2 new paintings and 2 new couches.

My dad is leaving for Hungary on Sunday, and I’ve been helping him move out of his apartment this week. He’s going to be gone for 2 months, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he won’t decide to move there permanently. Fortunately for me, he has to give a lot of stuff to give away so I’ve upgraded my old beat-up slipcovered couch and pleather loveseat into a barely used, matching set! YAY!

Here’s a sneak peek at “Vegetation #2″ (far left) and “Garden of Hope #10″ (far right)

My Nintendo curtains:

And here’s one of my paintings that isn’t for sale…maybe in the future though:

Tonight, the auction for “New Hope #52″ begins:

Also, I’ve placed “Garden of Hope #8″ in my eBay store:

And here’s what Koopa’s up to today:

Just snoozin’ under his heat pad.

“New Hope #50″

Everyone is obviously outside and not here (or on eBay,) so I’ll make this brief.  Here’s my 50th installment from the “New Hope” series:

On a related note, now is the perfect time to buy original artwork for less than the artist’s cost of supplies!  :-(   Who’s dumb enough to end an auction on the 4th of July?  Yup…me.

Also, I’ve announced an upcoming contest on my site, but I haven’t figured out what that means exactly.  Open to suggestions.

For Robin and anyone else who requested pics of Nes

OK, neither of us are thrilled with the camera, but here’s me and my sweetheart Nes today:

And here he is in his most “normal” pose:

And this is from my archives…Nes “hiding” under a pile of blankets and pillows. I have a slew of photos like this one. And yes, those are Nintendo 1-up mushroom pillows. I also have Nintendo curtains in the living room. I never had a NES as a kid, but I have one now…

Big anxiety, “New Hope #49″ and KOOPA!

When stress hits me, it hits me hard. I watched the auction for “Vegetation #1″ in the final minutes (waiting for the bids to roll in) and noticed that there were no views in the last 10 minutes. I also noticed that I didn’t receive a “watched item” email at all yesterday (I watch all of my own auctions,) and my feedback score kept jumping to zero at random intervals. Apparently eBay is taking lessons from WordPress on how to be glitchy. The auction ended at $46.00, and as a result I will not be using the auction format for this series ever again. The sale price barely covered the cost of my supplies and listing fees (starfruit, organic carrots, featured plus listing, canvas, and premium acrylics are not cheap.) I’ll continue to paint them for my own enjoyment, but they’ll be going into my store at a set price and I’ll be accepting best offers. To refresh your memory….here is “Vegetation #1″ (painted entirely with fruits and vegetables.)

This U.S. economy is in distress. People are browsing eBay but not bidding. Some of my best paintings have recently sold for much less then they were worth to me personally. It’s been a real struggle to deal with this due to my emotional nature, but it also makes me realize what a textbook “tortured artist” I am.

I went to the gym feeling terrible last night. The elliptical machine said that my resting heart rate was 150 (before I began,) which is about what it is after exercising at high intensity for an hour. I couldn’t even last that long because I kept getting dizzy from pure stress. If this continues, I’ll have no choice but to get a real job, and the thought of that terrifies me. Even the traffic to this blog has slowed to a crawl. I don’t much see the point in updating anymore since I could just as easily email the updates to the my 3 subscribers and commenters.

I wouldn’t want to hang around a blog where the writer is such a downer, either!

Hiding this side of me has crossed my mind, but I don’t see the point in covering up something you have no control over…plus I don’t like keeping secrets. It’s easier to just be open, honest and sincere and hope that people will be sensitive about it.

Anyway, here’s “New Hope #49.” It’s got a lot of great detail photos in the auction starting tonight. I often wonder who bothers to look at the detail photos. The main photo is always bad due to the lighting, but the close-ups can be taken at an angle and more accurately reflect the colors when viewing in person. I hear over and over again that “the painting looks better in person.” About half of my clients use that exact phrasing when they email me after receiving their artwork.

BTW, Koopa is doing great but his sleep cycle is as screwy as mine. He slept for most of the day but as soon as he woke up and approached me, I knew it was time for a turtle yawn. I grabbed my camera, and sure enough…

Now he’s kind of just sprawled out and relaxing under his UV light (under my desk.) Everything in a 1 foot radius from Koopa is covered in food because he just ate recently but I’ll be giving him a bath and vacuuming as soon as I publish this post. Koopa is a very messy eater!

I also took some photos of my Nes, who has been asleep for the past 2 hours, but he probably wouldn’t want me to publish them. Maybe one of these days I’ll post an audio version for you.

Ending on a happy note, I just want to say Happy Independence Day to everyone in the US! Let’s all be thankful that the Bush regime is almost over.

“Forever Young #1″ and a gift from Nes

My latest series is finally listed. The first 2 paintings from this series have been on my wall for a while, but I delayed the first auction due to all the photos and wording revisions involved with the designing of the new template. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not always thrilled by being around my computer so much. With only the title and this photo, can you tell what the “theme” is for this series?

OK, now go see if you’re right, and put the auction on your watch list (please.)

I haven’t been feeling too well the past couple of days. The right side of my head and right ear still hurt like crazy, and I’m now contemplating seeing the doctor. However, I’m stubborn and poor so I’ll wait a few more days to see if it fixes itself.

