Tools for my Muse

I am not much of a musician, and I am only a mediocre designer, I would never call myself and artist and lately I am finding that fact hard to reconcile. When I was younger, that is all I wanted to do, was to paint and write and draw. I did well in high school art class, I won some ribbons and even a best of show one year. I competed in the county fair and placed 3ed with an honorable mention. I was even accepted to a very prestigious art college in San Francisco when I was 17. Alas, the fancy art school was way to expensive to attend and I did not have the motivation to make it happen. Since then I have had the odd artistic renaissance every 10 years or so. I will dust off the brushes and the paints, knock the rust off of my decaying skills and try to do a serious work of art. It has been over a decade this time since I did a piece of art work I was truly proud of.

I do most of my work on the computer now, and I find that I am the jack of all trades and the master of none. I am a web designer, meaning I can manipulate pixels and make a cool logo or design. I have a knack for getting dramatic colors, but I also realize I am not as skilled as I could be. I know HTML and some programming languages, I can manage a project and I know how to deal with customers. All of this has served me well enough being self employed but it leaves me wanting more.

I have been told that it is a rare person that can design, write content, program, and construct the HTML on a web site while also leading the project, managing the help and dealing with the customer. Yet I take little pride in this skill set, I would rather be very, very good at one thing. I suppose now that I am 41 I long to be an expert at something. Every day I learn something else about my graphic program or I figure out another line of code. At this rate I will be 60 before I am truly excellent at either.

I bought a nifty tool not long ago, I have already used it several times to solve a graphics problem I was having. It is a Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet. An input device that allows me much more control than a mouse does. This thing is very powerful and instantly all of the possibilities jumped into my head. Of course it takes time and practice to master, and it works great with a piece of software I do not understand very well (yet). I am hoping that this new tool will inspire me to learn what I have to and practice more.

Then there is the creativity issue, I do not feel very creative any more. I am not sure how to get it back, perhaps to immerse myself in art and view others creativity and hope some rubs off on me. I once read a book titled "My Name Is Asher Lev" and while I do not remember all of the plot, at least part of it dealt with art vs. illustration. A work of art should communicate something to the viewer (or reader or listener etc.). An artist has the ability to feel something and make that feeling come through in his art. I realized I was just an illustrator mostly. I could draw the lines, but I seldom came up with emotion. What I do on the computer has all been done before, and I copy a technique or method that someone else created.

I like to play my guitar, I do not claim to be very good at it, but I love to sit and strum. One of my favorite things is to drink beer with a group of friends and try to jam on some old classics. Once again though, I am only playing the chords someone else put together. In any case, I just put a Martin D18 in "Lay Away" at my favorite music store. Someday soon I will have an amazing instrument with which to play my sad 12 chords and scattered finger picking. It is fortunate that I enjoy collecting guitars as much as I do playing them. Daisy says when I bring this one home I have to sacrifice an older one. This I will do, gladly, to have the D18 but it would have made way more sense to learn to play the old beater I have first then get the awesome git fiddle.

My toys and my tools, my muse should be pretty occupied for a long time to come. If only she would wake up and give me a new vision to execute, instead of always being what has gone before.

The Cat Hasn't Moved

My cat hasn't moved all day. Good old Brinkley the kitty has found a nice spot directly on top of my daughters sweater that is laying on the bed, to sleep the entire day. This is not unusual behavior for a cat, I know cats sleep 80% of their lives. It must be nice, to go eat when you want any time of day or night, to have an unlimited supply of fresh water, then to get rubbed by your humans and sleep. Today the cat has just laid around from dawn till late evening. He sometimes gets excited at night, being a nocturnal creature by nature and all, but the setting sun has had no effect on him this day. No, he is just as lazy now as he was early this morning. Sleeping or laying on the same spot for hours on end. The three toed sloth doesn't move much either, here is some data regarding one of the laziest animals on earth (besides the man you know who behaves similarly on Sundays.) :

..Sloths are among the most somnolent animals, sleeping from 15 to 18 hours each day. They are particularly partial to nesting in the crowns of palm trees where they can camouflage as coconuts. They come to the ground to urinate and defecate only about once a week...

I assure you, Brinkley defecates more often than a Sloth but really doesn't move much more. Oh sure, occasionally he gets in the mood to play, but being a dotted upon house cat, he sleeps at least as much as the typical Sloth. Every once in a while, I have one of those weekend days when I get out of bed in the morning then go take a nap, or get up and camp on the sofa for a snooze. I imagine this is what a Sloth does for a living. The cat recently got up from his chosen spot for the day (on a piece of clothing) and promptly laid down on the floor. Oh the exhaustion he must be feeling!

