This was supposed to be my 2006 Holiday card but I just don't think it photographed well enough to make a good card. It's actually a very pretty painting, but the transparent layers look too flat, and the green came out too blue, and the glossy bits just make the painting look lumpy and dull.
My life is very compartmentalized. When I drive home every evening, my job disappears and I don't remember it until the next day when I'm driving in again. I have trouble understanding the most basic programming languages at home and I can never remember errands I meant to do when I'm at work. I pity the person who calls me at home to help fix something: my groggy, unhelpful "uh-huh"s must really make them want to scream.
This Monday was a particularly amusing example, when I started humming a song as I walked out to my car (All That Money Wants) only to find it in mid-play on my MP3 rotation from last Friday. It freaked me out for a second there (especially since I was synced up with it - it literally started right where I left off as I turned the key).
I started thinking that maybe my brain is like the MP3 player or my laptop, where half my brain goes into sleep mode, just waiting to wake up at the same spot. Like a perfect VM option, each boot sector is saved with its last-used session data. (And now you can tell I'm at work, what with the computer terminology).
This particular configuration in my head is usually pretty helpful, since it means that I am better than most people at leaving work behind and enjoying my time at home. But there is one catch: I can't paint much when I have a job. For some reason, painting breaks the partition. Days after I just can't work with computers AT ALL. I finished my last painting several months ago and I spent the next two weeks at work just staring at my screen pretending to work because I could not for the life of me figure out what I was supposed to be doing. I'm lucky I didn't get fired.
I don't think this is a right-brain/left-brain thing (I don't buy that crystal-rubbing voodoo bullshit). It's just that twisting my brain around for painting is a very specialized arrangement and it tends to throw everything else out-of-kilter. It's like when you learn two foreign languages and you try to switch between them. There is a period there where every time you reach for a word, you get it in the other language. Thinking in color and viscosity and texture is just not compatible with math and if-then logic.
I need a command-m option for the brain. But for now I just have to reboot the hard way.
Another coworker's family. I'm waiting for the others to queue up, LOL!
Another coworker's family (christmas card style). These are actually pretty fun to draw.
I got to carve pumpkins this year! Yay! The cat is my previous skinny cat pumpkin design, rendered beautifully using one of those $5 electric carving blades. What a great idea that was! And I roasted pumpkin seeds after with sage and black truffle olive oil. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
