Yes, it’s been a while. I keep saying that I will get better at posting. And I always intend to and then something gets in the way. Usually, it’s me. So I won’t promise to get better, you’d rather see that than me keep saying it and not doing it. And since it has been a while I’ll try to bring you up to speed and maybe a little more. Grab a cup of coffee or tea and get comfortable.
First up. My day job decided to do another in person, all hands, department meeting this year. At one point they were going to do it in Nashville, which I thought would be really cool but they changed their minds and decided to do it in Orlando again. The best part about that was that I extended my stay and spent some time with my sister. The second best part was getting to see two rocket launches.
A bit about the launches before I go on. I lived in the Orlando area during part of the Space Shuttle era. It was common place to drive out to the coast to watch a launch. It was also common to stop what we were doing during a day or evening and just watch it from an office window, a parking lot, or the driveway. Yes. You can see a launch from Orlando. Though they are much more spectacular from closer up, like from the space coast.
So on this trip, after dinner the first night of the meeting, one group of people decided to go to over to the beach to watch the SpaceX Starlink launch. I didn’t go with them but a smaller group happen to be talking about it when I went down to the lounge area to hang out and they invited me to go. It had been so very long since I’d made that run out to the space coast. It was a lot of fun. We didn’t get the best viewing but we did end up just stopping on the side of the road to watch it, and listen to it, and feel it. That’s the really cool thing about watching a launch from the coast, you can hear it and feel the rumble as it comes across the water. It is really awesome. And the sight! Oh man. That is something else, especially at night. Those are the most exciting to see, the night launches.
The second launch that we got to see was a bit of a crap shoot. We weren’t really sure whether it was going to go. It was the Boeing Starliner crewed mission. They had tried three or four times to get the thing off the pad and had to scrub it each time so we didn’t know for sure if we were going to get to see it. We were in a training class as part of the meeting when it was scheduled to go up. But we did get to see it. At just seconds before the launch we all marched to the other side of the building, we were on the 19th floor, and invaded a conference room and watched the launch. We mostly just saw the con trail through the clouds, which was just as exciting.
The time with my sister was a lot of fun. We got very wet at Disney Springs. No, it’s not a water park. It’s a shopping, dining, and entertainment area. We wanted street tacos and they have some really good ones there, and I wanted to pick up a couple of things from the Cirque du Soleil shop. It was a nice day when we got there. But then, as happens in Florida in the summer, the afternoon storm made a showing. We did get the tacos, but we were probably the last ones served because the storm. We made it to Cirque du Soleil after that. That was the first time we got wet. While we were in the shop things let up so we made our way back to the other end of the place to get a few other things. We were just ready to leave when the sky opened up and dumped buckets of water. We tried to wait it out but decided to make a run for it. And that’s when we got very very wet. Very wet. And yes, it was fun. You can’t really help but laugh in a situation like that.
In addition to Disney Springs my sister and I also went to Seaworld. It had be years since I was last there. It was fun as always, though a bit hot. I might have whined about it a little. I like the heat but for some reason it was just kicking my butt. To the point that I thought the temperature in the Arctic exhibit was reasonable and comfortable. Still we had fun and she got some amazing Orca pictures from the show. We did spend a little time in her pool after that. And the next day. We made a point of choosing the hottest forecasted day to spend in her pool and my niece and her family joined us. That was a treat. My niece’s daughter has been very slow to warm up to me, not surprising I don’t see her but about once a year at the most. This time though, she is old enough to grasp the sibling concept a little, probably because she has a brother on the way, and she was able to relate that I am her Mommom’s sister. She wasn’t to keen to play with me in the pool but after swimming she got a little friendlier. It was a treat.
Another treat was the trip to the art supply store. My preferred art supply store is Dick Blick, or Blick Arts. I can order online, but I do like to actually go to a store sometimes. Unfortunately the closest physical store to me is in Savannah, Georgia. But it turns out there is one in Tampa, Florida which is close enough to my sister that we decided to take a trip over to check it out. I did spend some money. I needed another suitcase. It was so cool. And since we weren’t too far from it, we made a visit to a park in Tarpon Springs. The park wasn’t what my sister was hoping for but it could be good during the school year when there might not be so many people.
Once I got home from Florida, and got my world put back together, I finished up a couple of paintings that were close to being finished before the trip. I have a pastel painting of a group of tulips that I really only needed to sign and spray finish and now that’s done. Then there was the Rhino. That still needed some work, though not a lot so I got that done and then the final spray and sign. And that’s all the work that I was actively working on.
Unfortunately, that means I’m now in that dreaded window of time when I have finished things but haven’t started anything else. This is my most frustrating time. I think I’ve said before that if I haven’t started a new piece by the time I finish one then it’s really hard for me to start the next piece. This time I’m running into trouble deciding what to work on. If I happen to decide I want to work on a particular thing then I start going back and forth in my head with what medium to use. It’s exasperating. And totally unproductive.
It’s also probably a good thing. Because, when I’m going from one piece of art to another, I don’t do a lot of experimenting. Oh, I have, a little just not regularly. This gives me a little opportunity to experiment and play while I figure out what I want to create and how I want to do it.
The thing is, experimenting is important. It keeps things fresh. Experimenting can be trying a new medium, a new style, or even a new subject matter. By not trying them regularly, I can get stuck, or I get in my way and that slows things down. The way that can happen is if I have an idea that I think would look good a certain way but I don’t have a lot of practice or experience with doing it that way then I may not even try to tackle it because I don’t know how it’s going to work out because I’m not sure about how to do it, and several other reasons that go through my head and keep me from creating that idea. It can also get me stuck for creating a different idea because I can’t quite get past that one that I’m not sure how to make happen. It will sit there in the middle of the mental doorway and just barely budge if at all.
Fortunately my mental doorway is not currently blocked. I’m just dealing with the inertia that comes with completing a piece and not having something else ready right away. However. I do have some sketches that I’m working on and I’ve chosen a new piece to start. I hope to get that started in the next day or two. And I as I said, I am doing a little bit of experimenting which I’ll tell you about in another post because by now you’ve finished your cup of tea or coffee and probably need a bathroom break.
Cheers!