Creative Outlet

Sometimes I just have to do something creative. It doesn't really have to be something in particular. Most of the time I just go out and do some sketching and that helps. Tonight it came out in pastels.

Last week I was in charge of buying something for the Tennessee Architect Political Action Committee(TAPAC) silent auction on behalf of the AIA East Tennessee Chapter. I wound up buying a portable travel easel and art supplies and paper. It was titled "spring into art". I really enjoyed picking out the items and really wanted to bid on the package but refrained due to the flaky economy. It did get my creative juices flowing and this weekend I signed up for a ceramics throwing class. It is for 6 weeks and I am really excited about it. My trainer isn't so excited since it is on Wednesdays which is one of his nights. I told him I would come in another day during the week to make sure I don't lose progress.

...I digress, back to the story. So anyway, I grabbed as many coupons as I could find for craft stores this weekend and headed to Joann's at lunch and bought some paper. I had the pastels already but realized tonight that I need new ones. The ones I am using are from my neighbor growing up. Her husband apparently dabbled in art as well as geology and when he passed away about 20 years ago, she passed his pastels and charcoals to me. I still have most of them. It may be more for sentimental reasons rather than anything else as to why I keep them instead of buying new ones. I really liked the Johnsons...again, digressing.

When I got home tonight I meant to do some cleaning and such but I pulled out the paper pad and pastels and went to work instead. It was very cathartic and I think I will continue to create some more. This one I am titling "welded". I am going to ask John what to draw next, I think. I am creating a little gallery space in the bedroom. Most of the space is taken with John's drawings but now I have one to show.

Jacene

Easter Rhinos and Hippos?

Ok, I didn't even make it to the round cookie cutters. John selected the hippo and rhino cookie cutters instead for our Easter cookie making extravaganza. First, yes we are odd and have hippo and rhino cutters (they are John's favorite animals). Second, yes even though we switched to animals we were still going to decorate them with pastels and Eastery things.

I was able to make and bake all of the cookies but was running out of time before my dinner guests were going to arrive and had the brilliant idea to make a little decorating event for dessert. I made about 2 dozen cookies and had them laid out on trays with sprinkles and M&Ms at the ready. I didn't make the icing beforehand because I wasn't sure how fast it would set up and the directions said to use immediately.

Dinner over. Icing made. Most of it I left white but tinted some with gray food coloring...yes, I have that too. I really like to bake. :) Anyway we all had fun decorating and eating the cookies. By the end of the evening there were only 5 cookies left. Most everyone ate the cookies as fast as they could after placing the last M&M. I was amazed at how much sugar we could all ingest at one time. Wild animal Easter cookies may not catch on for everyone but they may be making more visits in the future for me and John. Yum!

Jacene

The simple pleasures

Things have been a little stressful in all areas of my life of late but today I am enjoying a day of being normal. This afternoon I am making cookies, sugar cookies to be exact. John and I are going to decorate them like Easter eggs. We have colored sugars and pastel m&m's and all. I don't have an oval cookie cutter but we may have very round eggs since I do have a round cutters. The dough is chilling in the fridge right now.

The best thing about baking cookies is getting to eat cookie dough. Cookie dough and cake batter bowl scraping are my favorite "back to childhood" things. John likes cookie dough too but isn't as big into batter as me. He is also content to have the dough put in a little bowl while I prefer eating off the beater and out of the bowl. These are the simple things that I wouldn't trade for anything.

Jacene

What do I do?

"So Jacene, what is it that you do at MBI?"

This is a question that one client keeps asking me. I guess I haven't come up with a good enough answer to have him not question me anymore. I have started a list of what I do at work. It is an odd thing to sit down and try to figure out especially when you aren't mainly doing production work anymore. I of course don't have the list with me (I am at work where I am about to finish my time sheet, expense report, and approve my team's time sheets and expenses) and the list is at home. I would like to post some of the things I do here because I think some people might find it entertaining and others might actually learn what I do and be amazed... or at least slightly impressed. If nothing else, maybe I could print the posting out for the client that knows that I am working on his project but can't figure out what I am doing if I am not drawing. Ha, little does he know...

Jacene

The advantages and disadvantages to taking a 5 year old to a product show

Ok, so tonight John and I went out for an adventure. I had approached him this morning about coming with me to the Construction Specification Institute product show going on today/tonight at the Crowne Plaza hotel. He wasn't really interested in seeing materials used in buildings (what sort of architect is he going to be with that attitude?) but I sort of enticed him (bribed) by saying that there would probably be toys and such that they would be giving away and if he was good I would let him pick something out of the treat box. Ooh that got him going. He was so excited he had to check out the treat box before school to see what the options were.

So, we get there and he is on sensory overload and wants to talk to everyone. He knows there is a ticket that needs to be turned in but he thinks it is the drink ticket we got at the check in. Don't worry, I didn't drink and I didn't let him get a drink either. So after a while of milling around and saying hi to a few people he wants to leave but remembers the ticket. I explain to him that the ticket is the card we received that needs 6 different colored stickers on it from different booths before you can turn it in. Oh man, I lit the spark under him then. It was a mission!

