Big Ending to the Week

Okay well it's Friday and I'm hoping to get a few things done today. I'm waiting for the FedEx man to come with the second Christopher Clark painting, cool afternoon on the Italian street or something.


Yesterday I received the picture frame stock that I ordered and so I'd like to go to the shop and unearth the miter saw, and attempt to make a frame for the Jose Trujillo picture I got. It was done on Masonite, cut badly and is roughly 6 x 18 1/8 inches. So it's not really possible to find a frame for it online at a reasonable price, and I'm not going to go to a frame store and have one made. It's just not worth it. So, since I have a fully functional woodshop, I figure it's not out of line to think I could make a picture frame.

I'm dictating this with the washing machine screeching in the background and it seems to be doing a pretty good job of understanding my words today. I'm hoping this signals a sea change in the behavior of Dragon naturally speaking.

Yesterday I painted a sunset scene based on one I saw José Trujillo do that had a lot of yellows and oranges in the sky. Ashton had approached me when she was sad last week and asked if I could find a painting that had a lot of yellows and happy sky and so I looked around and looked around and bid on a couple and then thought, I should just paint it, so I did. I followed the pattern of the one that Trujillo did and it was done with a palette knife. I haven't worked with just a palette knife before. I've been trying to learn and this was a good chance for me to practice. What I found was that for smaller canvases you need palette knives that have different angles on the blades, if you're going to use them to spread paint. Otherwise you're using him upside down all the time. I also realized afterwards I could've used just a plain putty knife or one of the many plastic credit-card like cards I've saved over the years for spreading things.

I didn't sleep well last night as I had some really tedious dreams that just seemed to go on and on. Mostly it was about me beginning my first day at a surgery center/Styrofoam manufacturing plant. I couldn't find anyone to tell me what I was supposed to do. People were just wandering around doing different things. I recognize some faces, but they were no help. A woman came up to me in and began talking and I assumed that she was going to lead me through the orientation. But she quickly turned her back and began mumbling so I followed her, but I couldn't understand a word she was saying. So then I went to find some chairs to push together so that I could sit down with her and say I can't hear you to understand your. I have a hearing problem and your speech was very low. She disappeared and then they were calling everyone together in a large room. It was quite military. Everybody stood up and lined up and faced forward. And I was wondering what was going on. Someone was standing in front of the group and then apparently, at some signal, people began backing up as some form of exercise. I looked around. I had no idea what was going on. I asked what we were doing, and a couple people around me said, backing up. Like that was the explanation. I thought, well maybe some studies revealed that backing up in operating rooms is a major source of injury and that's why we're supposed to practice backing up.

Anyway, it wasn't burning to death in a firing disaster or drowning or being shot at by terrorists, it was just a very tedious first day spent in a place that made no sense. I also want to point out that one point I was looking down the hallway at what I thought was possibly the recovery room or the preop area, and there was a large machine injecting loose Styrofoam into molds and then compressing it into large rectangular blocks that were maybe 8 feet long. This is while people are walking around in scrubs. It was very frustrating and it didn't seem to end. I had no idea what was going on.

I'm also washing my clothes this morning. There almost finished now.

I really can't go over to the shop and work on the picture frame until FedEx gets here with the painting. I don't want to risk them taking it back to their warehouse and leaving me with the notice that says you weren't here, come and get it. Especially since I am here and they should deliver it to me.

This morning as I lay in bed and opened my eyes looking at the ceiling, I once again saw that mass of black tangles in the middle of my visual field. It quickly disappeared. I close my eyes for a little while again and open them one at a time. I could still see the mass and it would disappear. It's incredible how clearly defined its edges and filaments are. I've seen it many times. I'm sure it's my fovea in both eyes the blind spots, that are quickly filled in by the brain to provide a seamless picture the world around me.

As I look at what I've been dictating I can tell that this is no longer doing an extremely great job speech recognition. It's gonna take me a while to clean this up. I better get started.

More later,

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