My gift from Nes.

Nes knows I love plants, flowers, and vegetables so he bought me an AeroGarden (which I’ve had my eyes on since I first saw it last year.) It wasn’t a special occasion and I wasn’t expecting a gift, so this was a great surprise! Nes is such a sweetheart. I didn’t plant a “real” outdoor garden this year, so this is the next best thing. An AeroGarden allows you to harvest herbs, vegetables, and flowers indoors for up to six straight months. The setup is soil-free, has automated lighting, a continuous watering system, and comes with dissolvable nutrient tablets, which makes it very easy to maintain. Nes bought me the chili peppers kit - 3 different varieties, which should be germinating in roughly 8 days. I thought it might be interesting to take a photo of it every week or 2 so you can see the peppers growing in my kitchen. Here’s the AeroGarden right after I set it up:

This is the inside…the water circulates around the seeds then drains back into this area. This is where the nutrients are added, and we should be seeing some root growth here in the future as well.

I will be be blown away if the plants look even half as good as the photo on the box. Stay tuned.

“New Hope #48″

Here’s “New Hope #48″

I don’t much feel like writing much today.  I have some sort of migraine/earache combo, and I basically don’t feel much like moving in general.  Maybe I’ll be back later with photos of the gift I got from Nes the other day. 

 

Dad’s retirement party

Yesterday was my father’s last day of work, and his staff invited me and my mom to celebrate with them.  We had a great time, and afterwards I got to spend some actual “quality time” with my parents.  My dad is going to Hungary for 2 months…he leaves in 2 weeks and I will definitely be missing him while he’s gone.  Keeping fingers crossed that he won’t decide to move there permanently.  He has dual citizenship and a brother there.

I listed “New Hope #47″ last night:

I see I’m down to 3 subscribers, from 12 a few days ago.  There must be something wrong with these numbers, but then again the comments seemed to have died as well.  Anyone out there?

“New Hope #46″

My site is back up, and I just listed this:

Getting my new boat tomorrow…so excited! 

Ugh!

My server is down, so my website doesn’t exist and all of the photos in my auctions aren’t showing up. Same with the photos on this blog that are hosted on the server. Very frustrating! I’ve been told that the technical support team “is working on fixing the issue,” so now it’s just a waiting game. Keep your fingers crossed for me, please. At least I don’t have any auctions ending tonight.

Here’s a video for your entertainment. It’s the follow-up the the very popular “Where the Hell is Matt?” video that you’ve more than likely already seen.

Not enough room for a suitable title.

OK, I’m covering 3 days here, so please bear with me and I’ll try not to get you confused.  On Saturday I went carping, which is another way for anglers to say “carp fishing.”  At this brook by my house I’ve seen massive (2 ft.) carp swimming around, so I brought corn and Wonder bread with me, determined to catch at least one carp.  Previous attempts to catch the carp with worms resulted in no nibbles or anything.

So anyway….on Saturday I brought two rods with me - one rigged with corn and the other with balled up bread.  I figured one of them would be taken by the carp.  No such luck.  I watched the carp swim right by my bait in the shallow water, completely ignoring it.  I fished the top, I fished the bottom, the middle.  The carp knew something was up.

For six hours I waited patiently, as carp are notoriously hard to catch and picky eaters.  As the sun started to go down, I noticed my “corn bobber” start to jiggle a bit, then it went under with great force.  Aha!  Carp!  That turned out to not be the case, as I ended up reeling in a very angry snapping turtle.

Would you believe this happened 2 more times?  I go fishing for carp, and I end up catching 3 snapping turtles instead.  For those of you not familiar with them, snapping turtles are the meanest, most evil of all turtles.  They will snap at anything in their path, and can sever a finger with one bite.  Unfortunately, I had to cut the line on 2 of the turtles (one broke free,) and I won’t be going back to that area until I can discover a solution to the turtle problem.  Very sad.

On a brighter note…

Also, yesterday I won an eBay auction for a little fiberglass boat (a dinghy) that will hopefully fit in the back of my pickup (fingers crossed.)  Mom and I are splitting the cost because we both like fishing solo and the canoe is too heavy for one person to lift (and it’s too big for my truck so we’d have to trade vehicles.)  My kayak is light and fits in my truck nicely but it’s too unstable to fish out of.  So now we have another boating option!  Yay!

Oh yeah…I almost forgot.

Last night I listed the first of my “Vegetation” series!  This series is painted entirely with fruits and vegetables such as carrots, celery, starfruit, pears, kiwi, sugar snap peas, etc.  I proudly present “Vegetation #1″:

Here’s the link in case you feel like watching/bidding/seeing more photos.

It’s currently Monday morning, 3:15 a.m. and I’ve just recently returned from the gym.  I’m seeing no results.  Even the scale is hovering around the same number.   I do at least 50 minutes of cardio and usually throw in some minor weight training, 5 days a week.  I’m drinking water, I’m eating the right foods, limiting my caloric intake, etc. but despite all this, I look and weigh exactly the same.  It’s very frusterating.

There isn’t much more to say right now.  I guess you can tell from my most recent posts where my mind has been.  I haven’t been too motivated to get my site updated but I have been listing paintings when I can.  I look forward to showing off the next new series - it’s very cool!  It should be breaking in the next few days.