brrrrr.....

It is very cold here today. Our family spent a couple of hours outside working on cutting, splitting and hauling the wood that fuels our heating system. The temperature is predicted to drop to lows in the -30's c., and we want to be ready. Our wood furnace is very old and dearly needs replacing, but that must wait for another year. In the meantime, someone will have to get up around 3-4:00 am to put wood in the stove so we can be warm each morning.

culprit

This tree is the reason I was unable to post for 4 days previous. 8000 residents were out of power for 3 days in the Prince George area due to a wind storm. Our home was out of power and telephone. We have a small generator which ran several lights (and the fish tank). Our wood heater kept us warm and we cooked outside on the propane campstove. The romance of the situation wore off after about 24 hours and the family was so greatful to have power restored on Tuesday.

an exersise in creative...sleeping?

This blurp is an excerpt from a Fast Company article on Brain Calisthenics. If you try it, let me know how it worked for you.

Exersise: Capturing unexpressed potential
Source: Robert Epstein, West Cost editor, Psychology today; visiting scholar, University of California San Diego

Place a pad and pen by your sofa. Relax on the couch, holding a spoon over a plate placed on the floor. As you begin to get drowsy, the spoon will drop to the floor, hitting the plate, waking you up, Grab the pad and sketch out whatever you were seeing during that drowsy state. The goal is to focus attention and preserve the unusual ideas. Epstein says Salvador Dali got ideas this way, and Thomas Edison had a similar approach.

Writer of the article, David Lidsky reports:
"How it worked for me: Incomplete. I slumped off the couch like one of Dali's clocks in The Persistence of Memory, the spoon ended up in the sofa cushions, and it took me three hours to wake up from my nap."

taken out by stomach flu

I'll be back in a few days.

uncommon thread

remember...

Jesús Moroles, a sculpture from humble beginnings was once drafted (during the Vietnam War) in the USA. His father a Mexican and his mother a woman from a border town, Jesús knew he would be sent to the front lines with others of visible minority. His chances of coming home alive were slim, as he saw others from his neighborhood go to war and 'arrived home in a box'. But high marks in math on military exams saved him from that fate and instead landed him in the Air Force as a computer repairman. Upon completion of duty four years later, he used his meager millitary pension to finance his way through art school.

Jesús works in granite leaving 50% of the stone in it's natural state, while coaxing out some of its other qualities such as transparency, movement and sound. Some of his pieces are interactive, playing music as an instrument would. For more on Jesús, visit:
Art Interview, online magazine.

dog time

My dogs are constant companions while I work each day. They seem to know time as they watch and anticipate my schedule. It amazes me that they are so accurate, within 10 minutes. Every day at 2:30pm, I bundle myself up and take them for the 1.5 km walk to the school bus stop to pick up my daughter. Every day at 2:20pm they start following me around wagging tails and barking. I was curious to see how they would handle the time change (daylight savings). It only took them 2 days to adjust to the new schedule. Amazing.

creative play for today

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