If I were of a mind to believe in re-incarnation I would likely be a house cat. There cannot be a better life out there for any of God's creatures. I mean what could be better than a regimen of eating, sleeping, getting affection, sleeping some more then eating?

A cats life must be hours upon hours of blissful sleep punctuated by moments of delicious food and love from the humans. Oh what a hard life.

As a human male living with a partner of the opposite sex, I am certainly not entitled to the same privileges as the cat, if I slept all day and did nothing all the time, every day, I would not be welcome here anymore. The cat gets a pass because he doesn't have opposable thumbs. The cat has no expectation placed upon him. The cat will never be a beast of burden, nor be expected to do the laundry.

The cat truly has it made.

This is just over half way to my goal of posting 30 times in 30 days.

The Best I Can Manage Tonight

The reason why I am so late and this blog is so short.
Daisy's Blogger Redesign!

Snow Day

Praying for a level 3 Snow Emergency
Parts of Ohio are about to get slammed with winter weather. It is looking like my part of Ohio will only be touched by winter weather. All season, I have seen storms come up and dump snow and ice to the west of where I am but only graze my county. This has meant long commutes on slippery roads that were slow but passable, and sure enough I made it to work (albeit late).
Our company has a policy about snow days, if the local authorities declare a "level 3" (meaning the sheriffs department doesn't want you on the road) then we are exempt from work and do not have to drag our frozen body's out to the frozen car and slog to the office.

The radar echo's are not looking so good (if one wants a snowy mess) most of the precipitation is south and west of here (again). One can hope though, that by some fluke of nature a ton of snow has fallen over night and I can just go back to bed in the morning.

Even grown ups want a snow day once in awhile.

This is day 7 of my ambitious plan to blog 30 times in 30 days.

Chains to nowhere

Clear back in the early spring, one of the first really warm days actually, Daisy and I were hanging out in her as yet unfinished guest room, I was sipping a beer and she was painting trim around the walls. I was catching a decent buzz and she was happy and just finishing up her painting when the phone rings. Daisy talks to the person on the other line, hangs up and suddenly exclaims that we have a visitor arriving at 6:00 PM. I was a little confused and since it was nearly that time already I raised an eyebrow and waited for the explanation. I sort of had to fish it out of her, while she cleaned up and hurried about in anticipation of the mystery visitors arrival.
It turns out that sometime back she was pressured into accepting a sales call from some company that sells air purifiers. In return for her time, she gets to choose the fabulous vacation of her choice for FREE! Apparently there was no purchase required. The phone call was from the sales dude, having got faulty instructions and needed to confirm the address. While he was on his way back across town, Daisy informed me that I get to deal with him. Oh yay I though, can I be rude? May I mock him? No, no be nice and then get rid of him.
The door bell rings and I answer the door, expecting a man in a suit and tie but am instead greeted by a tall, lanky individual with bright red hair and a flaming red goatee. The gentleman was dressed in a shirt that had what looked like burn holes in it and a pair of jeans and cowboy boots. The over all image was of some redneck nerd gone hormonal.
I invite him in, with some trepidation mind you, as he smiles (I dont think all the teeth were there) and shakes my hand. Daisy comes out of the living room and we gather in the kitchen. I am bemused at his appearance and notice the guy is wearing one of those wallet chains. You know, that emblem of shitkickers everywhere, the obligatory biker / redneck / piercing crowd fashion accessory that doubles as pick pocket prevention.
He starts in with the small talk and tosses a beat up brochure on the counter, the one with a stunning array of spectacular and exotic vacation destinations. He proudly says we are entitled to a vacation and we should choose one right now before we go any further. Daisy, chooses one, just randomly after we make a few jokes about it. With that out of the way our redneck salesman must be feeling encouraged because he becomes animated and starts winding up for the pitch. No sooner had the hot air started blowing and he had barely opened his case, Daisy asks him how long this was going to take. He derailed pretty quick and started to deflect the question but Daisy wouldn't let him. He states that the presentation will take about 2 hours.
As if that weren't enough, Daisy starts asking what the product is and how much. Oh our wallet chain wearing salesman didnt like that at all and Daisy was wielding Occam's Razor with the skill of a butcher.
Finally he breaks down, spills the price, gets told no, and is being massaged out the door. He didnt even get his case open. The conversation briefly turns into a question and answer session about him. I ask if he makes any money selling these things door to door, and how I cannot believe people still make a living at this sort of selling. They dont apparently, or else he would have had on better clothing. However there is that chain guarding his wallet, it could be it is stufffed with cash from all the $3000.00 air purifiers he has sold, right before dinner time, in someones living room.
Or it could be that he just didnt want to leave the house without his favorite fashion accessory, proudly (and loudly) proclaiming the quality of his character, convincing us right away that he and his company can be trusted and we should get out the check book right then and there. If the check made it past the closest state lottery outlet, it sure enough would have been safe in that wallet.

