Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which Today Was Rough

So after yesterday's ridiculous heat, I was excited that today would be in the 70s instead of the 80s. I was even looking forward to the idea of a rainy day inside, since we were supposed to get thunderstorms (which we did... eventually).

Unfortunately, pretty much as soon as I started to go to bed, someone got into an accident and knocked out power to my block.

At 1:20AM or so.

For seven. Hours.

Seven.

In the first hour or two, we still had internet, so I reported the outage to the power company (which is owned by Spain for some stupid reason... a country over 3200 miles (5150km) away from me.

The linemen are all great, though. They're local folks and they do their best with what they're given.

It's not their fault that the power was out for 7 hours.

Somehow, the freezer stayed 100% cold, though! When I checked after the power came back on, yeah the strawberry cheesecake ice cream was soft, but the lemonade bars were still frozen solid.

I don't do well when there's a crisis going on like the power being out. I prefer to know what's up, and I largely lose the ability to find out what's up when I don't have reliable internet access.

So I had very little idea what was going on, when the power would be back, etc. Especially since when the power first went out after 1, the outage map said it'd be back by 3:45AM...

I texted my folks at 6AM because they were out of town, let them know the fridge would probably be a loss and that the power was still out. Apparently the outage map had updated with a new time, which my dad relayed to me via text: 9AM

Tomorrow.

Uh...

Yeah I just about lost my mind. I don't like power outages - I'm afraid of the dark (my eyes and brain really like making shapes in the shadows...)

He'd misread the listing because his phone still thought it was the 26th. It was due back buy 9am today.

And it came back at 8:22AM.

Which I know.

Because I stayed up the whole night.

I have only slept about 20 minutes so far.  It's uh... It's a low-brain day.

So what did I do during the 7 hours of outage?

The first thing I did was make sure there was a flashlight near me. Then I snagged the book I've been reading - "Everybody Knows" by Jordan Harper.

I read the last two thirds of the book by flashlight light with a cat digging into my lap while my neighbors' generator hummed, distant machinery beeped, the train horn wailed, etc.

I finished the book...

Go read it. It's heavy, it's fast, it's hard-hitting and harder-nosed. Neon noir grit lit at its finest.

Made me set the book down mid-read and cuss at the author (in an "I'm so jealous of how well written this is! How dare you be so masterful!" way) twice.

After the book, I had plenty of time - it was only just past 4 when I was done with the book, so I went down to the kitchen, lit the stove with a lighter, made coffee without cream, and grabbed my sketchbook.

I worked out a little sketch in pencil.

the finished sketch, taken under the light of a Maglight

Once I finished the sketch, I puttered around the house before carrying the sketchpad upstairs and running primary inks with my Pigma Micron brush pen.

I really liked the way the inks looked at this stage and decided not to do colors

With the primary inks done, I set it aside, did some digging around for a non-refrigerated breakfast (pretzels, it turned out). Finally, I gathered a few more things - the sweater I'm frogging into yarn, a pair of shorts I wanted to try repairing, my sewing kit, my yarn ball winder - and brought them down to the living room, where there was more space & light. Then I took another pass at the drawing with the brush pen!

"Power Outage Again!"; ink on watercolor paper; 2023
[DEDBERT]

Once I was done drawing and inking, I set my art aside and took out the sweater, which started coming apart even better. From one section of buttonhole/chest piece and one section of bottom-ribbing, I ended up with three balls of yarn!

Which I then set aside because I was ready for a nap.

I am beat, guys. I'm probably just gonna try to go to sleep.

I hope you all had productive art weeks!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC