Can't get enough of complaining, whining or bitching?

Well then you've come to the right place!

The last few days have been way below normal temperatures, super dry weather and extreme winchills. Today it's not too bad, and all the snow is starting to melt.

Why poopee, you say, you should be happy it's warming up and the sun is shining!

My response: I wish I could be. For someone who is allergic to molds and dust it's pure hell. For the last 2 weeks, I've had an inflammation of the nasal passages and a sinus headache with serious light sensitivity from all the massive weather changes we've been having. I'm taking (legal) drugs like crazy, just so I can get out of bed and not have to wear sunglasses, even indoors. At least it hasn't turned into a cold and my period is mostly over.

Besides all that school is going super well. I finally got a couple of homework things back, so I'll be posting more photos soon. I am also killing in my critical theory class, I got 96 on my mid-term and have started tutoring one of my classmates.

Oh yeah, here is the a shot of my window painting, after session #5, which I did a couple of weeks ago and forgot to link here.



Previous sessions

painting update: session#4

Session #3
Session #1 & 2

session #3

my festering nipple is festering no more!

No, I don't have a fresh photo of the scar, but it is fully healed. Trust me. Not that you should trust anything a blogger-who-never-blogs says.

I had this whole plan to post about my whole going back to school experience. But it appears that the black hole of first-year homework has totally shot that plan to shreads.

So, basically, I'm a total basket case. This semester I'm taking 4 courses:

Introduction to Visual Culture: History and Ideas (art history)
Drawing
Time-Based Media (video, performance art, electronics and web stuff)
Form and Structure (sculpture)

My instructors are all accomplished, knowledgable artists and scholars in their own right and aren't uptight or stuffy. They just seem excited to see how we interpret the assignments. I've received some marks back already, so I'm feeling good about the work I'm doing. Mostly. It's definitely weird working among recent high school graduates. Most of them think I'm only about 3 or 4 years older than they are and freak out when I tell them I'm married.

I've also started working in the school's Writing and Learning Centre as their Friday reception. The pay is not the greatest, but it's on campus, and its enough to cover all my incidental school expenses, so its worth it.

Anyway, here's a photo of my most recently completed painting. Yes, I'm still painting whenever I can steal a few free hours from homework time. This is from a photo of Oscar when he was about 10 weeks old.



Also, yesterday was my first wedding anniversary! Since we're a little short in the moolah department, we just stayed home, ate veggie chili, drank some shiraz and watched Slither. Which was fantastically gross! And can I just say that DAMN, that Nathan Filion is one dreamy smartass. Ahem. We decided instead of buying each other a gift, we'd save up for a few weeks and get a 250 gig hard drive installed into the portable hard drive case we've got kicking around. That way we can store our media in one central location WOOHOO! Anniversary-tastic!

tastes like homo!

Today is training day for my new job. I'm looking forward to making a little dough, but I'm starting to freak out a little about all the homework I haven't been working on over the last few days. Though, yesterday was the WORST DAY I've had since school started.

Monster menstrual cramps + lunch of potato salad with pork tenderloin and coffee = Linda Blair-type explosive barfing.



I haven't thrown up like that because of cramps since before I went on the pill at 19. I went off it a year and a half ago at 31, and mostly don't regret it.

Anyway, here is a shot of a new oil painting I'm working on, because I'm insane and don't seem to get that I have more than enough to do already with school. It's from a photo I took of Oscar when he was about 10 weeks old. This was the first time he had been to my parents' house and he had never seen such an expanse of grass. He sat there for about 10 minutes just looking out.

sigh.

Ok, yeah, so, like, I , like, totally quit my job, eh?

As of last week, I am blissfully unemployed. I haven't posted at all about work, not because I'm afraid of being dooced, but because there are some things I just leave out of this blog. OK, considering how often I post, there are a lot of things I leave out of this blog. Mostly because my interest in journaling, or whatever this is supposed to be for, waxes and wanes, as they say.



Anyway, now its over and I don't even have to bother thinking about it. Not that that means I'm sitting around the house all day eating bonbons and watching soaps.

You are SO WRONG.

That was just yesterday, and it wasn't bonbons but coffee and not soaps but obsessively exploring flickr. Gawd, I'm such a geek.



For the most part, though, I've been working my tushie off over here. I've been doing a lot of housework, some copywriting work for a local interior designer, designing business cards for my brother's new business, starting a whole new series of paintings and drawings, repainting my bedroom (which should be done today), working on major landscaping projects up at the cottage, taking lots of digital photos AND (as I mentioned) obsessively exploring flickr. phew! and it's only been 11 days!



Damn, I'm working harder now than I did when I was actually earning a paycheck. I think it's a revisit to the twisted form of guilt I felt a few years ago when I was unemployed for 2 years and spending money I didn't actually earn myself. Kirk has been awesome about it, and is excited for me to start school in September. I'm excited about it too, actually. Not because I need the degree to be an artist, but hopefully to gain more confidence, network like crazy, and mostly to accumulate as many new experiences as I can to expand my art practice beyond what I'm used to.




Anyway, until my next post here's a couple of new works in progress for your enjoyment:










This one is actually a year old, but I realized I never posted it!

Thanks to Raymi and Merkley??? for inspiring me to add more photos to my posts. Except with less boobies.

Thanks also to Squid for reminding me that I actually have a blog of my own!

most recently completed...

self-portrait in blue, originally uploaded by poopee shmoopee.

self-portrait in blue
oil on canvas
24x32

allo? allo?

for the last 2 weeks my life has been nothing but a series of days where i sleep, drink water, eat a little, blow my nose and cough. i have that deep chest, rattling cough that makes anyone within 10 feet of you cringe. anyway, i hope to eventually do something with this here corner of the blogopodcastwebnetsophere.

in the meantime, here are some paintings i finished recently:





this is a portrait i did last summer from one of my parents' wedding photos:

newest piece

'buttercup', 16x20, oil on canvas

1 week to go!

Mustaches for Kids Toronto has raised almost $2200 so far and 1 week left before the big mustache ball. Kirk went to get his Week 5 photo taken tonight, but here's the Week 4.


This is my most recent painting. It's from a photo given to me by my friend Howard. It's is his village in Newfoundland.


On the way home last night from a massage (oh god, EVERYONE should have one) I passed this house. I was momentarily blinded by its radiance and had to go back and take a picture.


This is what my neighbourhood looked like this morning.

Since I woke up late, it was a bit of an inconvenience. That's because everyone in Toronto is retarded the first time the snow flies. For examples, read THIS and THIS. What makes driving in Toronto even more terrifying than a measely 10 cm (4in) snowfall? THIS.

I currently am sifting through 600 photos to sort out an online photo gallery of the wedding and another 300 for the honeymoon. It's taking longer than I had expected it would. It's coming soon, I promise.