Cool Art

These are the only two paintings I own. I bought the one on the right in 2008 and the one on the left in 2009. And this year I plan on buying another if I get the chance. They are space themed paintings, but that's not what's cool about them. What's cool about them is that they are spray paint paintings. And I watched them being created both times. The artist was on his knees, a can of spray paint in each hand, using pages from a newspaper to create the mountains you see. Each painting takes approx. 6 - 8 minutes from blank white canvas to finished project. And it's an amazing process to watch. All the paintings he cranks out just seem to be random space scenes. None of them really look like any of the others (as far as all having moons, or all having waterfalls, etc.) and have different color schemes. The two times I've seen him in action has been at the annual fall crafts fair in Sprindale, AR. And both times there was a huge crowd around him buying the paintings before he finished them. I got each of these by hollering out "the next one is mine" and paying for them before any paint even went down.

Now, I do love the two paintings that I have. But the guy paints a lot of pictures that are way more detailed and colorful than these. His name is Carey Huckabey and he's known on the interwebz as the "6th Street Spray Paint Artist" in Austin, TX. I have found a few youtube videos of him, but none of them are very clear or easy to see. This was the best one I could find and when he finishes the painting and picks it up, you can see it's either paper or posterboard. The ones I own are painted on some sort of glossy plywoodish (new word) board. Oh, and I should also mention that my dad made me the beautiful frames. Here's the video - watch me!

The Jello Gelatin Disaster

It all started innocently enough. My nephew Charlie recently started following a Weight Watcher's point plan diet and to be supportive I promised him I'd bring down a large supply of Jello for him. Jello's perfect for a diet because it fills your belly without many calories and all you need to make it is water. So saturday I stopped by the local Wal-Mart and loaded up my cart with 12 boxes of Jello in various flavors and a few other things I thought he would enjoy and would be useful. Then I proudly delivered the goods to him and he was very excited. But after a few mintues we discovered I had made a mistake. I had bought regular Jello gelatin instead of sugar-free Jello. And where sugar-free Jello is only 1 Weight Watcher's point for the entire box, regular Jello (the kind I bought) is 8 points for the entire box. Way too many wasted points. So guess who's going back to Wal-Mart to return some Jello? That's right, I made my mom. No not really. I went back to Wal-Mart to exchange my 11 boxes (we opened one before we realized the mistake) for 11 boxes of sugar-free. And I learned a very valuable lesson... I WILL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.

So here's what happened. Back in the old days, A few short years ago, when you walked into Wal-Mart with a return, the greeter at the doors would put a pink sticker on the item or the bag to let the Customer Service Desk know that he did see you walk in the door with it. Now they have an inventory scan gun called something that I can't remember. Dang, sidetracked. I worked at a Wal-Mart Distribution Center for 7 years in Bentonville, Arkansas and I can't remember what we called these freaking guns. Gah. Anyway, so now they have to scan each UPC code and print out a little sticker to put on each item. So the old man at the door grabbed my bag of 11 boxes and started scanning and tagging. Not only was he very slow, but he ran out of room on his little table to place the stickered vs. non-stickered boxes of Jello. So it took some extra time while he juggled them and moved them around over and over again. But finally he prevailed and I had a bag full of stickered items. Off to the service desk.

Silly me. I had assumed that basically I was gonna dump the Jello boxes out on the service desk counter and then run back to the Jello aisle and grab 11 boxes of sugar-free Jello, bring them back to the service desk for verification and then walk out the door. I was wrong. At the service desk they told me they needed my receipt. Luckily I still had it in my purse because I hadn't entered the amount into my checkbook yet. Then they went through the process of writing up a defective tag FOR EACH BOX. Now Jello is not expensive to begin with, but the ones I bought were the Great Value brand and were $0.38 apiece. So finally we had a seperate tag on each box of Jello. And she's ringing up the total so she can hand me my money back. I guess they don't do exchanges anymore, only returns. I don't know. In the meantime, because all of this has been such a lengthy process I'm bored and begin making idle chit chat with the service desk clerk.

"I'm really sorry about this. I know returning Jello is a little unusual. I just grabbed the wrong kind accidentally."
"Oh that's okay, people return food all the time. We'll just throw these away with all the rest"
"Excuse me?"
"We have to throw this Jello away. Ever since 9/11 we aren't allowed to re-shelve food items of any kind."
"Excuse me?"
"Yep, it's all going in the trash."
"I could have thrown it away and saved myself these last 20 minutes. Heck, I would have eaten the Jello myself. I could have donated it to someone who has little kids. I know plenty of peope who would have eaten that. I can't believe it's getting thrown away."
"Yep, that's our policy. Here's your $4.67."

I pocketed the money and hung my head as I walked to the gelatin aisle to pick out 11 shiney new boxes of sugar-free Jello. I can't believe they throw all food returns away. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that Jello. I mean, I understand that food can be tampered with, but.... crazy. And I do realize that by returning it and getting my money back I didn't have to spend additional money to buy the right items. But still the whole thing just really bugged me. The $4.67 was not that big of a deal. I wish I would have given the regular Jello to someone. What a crazy policy.

Ramblings... I Has Them

And off we go.

I love to lolspeak online. I don't know why, I just do. But I do not lolspeak irl. Very often.

I seem to be funnier and much more popular online than in person. If I could do everything online I could rule the world.

I'm reading a book called The Urban Hermit and it's strangely inspirational. I keep wondering if I would be able to ignore being hungry for so many days that it just faded away. As a professional fat ass it's something I've never endured for more than a few hours. But this book has me thinking about it.

