Those videos on You Tube of speed painting are just sick. At least they motivated me get out my tablet pen and see what I can’t do. Here’s a sketch of Ariane. Can’t wait to get CS3’s live trace.Read more.

Apparently, I got tagged by Ariane. Not with krylon or acid but with this post. So, I guess this is some kind of Web 2.0 chain letter, but I’m still looking for the get-rich-quick twist in the rules:Read more.

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, go down to the fourth sentence.
3. Post the text of the following 3 sentences on your blog.
4. Name of the author and book.

1. Tag three people of your own.

[img_assist|nid=146|title=Fiona’s Hall of Fame (Front & Back)|desc=Made the night before the tow.|link=node|align=left|width=550|height=391]

Ariane, Nanuq and I had a little going away party with Fiona in Fiona Tuesday night with a bottle of wine and a cowhide biscuit. Even though I gave her a shower and a scrub-down over the weekend, there were still little thises and thats in the glove compartment, under the seat and in all those other places that things fall and sit for years. So, we made a Hall of Fame box stuffed with anything and everything. Here’s the run-down.

1 The wire that we cabled up in a parking lot on Ashland that ran juice to Götz and Liz’s old car radio that they gave us back in Louisville in ’99.

2 The jingle that Ariane bought in Colorado to scare the bears while hiking in Yellowstone

3 The box of fuses that we got cause the that radio kept blowing out the headlights or the blinkers or everything else that I had in my hand when that asshole backed into our car door with me wedged in between trying one last time before our driving out of town on our road trip.

4 The folding magnifier that belonged to Fiona’s first driver, the grandmother that just drove to and from the grocery store once a week.

5 An alcohol swab packet. Can’t be sure if that’s from our first aid kit or from my mother’s restaurant silverware disinfecting kit.

6 A blood red stone that Ariane excavated from bottom of the Grand Canyon after sliding down 5000ft/1500m on mud platform shoes in a thunderstorm.

7 A battery

10 The number 6 as a safety reflector that I gave Ariane two years ago on our 6th anniversary together sitting on a parking lot at a gas station in Indiana where she gave me number 12.

11 A Grand Canyon visitors guide that was strapped with sun fatigued white elastic bands to the driver side visor since 1999, detailing how to hike down into the canyon, how to avoid the afternoon sun and how, on your way back up the canyon, not to get overtaken by a 70 year old brick wall of a man carrying 70 pounds on his back and his newlywed 60 year old wife. And yes, we made it out 60 seconds before they did. and then later that evening had dinner as their guest (sorta).

12 A scratch off ticket from Ariane for our anniversary fest-in-the-parking-lot, actually this is ticket number 5 after winning once enough to buy 4 more (isn’t that the way you play?) And it’s blackjack, Papa Shih’s favorite pastime even though it’s not really the same kind of bet, but still I got dealt and lost. Unlucky in cards, lucky in… I love you, Ane.

13 The gift tag for Nanuq’s bed that we bought for him at a pet store that was just opening up for his first birthday in Harbor Springs in northern Michigan during our honeymoon week there.

14 A piece of multicolored rope from the roll that we got to string up our food bag to keep it out of the reach of bears wandering at campsites. Ariane thought that this length of rope would better serve as a strap for an orange plastic whistle on her wrist so that she could have ready to shoo bears away in an instant.

So, after weeks of leaving books and papers out to dry, we finished putting them onto shelves, in envelopes or into boxes.

It still feels a bit like a loss though most of that feeling is rather abstract and distant. At least that’s how it is to me. Really, how often do you go back to read your old notebooks, that is, other than when you’re packing up for a move, looking for your Social Security card or cleaning up after a flooded basement? I think that these keepsakes don’t serve as memorabilia so well as they do as dead weight, something to keep just to have. Those markers or little creations that represent some meaningful time or place or effort in my past need to undergo a little transformation into a form that makes them interesting enough to have around on their own without any contribution from my own nostalgia. For example, origami the thing into a swan, laminate it into a place mat or clip it to a lamp. This time the sewage water saved us from the effort and performed a transformation on one of Ariane’s note papers into something interesting. But I still don’t know what we’ll do with it though.

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Something I found at (External)byteless.com.Read more.