Art & Life of SwarDrawS

Hollace never liked to get her ears and face wet when swimming. We have signed her up for swimming lessons before but she got nowhere with them. Last summer while camping she had a breakthrough and started going under water. At first while plugging her nose then when everyone at the pool gave her a hard time, she went without.

We stayed in a hotel with Dorothy on Thanksgiving night. In the hotel pool I discovered how much a swimmer Hollace become. She looked like she was on the swim team or something, swimming most of the length of the small pool underwater.

That pool's chemicals were harsh, after Hollace's second round in the pool (RAW said she was swimming even better that day) her hair was like ropes. No amount of shampoo and conditioner seemed to help.

That night at Dorothy's she complained of her skin itching.

The next day however she came down with the flu. Turned out she had a temperature and was achy. Poor thing. Didn't realize that as we dragged her to the Christmas tree show at the Embassy Theater.

I guess mom had a peculiar case of strep throat, the same day Hollace was under the weather. She didn't have a sore throat or anything, just something coating or swelling it. She ended up going to the ER where she got an X-Ray. Her strep test came back positive.

Cindy bought a new house. Everytime a sister buys a house, I get jealous and want to buy a new house too. It is a good time to buy. Of course we got to sell first which isn't that easy especially since we are embarking on a kitchen remodel.

Posted by swardraws at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today I got my first roll back from the Rolleiflex. Not as fun or fulfilling as the Holga. I got to figure out how to focus the thing. And I got to get use to the scanner, I have a heck of a time trying to get the 120 negs in the tray right. I also had a light leak on the Rollei film but not on the Holgas which is backward.

Utata had a summer project. I thought about it all summer then ran out of time. I did manage to get some shots up but didn't get to shoot what I was planning. Anyway, the editors were going to pick some shots from there for the magazine they were going to print. They said they sent out emails to everyone selected. I didn't get anything so I was a little bummed. Then a couple weeks later they said they just sent the last bunch of emails out and I got one! They selected an odd photo but hey, cool anyway.

Pretty scenery photos won the Abbott photo contest. I didn't submit any of those since I thought this was to fill their stock photo collection so I sent them stocky things. Whatever.

At work they are doing away with the large format printing so Jim was trying to run out of stock. I now have 18 large prints of some of my photographs mounted on foam core. Wicked cool. Some of them I sized to fit in the window frame I made. I feel like I should have a museum show ;-)

While picking up the large prints (which I had to get a cart to get them to my car) I showed off the Rollei to Jim. He gave me the old light meter he had (which looks exactly like my 25 year old one), some 120 neg sleeves and Jeff gave me some anti static negative cleaner.

I just wasted a roll of 120 film trying to load the Rollei tonight. I forgot to put it under the bar and wound the whole roll onto the other size. I guess I could of went into a dark room and rerolled it but instead I tried to reroll it in the camera. That didn't work out too well so I threw it away.

The Canon 20D should be back tomorrow.

Posted by swardraws at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got my idea for this year's Christmas card. It took 5 minutes to come up with it. That is all.

Posted by swardraws at 10:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am usually more chatty with this blog with short nails. They are still long but I will stop and chat anyway.

---------

Cloudy was just doing that loud beasty gutteral cat domain thing. Apparently a cat was outside taunting her. She is so freaky when she gets like that. RAW is sleeping in the middle of the living room floor and didn't hear a thing.

---------

You never know where you will find inspiration. For me today it was in the form of a pretty shade of green goose poop on my windshield. Instead of cleaning it off I drove home with it and tried to capture it with RAW's digicamera as I drove down the road.

---------

Last night I found my 25 year old light meter. I need one of these now with the Rolleiflex. The battery even seemed to work! It is probably a couple stops off, well it isn't dead at least. Actually it is a biohazard and I need to find out the best way to dispose of it. It has a mercury battery in it.

----------

I am fairly computer savvy and have been for over 15 years but I just discovered that you don't have to forward space to go back and delete a character. That there is a delete key that will do that in one forward space motion. I knew the key was there, I guess I wasn't sure why it was there when the backspace/delete key will work. Duh!

----------

The stupid thermometer we have would beep anytime the outside temperature was between 28-37°. Every freakin minute. Usually waking me up in the middle of the night. It wasn't loud but it was annoying. Why? What am I suppose to do about it? We freeze we freeze. I guess according to the instructions it isn't an option you can turn off. Dang, I can't live like that now that winter is approaching. Then I read that the freeze warning only happens in channel 1 (of a 3 channel wireless thermometer) so I changed the channel to 2 and no more beep-beep.

----------

Tonight Hollace was in rare creative form with her quick cartoon series of the "Crazy American". It started with her making a picture of Egypian pyramids and pharrohs. And on top of the pyramid was the crazy American with a flag. Then it was a series of 7 pictures all with the crazy American and his flag.

Then she went right to work on the "Romantic American" which is a 7 picture series of a date. Until the girl dumps the guy in the end because after he fell off the romantic swan ride, he was wet and cold and kept sneezing his germs out.

---------

I spent most of this week dealing with support for iPower.web to get Artwork's web site off the abandoned host it was on and share space on my server. Really looks like a no brainer set up but something didn't work on their end. It is all fixed finally now but not before my low point with support. After sitting online for 2 hours waiting for my turn on iChat support, I finally got someone. He said to hold on for a couple minutes while he looked into the problem. So I thought I would pay RAW's credit card bill. I accidentally loading the web page into the chat window and lost my connect to that chat!

Posted by swardraws at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well known fact #1
Hollace hates, absolutely hates to get her photo taken

Fact #2
Hollace hates homework, especially math, reading, writing, well all of it (except science and art)

Fact #3
Hollace got all 12 spelling words WRONG on last weeks spelling test

Today all these facts are shattered

Tonight we went to the church to get our free 8x10 family portrait taken for the church directory. Hollace did great then told me she didn't mind getting her picture taken anymore. I got my new Rolleiflex yesterday and she has already volunteered for a photo.

Tonight Hollace actually complained that the math homework was only one page, she wanted to do more! Huh, what? And we found a book she is really enjoying to read, I mean she really looks forward to it. That has never happened before. And while looking at the Scholastic book order Hollace put in a request for Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi. She said it will help her math and looks interesting.

And on fact #3, it really isn't all her fault that she failed that spelling test, we didn't go over any of the words. That is one part of her homework that keeps falling through the cracks. So this week we went over the words really only one night but they sticked. She knows them all. She is so going to ace that test tomorrow.

Posted by swardraws at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think I wanted to write something specific here but in the moment of thinking of it and logging on here I lost it.

In the meantime, here is a quick rant:
How much effort would it take to drop a quick email reply saying thanks for sharing those pictures. I know I share a lot of picture on Flickr and my photo blog but I emailed my sisters pictures from cousin Jeff's and not a single email reply from any other them. I guess because I would quickly drop a line I assume everyone else would have the same courtesy. Also Aunt Bobbie never replied to my email after I found out her daughter was pregnant. I thought for sure she would reply to that. Instead I continually get more forward joke emails from her. Aw people in the electronic age.

I had a flat tire today. I didn't get far.

I still don't know what I was going to write.

Posted by swardraws at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)