I told him he could just go up and ask the people at the booth if they had a sticker of "whatever" color and he went right to it. He was more unabashedly bold than I could have ever been. After much searching for the elusive "light blue" and "yellow" stickers he was complete. I almost turned it in without filling in the contact information but remembered at the last minute. If we won something tonight it is all John's doing.

I didn't get to see as many products as I would have liked but I did get to be entertained by John which worked too. He did score a visor, a hat, a stuffed armadillo, a drink mug, some sonic magnetic rocks (which were cool enough that I asked for a set too) and some cookies and candy. And, on top of it all, a treat out of the treat box. All in all, he fared well. I don't think I would recommend to other people to take your small child if you actually want to learn something.

Jacene

Dancing machine...

It was great. After John and I made it home from the gym and ate dinner we continued to listen to They Might Be Giants "Here Come the 1, 2, 3's" and John started dancing. He asked me to dance with him and so we both danced and hopped around the room for several songs before the late bedtime became a very late bedtime. We both had fun and every song that came on next seemed to be his favorite and we had to keep going. I love having a 5 year old!

Jacene

Charit Creek Hike Lesson #1 - Work boots are not the same as hiking boots

I have made it back from the weekend hiking excursion. There was a big group of women that all came together from various contacts to hike to Charit Creek lodge this weekend. Donna Covert and Kathy Proctor (two wonderful women) were the ones to invite me on this adventure. I think the invite came in December sometime. We couldn't have asked for better weather. It was in the upper 60s and sunny. Beautiful!

Here is the map of the trail loop.

There were several ways to hike to the lodge. On the way to it on Saturday we chose the 4 mile hike. You pass by and over the twin arches which are natural rock formations in the shape of...you guessed it, arches. They are pretty spectacular and my photos don't even begin to do it justice. The texture and molten looking rock formations of it are just amazing. Everywhere we turned there was something beautiful.
Here was our little sub-group that hiked together. There were 3 or 4 sub-groups hiking in our big group.

At this point we were about 3/4 of a mile into the hike underneath one of the arches.
Here are some pictures of the arches themselves.















These are a couple of photos from the top of the arches. You can make out just a little of the top of one of the arch openings in the one on the right.


There are, of course, more pictures but I am not going to make the entry any longer than it already is. We are going to create a flickr account and post all of the photos there so when that is up and running then I will add a link. Until that time, these will have to suffice.

Ok back to the trip. We hiked for a while. Most of it was pretty easy and downhill. There were some hills and we did all get out of breath and a little sweaty but we made it. We trapsed through rocks, sand, mud, leaves, and whatnot to get there. It was great. I did have one lesson learned on the way and it is in the title of the post so you don't have to wonder. My feet started to hurt about half way through. Not like a blister really just like the shoes were ill fitting and my heel started moving too much and maybe my feet grew in the 15 years I have had my work boots. Yes, I wore work boots not hiking shoes. I don't hike regularly and so I have tennis shoes and work boots for casual shoes. Oh I have some keens with open sides and tevas which are just fancy flip flops so those wouldn't work either. If I go on another hike I think I am going to invest in some good shoes. My feet shouldn't grow any more (maybe the pregnancy feet growing thing has some validity) so I should be good to go for the next decade or so.

Anyway, we all make it to the camp site. There were a ton of women and three llamas and we had all brought food so we stuffed our faces before dinner.


The wine was flowing freely and the various traveling containers varried widely. Some had special bags for liquids, some carried it in water containers, others took the bags out of box wine and brought that, some brought plastic carafes and those enough brave/stupid enough brought the wine in the original glass bottle. My contribution to the party was a giant wedge of jarlsburg cheese, crackers and merlot that didn't get opened. Everything was great and I had two glasses of wine before dinner. Woo hoo. The most popular food item was Donna's rosemarry shortbread. It was scrumptious and addictive. I think we all probably ate 10 cookies each and yes, Donna made and brought that much. :)

After dinner I pooped out. It was only about 7pm but I was tired and not very social so I decided to go to sleep. I was aided by some tylenol pm and the wine. There were 3 cabins with double bunk beds. We had 3 sets of bunks in our cabin but only 9 people so those of us that slept on top got to sleep alone.



The wood stove got hot a couple of times in the night and I found myself sweating occassionally even without any cover. I did do the thing I was hoping I wouldn't, I woke up coughing at around midnight. That was also the time the last of the women went to bed and Kathy took pity on me and found me a shot of whiskey. I thanked her but opted for my narcotic cough medicine instead. I was good to go in about 20 minutes and fell back to soundless sleep until 6am. All told, i got about 10 hours of much needed sleep. Here is the sad thing, I still napped in the car on the way back home.

So we had breakfast and headed back out. It was about 11am before we hit the trail again, maybe later. We chose to hike the 2 mile trail back across the arches instead of the 4 mile trail. It may have been shorter but it elevation chages were greater and most of it was all up hill. The photo on left was from Saturday (stairs down) and the photo on the right is from Sunday (stairs up).















We had a snack break on top of the arches and had cheese, crackers and rosemary shortbread. Yum. It gave us all enough sustanance to make it the 3/4 mile back to the cars.

The ride home was long with a diversion through historic Rugby. The first thing I did when I got home was take a shower and the second thing was have lunch. This was all around 5pm today. It has been a fun but long day. I am greatful that such a varied group of women let me hang out with them for a while.