Wexford Girl

I Miss Wexford

At this time of year I miss Wexford, my home town in the south-east corner of Ireland. Christmas and New Year's Eve are such fun there. The pubs are packed, the streets are crowded, and if you drop in on anyone for a visit, a glass of whiskey is immediately pressed into your hand, even if it's only 10:00 AM. Returning home for Christmas the first few years I was in America was always fun because I would bump into pretty much everyone I was at school with walking along the main street. Now, I'm not sure I would recognize most of them, although I do have a handful of good friends left in Ireland.

My sister Liz always has a New Year's Eve party, and this year the theme is the eighties. She just called to tell me that they raided my old portfolios from art school at my parents' house and stuck my 20-year-old artwork all over the house because it all looked "so eighties." 

Three of the kids are going as Ghostbusters and the 7-month-old will be a little ghost. Liz is going as "Borderline"-era Madonna. Her husband Dave was going to go as Jaws until he realized that the movie was made in 1975, so now he's wearing the combat jacket he got for being on the crew of Saving Private Ryan (The beach scenes were filmed in Wexford) and going as Charlie Sheen in Platoon. My brother Michael's costume is a big secret, but apparently there was a lot of shopping on eBay involved.

Can't wait to see the pictures!

Limbo Week

The week between Christmas and New Years is always a bit of a glum week for me. The minute Christmas is over, I am tired of all the decor, the Christmas trees, lights, etc. What looked magical one day before is now just stuff I'm sick of.

And New Year's eve is more often than not a disappointing evening. A few years we've had a party and that's fun, but if you go out, the driving and not being able to drink, or worse, the drinking and trying to get a cab, is not my idea of a good time. But the alternative is to stay home, order pizza, go to bed at 11:00, and feel lame.

This year, however, I am excited about New Year's eve. We made an impulse decision last week to get tickets to fly up to Portland and spend it with Amy and Randy. They've rallied all their friends and a bunch of us are going out for dinner, then back to the house for cocktails and slumber party. And Randy, who is an amazing cook, has planned a lavish brunch on New Year's day.

This may become a habit, getting out of town for the New Year. I am very excited about it!

Bathroom Facelift

Eric is taking this week off, but I have to work. His project this week is painting the bathroom. It used to be pale swimming-pool blue, with a painted mural of cherry blossoms: brown branches, white and pink blossoms. But over the four years we've lived in our house, the bathroom paint job has started to peel a little bit. Maybe we didn't use the paint that's supposed to withstand bathroom condensation.

So we recently decided that a new bathroom color scheme was in order. Eric was inspired by one of my little paintings - multicolored stripes on a brown background. Yesterday I came home to find the swimming-pool blue gone, the cherry blossoms buried, and the bathroom a rich shade of chocolate brown. It looks good but the darker color will take a bit of getting used to.

Once he gives it one more coat, we'll let it dry for a couple of days, then paint the stripes vertically, ranging from one to two inches or so in width. Then we'll have a new bathroom!

Here's the original little painting.

The Art of Christmas

Now it's Boxing Day, as it's known in the UK, or St. Stephen's Day, as it's called in Ireland: The day after Christmas, when everyone goes to the pub and gets fluthered. Yesterday was a nice day. Eric and I had waffles and champagne in the morning while exchanging gifts and then spent the afternoon at his sister's house in the East Bay.

Eric gave me the best present ever - a Rex Ray collage! I was blown away. It's just gorgeous, and I'm thrilled to finally own one. He really knows me and listens to me, and I feel very lucky. I got him a Leatherman all-in-one tool, Diesel jeans, and a Thomas Pink shirt. There was also something else that didn't make it here in time from Amazon, which he will get tomorrow.

We have a spot picked out for our new art, but that spot is where the Christmas tree is right now. I'll take a picture of it on our wall when we have it rightfully installed. Until then, here is the official shot as shown on the Velocity Art & Design Web site. Yeay! It's mine!

Allison's Art Purchase

Last night, I met my friend Allison at The Slanted Door in the Ferry Building for a Christmas cocktail and chat. It was great to see her and we had a lovely time. She gave me a stunning hand-embroidered vintage linen handkerchief. It's so delicate and pretty. I gave her a glass serving platter with Japanese writing on it, because she competed in a karate competition in Japan and it made me think of her.

