Just finished a phone interview with the "recruiter" at Armstrong Nursery. Hopefully I answered the questions to her satisfaction and danced around the reasons for being fired well enough that I didn't kill the job possibility. I'll know by end of Wednesday if they want a second interview and when told that they require uniforms and reasonable jewelry, no tattoos and such, all good with me. Lifting 50 lbs...that can be an issue and told her that safety comes first and if I can't lift it I will ask for help. I stressed the safety part hopefully enough.
Anyway, will see what happens. It's cloudy and cool today, was going to go to a park and maybe get more photos to turn into paintings but not the right kind of weather for what I want to do. Cloudy weather makes for uninspiring skies. White... a lot of white, not a lot of variation. It's going to be back up into the 90's on the weekend. Oh. Yay. Welcome to fall y'all.
Jon got something in his eye last night and ended up scratching his eyeball. We ended up going to the ER around 9pm to have him checked out and it was surprisingly fast. He loved the doctor, she laughed at all his antics and humor. That should be a job for him, roaming comedy relief for ER's and hospitals. It makes me happy to have him brighten the day for people in a stressful job like that.
A few days ago I was trying to listen to music on my computer and be on SL at the same time. Well my headphones were giving me fits with warbly sound and cutting in and out and I thought, 'great.. now have to find a new headset'. Jon listened and said it sounded like stereo going through mono channel. Impossible since the headset was stereo and so was the output for the computer. I have the money luckily so we went to BestBuy and found an $80 bone conduction set that seemed to fit well. Some problems with that though.. the sound was exactly the same so it wasn't my headphones, also the distance from my ears to the back of my head is smaller so they didn't sit right. I fiddled with things, finally closed out SL and listened to the music...voila! The sound channel in SL was interfering with the receiver or something going through itunes. I gave Jon the new set and he is tickled to death that he can have a small headset that doesn't go in his ears. He's got an over the ear (padded ear cover type) for listening on his computer but he can use the small set for listening on his phone.
I did a count and I've done almost 30 different paintings of photos so far. Have to convert a lot of them to jpg in order to share them in various places like here. Always looking at a photo and now knowing what some of the brush settings are capable of I can now choose different ones depending on what effect I want to have.
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| "Stumped" |
I learned about using a marker setting to get the definition on the branches I wanted. Still trying to figure out how to get the sky done in one layer so I can do the other layers. That may have to happen by doing actual painting techniques and not using an existing photo and pushing pixels around. This is one of my new favorites though and I'm also discovering some photos just won't translate well to my technique and I've actually deleted a number of photos that I thought, at the time, they were a good photo of something. Looking at all my photos with a more critical eye now. Even this painting I thin I could define some of the more foggy looking branches a bit more. My current style is 'mixed media' with watercolor being the primary medium. Could I do this with actual paints? Hell no. I still can't draw a straight line with a ruler or convert something I see to strokes from a brush. Might eventually learn...someday..before I die.
I have been and am now looking at new mobile home prices and places as well. $150k and it's a brand spanking new construction in a community spot. When I saw that an older model in place costs almost as much as a new one that could be placed in a park within 50 miles of the manufacturer (meaning free moving cost) AND includes grading the site and the whole 'Development package' (foundation, hooking up, block skirting, all the jazz)... yes please. Only thing needed is a washer and dryer, kitchen appliances are included... now if I had something for a down payment... I'm doing all my homework and will continue to monitor the market so I know what to do when the time comes. Shooting for no more than $200k by the time we have the money, there won't be anything to buy in our budget.
IF I get this job AND hold it down for 3 years, investing in a 401k as well... there's another tidy sum for a retirement fund. I have a Credit Karma savings account that now, with the extra money on unemployment, I'm socking away $40 a week. It had sat at $30 and change for about a year now and yes it earns interest but the rate has continued to drop so hopefully with interest this will have about $3k after a year. Without interest socking away $40 gets about $2k (40x52 weeks) right now interest is sitting at .01 a month. Whoopdee do but that was based on my previous balance. Interest is based on the market I know but somehow I figure they lower it if you don't have an active account to the lowest possible amount. Will see what happens.
Over the weekend, the neighbors renting behind the fence had a bounce house Saturday and Sunday..kids screeching and laughing and dogs barking for hours. The dogs were on our side of the house while the bouncy was in the front yard. I was hearing it all Saturday and most of Sunday. I love seeing kids play and that's all well and good but the weather was good so I didn't want to close the window. It's all very very quiet now and I love it.
Looks like it's going to rain, wind has come up and the sky is flat white but slightly puffy cloud looking so here's hoping. The Northwest is being hammered by a 'bomb cyclone' with feet of water dumping on Norther CA up the coast into Canada. As long as it dumps snow on the Sierras that will help with our drought. Cool weather is nice. I like that now, the change in the weather and all that.
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| It's FALL! |
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