Frankie and me

Photo by Sara. My grandson.

Mike's Mole Almost ready to ship to Ammon

Hard times have hit--we had two floods. Photos, manuscripts, artwork, clothes, sleeping bags etc all got soaked. The house is chaotic with stuff spread out drying and boxed hauled up from the cellar. It will be long time before we get dug out. I had wanted to do some work on my kids books in Mike's mole, but the prep time was prohibitive.

1)Leopard. Faber-Caselle PITT astist pigment pens and PRANG metallics--the Prang pens ran out of ink, I bought more, they were a different color, I bought more--they were dry AND a different color--so I had to go with it--apologies. What do you do when the pen you start with runs out of ink in someone else's mole and you can't replace it? AK!! :-(

2)Impala, prey of the leopard--I pity them both face to face for the lifetime of the mole. One terrified and the other hungry but thwarted. Faber-Caselle PITT astist pigment pens and PRANG metallics

3)Pocket items, iPad Artrage painting print 4 x 6--I had to rescan the print because nothing was working that day!

4)pocket item #2--eagle skull. Just finished today. iPad Artrage painting print 4 x 6

5)Our living room at the house where we live--the studio house flooded too.

We are leaving for a short trip Thursday 6/16.

click images to enlarge.

walking tracker app, Run Keeper, on iPad

Tuesday, 6-7-11 10:52 AM I am trying out a new (to me) iPad app for tracking walking speed and distance called Runkeeper, but it does not work well on the iPad for a variety of reasons.  This iPad does not have 3G and apparently, either does not have a GPS or the GPS requires the Internet or the GPS doesn't work well.  The iPad doesn't work well for writing while walking.  It is heavy and awkward and the keyboard poops green.  The keyboard is missing vital keys for serious word processing, such as navigational arrows and a forward delete button. The screen is hard to see in the bright sun. The heaviness and awkwardness of the iPad (compared to the Psion, which I love) makes my back hurt trying to write while walking. I have to lean back or something to counterbalance it. There is also no tab key.

I have been walking 40 minutes, and it says I have walked .32 miles at a pace of 2 hours for one mile, which is wrong. I am a slow walker, but not that slow!  I've walked over a mile, I"m not sure how much over a mile.   At the end, it says I walked 51:36 and .6 miles.  Uhh, duh!  That is not correct--useless app for iPad!!! It might work OK if I walked up and down my short little driveway for 45 minutes!!!

Then I got an email from RunKeeper:

• This is a RunKeeper FitnessAlert to let you know that you achieved the following milestones with your most recent walking activity. 

It has my farthest distance as .6, but I actually walked MUCH father than that. I walk farther than that EVERY DAY!  DUH!!! I guess I have to spend a LOT of money if I want to enter the digital cloud age for walkers.  I need an iPhone or iPad with 3G and an upgrade to RunKeeper elite--NOT!  I have a watch and that is good enough for me right now!!!

Collaboration with ROma in Mike's ROund 3 Moleskine Sketchbook

I tried to follow suit with themes of color and shape already begun by Roma. (Click image to view larger.) It's fairly textural, which doesn't show up in the scan. The bottom 1/3 or so is mine, but I also drifted up to make links with Roma's part. See her part without mine here. See close-up details here.

Between our flooded basements and our traveling, I am WAY WAY behind and no time yet to catch up, but I will as soon as I can.

Keith invents a riddle

(Someone else may also have invented it, but not that we know of.)


How many pecks in a bushel?





I don't know, depends on the size of the bird.

Finally Pinery 1

8:29 PM Saturday, May 28, 2011

Finally, we left the flooded basements behind and are camping up at the Pinery!  YAY!

The bad news is that it started raining.  The good news is that the rain seems to be dwindling again.

We are camped right in the dunes!

9:19 AM Sunday, May 29, 2011

Right after I said that the rain was dwindling, it de-dwindled and turned into a full-fledged rain which lasted all evenings and all night.

Luckily, our tent did not leak.

It was damp in there, but not wet.

This morning, everything is wet, and the sky is a mass of grey, and the air is thick with humidity from the rain, but -- knock knock -- it is not actually raining --yet.

Keith is making breakfast, bacon and eggs, on the old camp stove that belonged to Ma and Pa.

Love, Mary, Sent from my iPad