Monday Again Already?

I have little to show for the past week -- it was too cold to go exploring on long walks, or to go look for birds.  The Hounds were lucky if they got a quick hike around the block.

As for art, I had every intention of doing some sketching and painting, really I did.  And although I did do some quick demo drawings of gardens and plants for the friend who comes over for art lessons, they were nothing to write home about (or take photos of!). 

What I did do was buy art supplies:

New watercolor palette, some colored pencils, a few new brushes, and new paper.  The paper is hot press watercolor paper, which is very smooth, as opposed to the cold press paper that I normally use.  Cold press paper is a bit rougher and is great for watercolor mixing, but not as good for pen work.  Since I really enjoy the pen work more than the painting, I wanted to give it a try. 

I even got a bunch of new pens:

Look at all these different nib sizes!  Whee!

But did I actually get around to using them this past week?  Well, that would be no.  I spread them all out on the dining table and stared at them a lot.  Does that count?  I even drew lines with each of the pens to see how thin or thick each one was -- surely that counts, right?  And I arranged watercolors in the new palette -- I know that counts for something.  I'm just not sure what.

Anyway, I fully intend to use them someday soon.  Any time now.  Maybe tomorrow.  Or Wednesday.  Or a bit later in the week.  If I feel like it. 

In the meantime, I have been wasting my time ... er, being mildly creative by working on a needlepoint project.  I bought this set of four lighthouse needlepoint kits, one for each season.  They're on plastic canvas so you don't have to frame them, just hang them right on the wall.  Here are Winter, Autumn, and Summer:

And here is Spring, which I started first in anticipation of real Spring, which can't come soon enough.

That's kind of creative, right?  Even though I'm simply following the chart?  Well, at least I'm making an effort of some sort. 

Oh, and I'm also continuing my home decor efforts -- I'm sure that requires at least a little creative thinking.  Recently I found this lovely plant stand at an antique mall:

At least, I'm assuming it's a plant stand, because that's what I put on it.  Sort of.  You see, while real, live house plants are quite nice to have around, I don't want them around, since my plan is to spend two months or more per year up north visiting friends in the Summer, and any real, live house plants would suffer accordingly.

So I got this instead:

It's made of silk.  Imagine that.  No way I can kill it through overwatering or from neglect, and it won't attract those tiny flying insects that real, live houseplants always seem to attract.  The place I bought it had both real, live plants and lots of faux ones, and I couldn't tell the difference most of the time.  There may be more of these things in my home's future.

So that was my week:  not taking long walks, not sketching, and buying stuff I don't really need.  Such is the lively life of the retiree.

And of course, I spent a lot of time admiring dachshunds.

There is a sunny patch that appears on the living room carpet in the afternoons.  Pippin adores it.

I always, say, when you have nothing to write about, always end with cute dachshund pics!

A Florist Shop and a Fat Dachshund

Not much happened last week, other than a sketch outing and a vet outing.  Life in the Atomic City is kind of on the quiet side, which is precisely how we like it.

The sketch group met at a florist shop, a fine place with lots of stuff to draw, including fake plants that looked real to me.  I was drawn to the cactus display, though not to some of the other things around it, so I took a little artistic license and cut some things out and moved other stuff closer together.  The rules for Urban Sketching are, after all, only guidelines.

I'm quite pleased with the results.  I also tried a little framing device, which is a little wonky here and there but hey, it's freehand, so you get what you get.  We get 1-1/2 hours to draw, and I spent 30 minutes on composition and an underlying rough pencil sketch, 30 minutes on pen work, and the last 30 minutes on watercolor plus a few white pen highlights.  I finished at precisely 11:30.  Whew!

Then we shared our work and took the group photo:

The veterinary outing was for Pippin's annual check-up and vaccinations.  The new vet determined that little Pip, as I suspected, was overweight.  He should weigh 15lbs, and he currently weighs 16.7.  This means cutting back on his food, and he was NOT pleased at the news:

Here he is back at home, showing me his svelte figure, and explaining that the scale lies:

And here he is begging for just one more treat, pretty puh-leeze:

And here he is after I denied him:

Then he decided that he didn't need to suffer alone, so he pointed out that Truman looked overweight, too, and should thus join him in his new horrible diet plan.

And now Truman is not pleased, either.  Darn that Pippin!

Well, in fact, Truman has his check-up this Thursday, so we shall find out then!

A little art and a lot of reading

Last week I managed to join the local Urban Sketchers group, which I'd missed for a few weeks, on an outing to a sporting goods store.  The first thing that caught my attention was a stack of colorful kayaks:

That sketch took about twenty minutes, so I wandered around searching for more subject matter.  I had no idea one of the other sketchers was taking candid photos.  Here I am, looking for something fun to draw...which would have been obvious had the person taking the candid photo just shouted out, "Hey, turn around and look up!"

Eventually, even without any help, I did turn around and look up.  The place was littered with hunting trophies, which some folks may find disturbing, while I just thought of it as a more commercial version of a natural history museum exhibit, and went to work.

It was a fun outing and I enjoyed hanging with the group again -- hope to do it more regularly this year.  (I'm holding two sketches here -- my kayaks, and the sketch done by the person taking our picture.)