Beer and Bait Drive Through

There was once a time in my life when I thought fishing was the finest leisure activity known to man. I could write a tome on how excited I got when it was time to go fishing, how amazing the feeling was when some fish ate the bait on my hook and made a run for freedom, only to be thwarted by a thin strand of monofiliment and my will to bring this animal to land. I was addicted to the art and sport of fishing. When I was a younger man, age 12 through 17, I was a fishing fool. Every day the sun shone, no matter what the season, I was likely on the creek bank or plying a local farm pond hunting all of ichthyarchy.
Yes, I was going to be a pro bass fisherman and enter tournaments, I was going to get a sponsor and a fancy bass boat and make my living as a sport fisherman. I took it all very seriously back then, and while I knew it was unlikely that I would ever succeed as such a thing, it was fun to aspire to a goal.


Of course, life got in the way of such aspirations. I got older, married, had children, had to work for a living, but still I managed to wet a line from time to time. After awhile "fishing" read "drinking" as it became an excuse to fill a cooler with beer and take off in the car with a cold one between my legs and the windows open, rock and roll on the radio. There was nothing better than escaping the domestic life at home than to arrive at some pool of water and drink beer while casting about for my submarine prey. In those days, often was the time all I caught was a buzz, and that was enough.


Eventually, I stopped even pretending to be a fisherman, summers past by and I didnt even wet my line once. I forgot the rush of my invisible quarry, hidden till the last moment, biting the lure in a violent and sudden fury. The pull on the line as an easy troll hit a solid, living force determined not to surface. I forgot the peace of spending time at waters edge, the natural beauty and stillness, interrupted only by the song of crickets and the drone of bull frogs. I forgot the serenity I gained from fishing, even if I got nary a nibble, the act of being by the water and quietly hunting fish was sufficient to ground me for awhile, to calm my nerves and make me think of the more important things. When fishing, there are often long blocks of time where thinking is all there is to do.


So today it has been 12 years or more since I have been fishing, longer than that since I was serious about it. Then for no other reason than there was nothing better to do one afternoon, my girlfriend asked if I would like to go fishing at her fathers pond. We left without tackle or even a rod, I was assured her father had gear I could borrow. Sure enough the man had some decent lures and a good rod and reel that he allowed me to use. We arrived at the pond, it is beautiful, surrounded by the hills of south central Ohio and as clear and clean as any spring fed lake can be. In the brilliant sunshine, totally in love with my girl, a slight breeze blowing and a sky an endless vault of Corillian blue, I tossed out a lure and brought her back like I had done so many times. The first cast or two yielded nothing, but the third got a "hit" where some underwater life had actually thought about eating my lure. Eight or ten casts later I had a fish on my line, a juvenile bass came up, he was small and easy to catch, but I was experiencing a re-awakening, a long lost love had come back into my life. I let the fish go, and started again, by the end of the afternoon I had caught over a dozen small fish and one nice one. The bigger bass was about 18 inches and went 2 lbs. Not a leviathan by any means but fun as hell to catch and bring in.
It is funny how a small event can mold and shape ones future. I have since purchased new tackle, cleaned my old, nasty tackle box and bought a new rod and reel. I am now outfitted to fish anywhere any time. I do not know if I will actually find the time to fish regularly, but I hope I do.


My sweetie suggested we buy my new tackle at a small sporting goods store in town. She drove me to the spot and I knew I loved it the moment I saw the place. First off, there were beer signs in the windows. This is always a good sign, meaning the proprietors understand that fishing often means drinking. We walk inside and it smells like a bait store, the odor of a live minnow tank and a refrigerator full of nightcrawlers, overtones of bagged catfish bait and the lingering hint of burly, stinky, drunk cat fishermen that just left. I hit the wall of lures and started making selections. I needed some chartreuse rubber worms and I wanted a selection of Rooster Tails. It was funny how I remembered what kind of artificial bait I needed. I decided to purchase a new rod and reel, I got a nice combo for only $20.00 and thought it was funny how the same rig would have been over a hundo back in the day.


