Pain.

The Crunchmaster 3000 has officially kicked my ass.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with said machine it is the ab-crunch machine from hell.
There is no way for me to describe this machine and I am not even going to attempt it. Just know that if you see a machine by this name walk away and don't look back.

I feel like I have gotten my ass kicked by Bruce Lee. I can't bend over. I can't laugh. I can't sneeze without feeling every muscle in my stomach. It hurts.

But those of you that know me well, know that I will probably use this machine again. Because when something kicks my ass this hard, it must work. Right?

Anyway. My first day at OCC started yesterday. I had my beginning digital photography class. I am so excited about this class. I get to learn about our new camera. The ins and outs. I also get to learn the ins and outs of Photoshop. I am really excited to learn this program. There is so much to learn and do. I think overall I am just happy to be learning again. There is something about being in a classroom and learning something new and useful that makes me all excited.

I am also excited over the fact that I have more to talk to Mike about other than Etsy and Chloe.

Tonight I have my advertising class. I am really worried about presentations. I know we are going to have presentations. It's an advertising class. That's what advertisers do. They present. I hate presenting. I don't want to think about it. My stomach hurts enough as it is.

Then Wednesday is my Graphic Design class. This is the class I am really looking forward to.
I had to buy my books last night. I haven't bought books for school in years. I couldn't believe how much they cost. My ad book alone cost 131.00 dollars. And that was used! Books should be free...

I am trying to get work done for my show in February for Pink Milk Studio in Ohio. Things are slow going right now. I just can't seem to find anything that I want to paint...I have to come up with something soon....I'm starting to run out of time. It's just so hard for me to be inspired here.
Oh well. Something will come. I hope.

Cloudy Grey Skies

Ouch.
My body hates me after my work out yesterday. Most notably my arms. I am in pain. It hurts to buckle my safety belt. It hurts to turn the wheel of my truck. Ouch. Other than that I am good. I think I'm getting a cold. It doesn't help that the heat in the apartment building is not working. It is either 90 degrees in here, or what feels like 45 degrees right now. It's not freezing, but it's not warm and toasty either. Hopefully someone will be here tomorrow to fix it.

I am trying to get up the motivation and inspiration to work right now. I have several panels that I am priming right now, but no ideas to get me started. This is the hardest part of being an artist. Finding inspiration and motivation to get working.

A fellow artist, Megan Chapman, has a great blog that I just read this morning on this very topic. Her blog deals with living and working as an artist. The ups and downs and she has a lot of good advice for artists starting out and ways to promote yourself. I love reading her blog. It reminds me that there are artists out there that have the same issues that I do. As painter/printmaker almost all of my work is done solo, as with most artists. You tend to spend most of your time by yourself and if you're an artist like me you tend to shut yourself in. Yeah, I don't get out much...

Anyway, Megan's blog is awesome, especially if you are looking for some inspiration. She is an amazing painter and I would love to her work in person one day :) I don't know how to paste pictures from other websites right now. Hopefully I can figure it out so that I can post some of her images here. But you can see some of her work on her blog.

http://meganchapman.blogspot.com/

On a side note. For those of you interested in my wedding plans...mostly Kim and Angie.....
I have decided to start a wedding blog. I haven't started it yet, but that is one of my goals for today. I have a lot of really good ideas, but I would love to hear any ideas from you two. I'll keep you posted! Don't you just love the internet?

Alright. Mikey is done in the studio and I need to go pick him up.

Saturday

So today we got to go to the Royal Oak Farmers market. It is one of my favorite things about living here. Kinda one of my only anyway. Now, we had Farmer's Markets in Portland. We had a lot actually, but this one is much better. Everything is sooooo cheap. Really. We never really went to Farmer's Markets in Portland because they were almost always more expensive than even the local grocery store we worked at. Plus we got a 20% discount there...Tomatoes at our farmers markets were like 3.99 lb, and fresh basil was 2.99. It never really made any sense to us either. We figured that if you were buying direct from the farmer, shouldn't it be cheaper? Guess not.
However, here it's very inexpensive. You can get a quart of tomatoes for 2.00, and basil is 1.50. You can get a basket of beans for 2.00, and leaks are .75. It's pretty cool. You can also get farm fresh chicken for $1.75 lb, and ground beef for $3.50. That might seem a bit spendy, but it's pasture feed and it's from a local farmer.

I am all about supporting local farms. There has been all this hype about buying organic, but really buying local is the way to go. If you can get both that's even better, but supporting your local farmer and saving as many rescources as you can is so much better.

So that's what I did today. Oh, and I tried to paint. Things aren't going to well in that department. I'm really stuck...it will come. I think I am going to make a bunch of little paintings and get some ideas out first. Hopefully it will help me move past this bump.