Okay, on to a whole lot of reading.  As some of you know, I enjoy having a reading plan.  Last year I tried to read one nonfiction book about each of the 50 U.S. states, and I failed miserably.  I got through Indiana, and it was a struggle.  The books I chose, despite a lot of research and reviews, just weren't that spellbinding.  Sigh.

I also tried a reading "challenge", which various people and groups come up with every year, where they list categories, and you must read a book from each one -- categories such as "Native American author", "horror fiction", "set in your home town", and "recommended by a librarian."   I did succeed in completing one of those last year, only because it had just ten books and the categories were super easy.

This year I decided to set up my own challenge, and a harder one, because I always like to have at least one pointless project to hand (one of these days I'll tell you about my license plate search....).

Since I love nonfiction and didn't read enough of it last year, I decided upon what I call the Dewey Decimal Reading Plan.  Of course you all know the Dewey Decimal system by heart, right?  Melvil Dewey took it into his head one day to invent a classification system for keeping library books in their proper places, and I loved it so much as a child that my personal childhood library was not only shelved according to it, it had handmade tags that I affixed to the spines after carefully researching the proper number to assign.

Yes, clearly I should have become a librarian, and in fact, I worked in the school library as a kid, and had two library jobs as an adult -- in an insurance company's legal department, where I took care of the law library, and at the university department where I was the librarian for a small department collection of books and periodicals until it was de-accessioned.  And now that I'm retired, I get to volunteer at the local library's used book sale room. Yay.

As I was saying some time back, I heart the Dewey Decimal system.  So I found a handy list of all the categories (see:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dewey_Decimal_classes) and I chose 40+ of them which I felt might contain at least one book I'd enjoy reading.  And then I went to my library's shelves and had a look.

The first one I found was category 001: Knowledge

I read it, and it was okay, though a bit silly at times and it certainly didn't cover everything.  (I once tried to read The World Book Encyclopedia, but only got through volume B.  I did, however, succeed in reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which isn't nearly as long.)

The next book I checked out was from 002: The Book.  It may seem peculiar to read books about books but it's one of my favorite subjects, and this particular example offers a decent survey and comes with lots of pretty pictures.

And the third book I checked out came from category 027:  General Libraries, another topic that never gets old.

I'll admit these early categories are easy, but I have set up some challenges later on, such as 201: Religious Mythology, 320: Political Science (ugh), and 330: Economics (which I actually read a book on last year before coming up with this idea, but that doesn't count, dagnabbit).

Anyway, that's my 2019 reading plan, and I hope it goes better than last year's!

National See An American Kestrel Day

Did you know that January 5 was National Bird Day?  You didn't?  What kind of birding slacker are you???!?

Well, truth to tell, I didn't know it, either, until someone pointed it out on an online birding group.  Of course, this meant I had to go outside and see a bird.  Maybe even more than one.  But FIRST, I had to check in with the Hounds on this whole "National Whatever Floats Your Boat Day" business that has gotten out of control.  Because naturally, they wanted to know if there was a National Dachshund Day.

After all, there is a National Chocolate Covered Raisins Day (March 24), a Lost Sock Memorial Day (May 9), and an International Sloth Day (October 20).  So I looked it up, and sure enough, JULY 23 (mark your calendar) is National Hot Dog Day -- and they don't mean the bun-with-mustard kind.  This article about dachshund day even has a photo of a Truman lookalike.  Now you know. 

The Hounds and I went out three days in a row this week, the first on January 4 to the Chamna Natural Preserve, and we looked for birds even though it wasn't National Bird Day yet.

We saw juncos and sparrows and ducks and gulls and geese and whatnot, and then we came upon this bird:

This is a Northern Harrier.  It's a good-sized raptor which I've seen lots over on the western side of the state, but this is the first time I've seen one since moving back to the east side.  I was best pleased.

We also saw a really big rock (dachshund provided for scale).

The next day, on actual National Bird Day, we went out to a different spot, Columbia Point. 

We looked for birds again, and found this delightful little raptor, the American Kestrel:

We also found a lot of smaller rocks (dachshund provided for scale).

Here we are at the end of the walk, when we turn around to head back towards the parking lot and the car.  Truman, who hates to walk away from the car, is always motivated to return.

The next day, January 6, was National Bean Day.  We did not look for beans.  Instead, we went to the Columbia Riverfront Trail's northernmost point to look for birds, and there we found a lot more rocks.

I belatedly discovered that today, January 7, is National Old Rock Day.  Go figure.  Here is an old rock that we found, sadly, on Bean Day (dachshund provided for scale):

We also found a lovely trail down to the river, which the Hounds thoroughly explored.

And then I spotted another American Kestrel!

Could it be the same one we saw the other day?  This was about seven miles away from the first one.  How large is a kestrel's territory?  Well, I have no idea, but isn't that what the Internet is for?  Yes, it is, and the Internet tells me that a kestrel's typical territory size is one-half square mile.  I'm thinking I saw two different kestrels on two different days.  Whee!

Since January 6, when I saw a kestrel, is National Bean Day -- an utterly idiotic thing to celebrate unless you happen to be a bean farmer -- and since January 5, when I also saw a kestrel, is already Bird Day, I hereby declare a renaming of January 6 to National See An American Kestrel Day. 

And perhaps there should also be a National Dachshund Run Back Towards the Car Day, to boot.

Which would pretty much be every day we go out.