A store where one can drive through and buy bait and beer is a classic combo. I am a big fan of one stop shopping. I remember outfitting for a fishing trip, it always included a stop at the bait store and then another stop at the drive through. Here I could do it all at once, re-fill the cooler with beer, ice it down, get night crawlers and chicken liver, then drive to the lake and enjoy.
The advantages of living with the rednecks in rural Ohio are few, but one has to admit, beer and bait from the safety and convenience of the car is a rare and beautiful thing. I can hardly wait to be beer drinking and bass fishing again. My neck may be a little red after all.

The Devil and My Muse.

Oh look! He changed his blog design again! Well this time for real, I hope you like it as I sure do. It is late and I am going to sign off, but maybe now I am inspired enough to write in this thing more often and create some decent content for your enjoyment and my catharsis.
I am still figuring out the code in the blogger template but at least now it looks like a web designer owns this blog. Enjoy.

Canned Cheese and Whiskey

I have been fortunate enough in my life to have formed some very close and binding friendships. While I do not have hundreds of friends, maybe not even dozens, the ones I have are exceptionally dear to me. I am part of two groups of friends, one set from my highschool and college days and another set of more recent aquaintances culled from work, social interactions, and through other friends. The first set of friends and I share a history that spans some 25 years. These men and I stay in touch, travel across the country to see each other and generally keep up with each others lives. Alas, most of the group from years ago have moved away and made lives for themselves in diverse parts of the world, San Fransisco, Dallas, etc. Ironically I was the only one not from around this corner of the rural midwest, having arrived in "BFE Ohio" when I was 11 years old, yet I am the only one still here. One of these men, Chris, was gone from my life for nearly 10 years in the 80's and 90's, I was married, he had his own small business and we did not interact much. Then, suddenly in 2000 he called and said he was back in my little corner of Ohio, tucked into the cornfields, and we should get together.

The friendship from the old days blossomed anew and we became closer than ever. We spent a great deal of time together, playing guitar, discussing politics and history (he has a degree in history, I have years of watching the history channel and reading civil war books), we would go to bars together and be each others wing man. He was there for me when I went through a brutal break up with my finace. He held my hand and listened to me cry, he patiently let me express my anger, heartbreak and fear. He helped me to keep it together and made sure I made it home safely after drinking myself into oblivion in an effort to kill the pain.

I was there for him when he needed a break from the country life he was living on the family farm. I drove him where he needed to go since he doesnt drive. I was there for him as much as I could, and opportunity allowed. We are friends, the best kind of friends, like brothers. There is a quiet love between us, the kind that men have for each other and is usually subdued and runs like a deep river underground, not overt, but love nontheless.

Chris recently got a job as media support for an alternative news organization that concerns itself primarily with affairs in central and south America. Thus, last week, he got on a jet and left for Mexico, exact location undisclosed. I don't even know when I will hear from him again, let alone when he might be home. This sort of adventure is exactly what he likes to do, he loves the culture and people of the latin states, and has often travelled there. He speaks Spanish well and he will be fine, it is good for him.

At least in theory it is good for him, since journalists for this organization have been harrassed, beaten, detained, but fortunately never shot or made to vanish. I have had some concerns regarding the fact that the job could be dangerous, but I love him, so I support his decision, but I dont have to think it is a great idea. Mostly I am just unhappy becuase he is gone agian, I lost him once, and find myself generally unwilling to let him go.

We got together for a last visit one night not long ago, it was classic Phresh and Chris, just like old times. After some discussion on how we should spend the evening, we decided it would be a good idea to load up on snacks, like an adolescent slumber party. We came home with chips, crackers, canned cheese (I love ez cheeze), artichoke dip, pizza rolls, and plenty of ice. It so happened that I was nearly out of beer, and money, so the only intoxicating beverage in the house was a bottle of Kentucky burbon. No problem, I like burbon and coke, the night began. We laughed and talked and got stoned on whiskey. We played our guitars and listened to music till the early morning hours. The canned cheese was a big hit, and we happily munched on pizza rolls and chips all the while gamboling joyously in the warm glow of friendship. It was a good time and the last such time for the forseeable future.

Memory of this night will carry me till I see him again. He will get busy working and so will I, time will pass quickly, too quickly and one day we will both be older, but it will be like no time has passed at all, we will still be close friends as if he never went away. I am going to miss him, I miss him already, but if he survives the Mexican jungle and the dangerous assignments, he will be home someday. I hope he knows I am thinking about him.