While we were chatting she said that this blog exposed her to the work of Kelly Tunstall, whom I've raved about before. So when we were leaving I suggested that we go to the chocolate store in the Ferry Building, Recchiuti, that carries a line of Kelly-designed chocolates. The store was closed, but we pressed our faces up against the security gate and spied a little Kelly Tunstall painting. It's was such a pretty painting and the woman in it even looked a little like Allison. She loved it. We both did.  We walked out in the rain to catch a cab deciding that it was probably too expensive. But oh! Wasn't it gorgeous?

Well, Allison just called me and she's driving home with the painting right now! She thought about it all last night, and today went back to the chocolate store to inquire about it. It was affordable, although not cheap, but for some reason the store didn't have the authority to sell it without Kelly's say-so, so next thing you know, they called Kelly and Allison finds heself chatting to her on the phone about buying the art. Apparently she's very lovely and down to earth. Allison is thrilled with her purchase.

Congratulations Allison, I'm so happy to have played a tiny part in this art transaction!

And for some of Kelly's artwork that's less of an investment but has more calories:

iPod Love

I'm so excited! I have a new black video iPod. My little pink mini bit the dust. It had a sad iPod face icon and made a whiny clicky noise when I held it up to my ear. Not a good sign.

At the Apple store they give you 10% off a new iPod when you turn in an iPod corpse, and I had a $20 gift card for Apple too, so I decided to upgrade. (Actually Eric did all this for me when he was at the mall today, calling me and talking me though the process. Thanks sweetie!)

I am in the process of downloading an episode of Lost that I missed. The one where the two sides of the island meet up again and Kate sees Sawyer, and that sweet older African American woman sees her dear husband who she was sure was still alive. I hear it's a tear-jerker so I'm getting it for two bucks and I'll weep all the way in to work tomorrow on the bus!

Fermat for Matt

It's a drizzly day here in San Francisco. Time to pop out for an eggnog latte soon I think. Mmm!

I think I am fairly well prepared for Christmas. I went to Borders last night to get the final piece for our 21-year old nephew, Matt. it's this book. I read it about 8 years ago and loved it. I also sent it (and Simon Singh's second book) to my brother Michael for Christmas.

Fermat's Enigma is one of my favorite books, and I would get it for anyone if I thought they would enjoy it. Michael is a computer programmer, and Matt is in college studying computer science, so they are both probably more likely than most people to get excited by mathematical stuff. Although I don't have a math or science background and I found the book to be a page turner - full of intrigue, suspense, and the race to solve a mystery that baffled mathematicians for three centuries.

Here is a stamp I found from the Czech Republic about Fermat's last theorem. The graphic is a bit misleading, but I love that they made a stamp about it:

Grumpy Charles

Being the guest artist on Amy's art sale was a lot of fun. I sold many paintings. As expected, the Mexican Wrestlers were popular, but the first one to sell was actually one I contemplated not putting in to the sale at all. It was an owl I named Charles. My first owl, and I thought he looked grumpy and strange, but it was the first one to go! There's something for everyone.

Yesterday we had a spectacular storm in the morning and then we were without power for eight hours. So I couldn't catch up on painting orders because it was dusk from about noon it seemed. Nick and Desiree and their two little girls, Belle and Ella came over and we had a lovely day. Eric made Cassoulet (luckily we could still cook) and we ate it by candlelight. Then we were listening to the house across the street playing the piano and singing. How often do you hear any sounds float across the street in our TV and DVD-filled world? It was nice.

Belle is so funny. She said of the people singing across the street, "they are so high spirited." She's seven! And when I gave her some cassoulet at dinner to try (the girls had chicken noodle soup) she said to me quietly, "it might be just me but I don't care for it. I don't want to hurt Eric's feelings though."

Pecas and Besito

I just finished the two Mexican wrestlers for the ReadyMade order. I like them! Here's a peek.

Painting Like Mad

Every morning I say to Eric as we're heading out the door to work, "I wish I could stay home and paint all day." It is hard for me to leave all day and do something else. I'm having such fun with it right now.

I sold about 10 paintings to people at work over the last week, and I'm going to be Amy's guest artist for her online sale on Friday, so I'm doing a lot of Mexican wrestlers; they are still the big sellers.

I just got an order for two paintings, one each of a male and a female wrestler. It was from a guy who had seen me at the ReadyMade show and he's getting them as a gift for his wife. He wants me to incorporate the words "pecas" and "besito" into the paintings. I looked them up on Babelfish and they mean "freckles" and "little kisses" in Spanish. Cute!