Sam's class went to the Fort Worth zoo last Friday. Here's a picture of Sam and one of his classmates in the petting zoo. It was fun but would have been better if there hadn't been 4000 other field trips happening there at the same time. It was a nightmare - so crowded! It took almost 2 hours to get there because of all the traffic, so we had to practically run through the zoo. "Look! An elephant! OK, let's go!"

I had borrowed my mom's car to make the trip to Kansas. Before I left I took my car to the shop so they could try to figure out what was wrong with it - it would occasionally just die while I was waiting at stop lights. Not all the time, though...

So they couldn't figure out what was wrong with it so I picked it up on Friday afternoon. I drove to Dallas on Saturday night for the spring gallery night but when I got to Lewisville my car just stopped accellerating. I pulled off the highway and stopped in a parking lot. It wouldn't start again, so I called AAA and my mom rescued me and I borrowed her car again.

Turns out the timing belt broke. It was going to cost more to fix than the car was worth. So I'm going to buy my mom's car from her. They were planning on getting a new truck soon, anyway...

I complained to John about the car but he said he wouldn't give me my money back. Rude! Oh, well - I guess I got my money's worth out of it.

We had some crazy weather yesterday. I was driving around when the first storm hit - buckets and buckets of rain. I had to pick Sam up during the second storm. Streets were rivers. It was crazy. While I was driving (the low-to the ground PT Cruiser) through the rivers, praying that my brakes would work, I was thinking, "This is so scary!" At the same time, Sam yelled, "This is so cool!"

The drainage ditch behind our house overflowed and flooded some of the houses behind us. Luckily our house is up high enough that we didn't get flooded. It was scary. They showed video from Denton on the Today show this morning...

But it's a gorgeous day today! Weird how that happens.

F2 - artist's book - installation view from Seeking Shelter at the Manhattan Arts Center, Manhattan, Kansas

installation view from Seeking Shelter at the Manhattan Arts Center, Manhattan, Kansas

installation view from Seeking Shelter at the Manhattan Arts Center, Manhattan, Kansas

Had fun in Kansas. I drove up on Tuesday and had a fairly uneventful drive. I was wondering how many times I've taken that trip up I-35. When I was little and we lived in Kansas (between the ages of 3 and 7 and then again from about 10 to 12), my maternal grandparents lived in McKinney and Melissa, so we would drive down to visit them. Then when I was in high school, we moved here and we would drive to Kansas to visit Larry and Ellen and Colleen. I'd estimate that I've made that trip maybe 15 times. I don't know. There are so many things that are so familar about it. Frontier City in Oklahoma City. The Horseshoeing School somewhere in Oklahoma (I can always go there if the art thing doesn't work out), the Flint Hills along the Kansas Turnpike, the big Coors beer can at the northern end of the Turnpike (which is either gone or I missed it this time), and the curiously located Knute Rockne memorial. Oh, now I get it. If I had stopped to actually look at it one of those times maybe I wouldn't have been so confused...

Anyway, the trip always takes 8 hours.

I stayed with Larry and Ellen, who were nice enough to live with all my boxes for a couple of weeks. I had sent my work to them from the last show in Iowa, since the art center in Manhattan didn't have room to store the stuff.

On Wednesday, I drove to Manhattan, which is about 2 hours from Overland Park. Larry helped me stuff all my boxes into the car. I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't all fit. Well, it fit, but I couldn't see out while I was driving. I had to use the force the whole way. It was stupid and very scary.

I realized later that when I had fit it into the car before (plus two additional long paintings and Trish!), I hadn't packed everything for shipping. This time the smaller (14" x 14" x 14") boxes were packed inside larger (18" x 18" x 18") boxes. I also had my house sculpture and the wooden circle in boxes this time. So it all took up so much more room. Had I realized that earlier, I would have taken the smaller boxes out of the larger ones. Which is what I did once I unpacked everything. I broke down the larger boxes and brought them back with me. When I go back to pick it all up again, if anything doesn't fit, I can always ship it back home.

Manhattan is a really cute town in the beautiful Flint Hills. They call Manhattan The Little Apple. It reminded me a little of Denton, since it's a college town.

Colleen went with me to the reception. We were worried the night before since they were predicting 3 inches of snow in Overland Park and 5" in Manhattan. It rained and snowed Friday night but nothing really stuck, so we had good travelling on Saturday. We stopped in Lawrence to eat at one of Colleen's old college hangouts.

Not many people came to the reception but we had fun, anyway. Afterwards, we went to a cool restaurant near the K State campus - an area they call Aggieville (K State is a big agricultural school).

It was a good trip.

So this is my first full week of being an artist. I'm freaking out a little but it's OK.

Last night I went to a meditation class at the local Unitarian church. It's lead by someone from a Buddhist center (temple?) in Arlington. I enjoyed it. I've been wanting to try meditation and wanted to get more information about it.

I was supposed to go to Houston this weekend to teach a workshop but they had to reschedule, so I'm not sure when that's going to happen. I'm kind of glad that it's not this weekend, though, since I was gone so long last week...

Check this out:



How fun is that?

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