When you find yourself absolutely pissed off at someone who honestly did nothing wrong, what do you do? I'm mad because I don't like a decision this person made and the affect it had on me... but this person had every right to make that decision and I'm quite sure is better off for it. There was no reason whatsoever for this person to even wonder about how it would affect anyone other than themselves. But I'm pissed to the point of being distant and cranky and they deserve to know why. Or at least I think they do. Yet I also know it's not fair of me to whine about helping themselves and not considering me.

I sure wish I could write had the courage to write like Heather Armstrong.

Last night I had a dream that I was on an accidental roadtrip (driver got us lost after a wrong turn) with a co-worker that I cannot stand and a friend that I rarely talk to. In the dream I liked the co-worker and I woke up pretty pissed off about it.

I'm completely torn on the subject of whether social networking is a positive or a negative. I believe that sites such as Facebook and the ability to text, etc. are great for keeping up with distant family members or reconnecting with old friends. It's amazing that we can instantly communicate with each other to relay news about someone's medical condition or reminders of an upcoming birthday party. And I am addicted to the internet, Facebook, text messaging and emails. But I also get sick to death of it all. I believe it's sometimes a bad thing that we don't get a break away from people. I think it causes teens to have more problems and drama than teens normally had before the age of technology. Now bickering, name calling, jealousy, etc. can continue 24/7. Back in my day kids only had to worry about stuff during the school day or at the basketball games. Once you went home you had no idea who your friends were talking to or who was secretly dating who. Today's saturation of information causes a lot of problems between people. I also think it's neat to get a bit of insight into your co-workers and learn that some of them have the same hobbies as you. Then again, it's easy to change your opinion about people once you discover they are hippies or sadists or whatever. And regardless of whether you still like them or not, who the hell wants to see all of their zodiac quizzes and pet pictures. There are times when I'm having a blast playing cards with friends and then see a Facebook update that someone else I enjoy hanging with is at the movies and I find myself kind of jealous that I'm not at the movie with them. WHY? Without this instant communication I would never have known and I'm perfectly happy where I'm already at. There's just as many bad things about constantly being in touch as there are good. I'm still torn.

I find it very frustrating that I don't have a specialty. There is not one thing I know more about than other things. That I'm aware of anyway. It's like I'm sort of a jack-of-all-trades. I dabble in everything that strikes my fancy. And I guess that makes me a fairly decent "all around" type of gal... but it also means I don't focus on one thing long enough to be an expert at anything.

I love doing jigsaw puzzles and I've been itching to do one for quite a while now but I know the cat won't allow one to be on the kitchen table. That sux. I haven't put together a puzzle in a couple of years. For the record, I hate the beginning part where you have to flip over all the peices.

I feel better now. Thanks for listening world. And by world I mean you three people that read this.

Hoar Frost (or Hoarfrost)

Whether it's all one word or two seperate ones seems to depend on who you ask. But no matter what it's called, it's beautiful. This morning, everything in the Springfield area was covered with hoar frost. Unfortunately I go to work before it's light enough to take pictures, so when the sun came up enough to reveal nature's beauty this morning I could only take pictures of what I found near the building.

We do have an overgrown empty lot behind us which looked pretty cool.



And one of the trees still had some leaves on it that showed up nicely.



There are also some cute little pine trees near the front door.



The funny part about seeing the hoar frost this morning is that yesterday morning I had never heard of it before and hadn't ever paid attention to it. But last night, I was catching up on one of my favorite blogs ( The Lope ) and he had posted pictures from a hoar frost in his area on January 31st. I thought it was so pretty and then boom! here it is in front of me today.

It's Funny How Unaware I Can Sometimes Be

Lately I have been abnormally grumpy, especially at work. And since my bestest work buddy got fired back in October (major downsizing in my office) and then my next-in-line work buddy decided to change shifts so that I no longer see her, I've just gotten grumpier and grumpier. Actually, I'm not sure grumpy is even an acurate description of it. I'm pretty much an ass lately.

One of the things I'm being an ass about is the fact that my few remaining co-workers are getting on my damn nerves. Before I go on, let me assure you... I do like these people. Or at least 99% of these people. They are perfectly nice, normal co-workers and I don't have any issues with them. Except for the 1% that I don't like of course. I think my main problem is that aside from all the extra work and the fear of losing my job... I just don't have any friends left here. And by friends I mean people who hang out at my house, invite me over to their house, and know me well enough that we can spend hours not talking about work. I don't have anyone to bitch to when I've had a bad call (or 10). No one to take breaks with or go to lunch with. You get the picture.

So anyway, my point is that I'm grouchy with the people that are left. Not on purpose, but grouchy nonetheless. And when one of them gets off a call and says "That guy sucked" or "She was a moron" (YES, we totally talk shit about you after we get off the phone) it just pisses me off that they are disturbing me by talking out loud. I roll my eyes. Why do they think I give a rat's ass about their phone calls? Who made them think we all needed to be disturbed while they attempted to be funny? See.... I told you I'm an ass these days.

I'm confessing this because today I realized that even though I dont' want to hear them, I am guilty of doing the same thing after every other phone call. And I feel bad for being so hateful to them (I've only been hateful in my mind, I don't say anything to them) and then I do the exact same thing I don't want them to do.

And I guess I just need the world to know that this is not Charlie's fault because he didn't want to be downsized... but you can totally blame Kim. She didn't have to change shifts and leave me pissed off and all alone.