okay, so the place isn't prestigious, but what's better than that is that it's a get together with my remaining three best friends from high school, and we meet there because it's halfway between our various homes.  And they'll let us sit there all afternoon.  And while we're sitting there, we can keep going back to the buffet table, so that lunch goes on for 3 hours, and seems to involve multiple desserts.  We have a great time, because when you get older, it's really nice to have someone that connects you back to your youth, especially if, like me, you don't have any living relatives.  This time we shared baby pictures, which were all new to us, because we mostly met in 7th grade. 

But back to the high-flying art.  Thursday is Hot Lunch in the park.  This is a free concert at lunchtime, acoss the street from Hot Italian.  Hot Italian is a relatively new restaurant in midtown with a rather limited menu -- no spaghetti at this place -- but using quality and fresh ingredients.  They serve most of their dishes as either salads, pizzas or panini.  Hmmm, I seem to be confusing food with art.  I suppose they are both rather intertwined, the same way functionality and design are on Mac products. 

But back to the high-flying art.  Thursday is Hot Lunch in the park.  This is a free concert at lunchtime, acoss the street from Hot Italian.  Hot Italian is a relatively new restaurant in midtown with a rather limited menu -- no spaghetti at this place -- but using quality and fresh ingredients.  They serve most of their dishes as either salads, pizzas or panini.  Again, I digress.  This Thursday's  group featured Gillian Underwood, who I managed not to get a picture of, but here's the  rest of the band and the crowd. 
Anyway, it was fun, relaxing and good music.  And we had a nice Hot Italian box lunch and it was free!

I've been suffering a little bit of cat withdrawal since we came back from Martha's.  Her two cats are so nice, and Julia, in particular is demanding but funny and adorable.  As we were walking over to Hot Lunch in the Park, we met this cat with a remarkably similar look and personality to Julia -- came right up to us on the street and demanded to be petted.  I thought I hadn't seen any cats here in California with Julia's particular fur type, grey striped with an undercurrent of red, but this cat had the same fur, and relatively similar markings.  Not to mention a very similar personality. 

And my final foray into the arts today was to participate in the Run for the Arts, an annual event to raise money for the arts.  About 1200 people signed up, though the highest number I saw on a jersey was 1012, but lots of people only sign up to donate.  I managed to finish the grueling 5K in 52 minutes, coming in in 840th place.  Some of these are runs and some are walks -- this was advertised as both, but clearly there were a lot of runners.  I was definitely a walker.  And in my defense, I will say that I stopped at a garage sale along the way.  There were some 15-year-old ballet dancers in front of me wearing tutus and they were just too cute for words.  Every time they got to a mile marker they would do cute ballerina stuff around it, or they would walk along and then do a few jetes eleves so it was fun just being around them.  I had planned to walk with Gaeann from CALS, but I couldn't find her when I got there.  They also had lots of booths of various arts organizations, some giving away tickets to their upcoming productions, some just advertising, or the fun one, a booth where they let you play handchimes.

Since my head was completely in the clouds from all my high artistic experiences, I did a really dumb thing.  I let Mike borrow my car and he didn't put the cover on it, so I had to wash it.  Hate, hate, hate that job.  Decided I'd also wash the cover.  It can only be washed with the hose, and then you have to hang it up to dry.  Normally I do this with two ladders, since I don't have a solar laundry drying device.  However the cover is getting old and is rapidly approaching equal parts duct tape and fabric, and anyway I was too lazy to get out the ladders, and it was pretty hot, so I thought I'd just rinse it off and let it dry on a sunny spot on the grass.  So I put it on the only sunny spot on the grass and hosed it off.  Which, of course, made the grass underneath wet, and therefore no longer a good place to dry the cover.  DUH.  So then I had to take it across the street, where I was worried someone would come by and steal it.  Then I was able to use the matrimonial air motion device which got it dried a little faster.  At least I'm done with those two jobs for six months.