I'm Still Here

I read about The Little Art Club on Katherine Thomas' blog, so I have become a follower. I hope it will inspire me to get some painting done. I want to do some Christmas cards. Katherine's drawings are awesome.

I just finished Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny. She's an award winning author whose work I love. If you're in the mood for a good mystery, pick up one of her books.

Jim is reading Battle Cry of Freedom. It's about the Civil War. For awhile, he was reading mysteries and I was reading history books and now we've switched.

We went to North Carolina to visit my mom for a few days at the end of October. I'm posting some photos. I want to paint the one with the bird. Is it some type of heron? We sure had a wonderful trip. We went to the Biltmore, toured the mansion and walked the lovely grounds. We also hiked at Chimney Rock Park - absolutely gorgeous!

Gratitude Friday or Who Was That Woman?

Who was that woman who said, "Our granddaughter is staying with us while her dad is out of town, so there will be art galore"? Yikes! We're having a blast, but we haven't made any art. We've been reading in the evenings. She has a log for her teacher and we sign off on what she reads. Last night, we read a chapter from It's Raining Cupcakes. Wednesday night, we read Little Beauty and a story about farm animals who enter a talent show. All three of us spend a lot of time laughing.

We do a kind of relay in the morning trying to get to school on time. Jim isn't in the classroom any longer, so he has had the responsibility of getting Jade to her school because his schedule is more flexible than mine. I help her get ready and drop her off to Jim on my way to school. He handles the final leg of the journey during which they stop for hot chocolate:)

I am very grateful for having the opportunity to spend time with our lovely little granddaughter.

A Lazy, Lovely, Rainy Day in Las Vegas

Yesterday and today, we had some rain and a few hours of overcast skies. It was a nice change. Up until now, we've been having temperatures in the 100s, which is unusual for this time of year.

I've been reading a novel by Julia Glass on my Kindle. Thursday night, Jim fell asleep before I did. I felt like reading, but I didn't want to wake him up by turning on the light. I used the light on my Kindle cover for real for the first time. (The times I just played with it don't count.) It gives off just enough light to illuminate the page. It's a really cool feeling to be surrounded by darkness and read with this tiny light.

I kind of fell out of blogging mode the last couple of weeks. I have to make the rounds to see what you've been up to.

A Quick Note

I haven't done any painting because I'm trying to get back in the groove of school. I have wonderful students as usual, but I've been tired each day when I get home.

The only artsy thing I've done is Jim and I went to the Harvest Festival with a friend of ours. We'd never been to it before. It was a lot of fun. They had arts, crafts, food and entertainment. It was a very relaxed atmosphere. We bought two prints by Richard Curtner. He does collages. Check out his work on the Internet. It's beautiful and it's different.

A cool thing that happened is our Kindle arrived on Friday. I played with it yesterday. It is an amazing piece of technology. You can download about 3,600 books on it. You can download magazines and newspapers, too. A lot of books are free because the copyright has expired. Newer books are cheaper than the print editions. For me, it won't replace the library or bookstore, hardcover or paperback books, but it's a wonderful supplement. It's wireless, so you can download books at the airport, etc. It will fit in your purse. It's approximately 5"x7"x 1/4". As I discover all of its secrets, I'll share them with you. I'm in love. This was supposed to be shared with Jim, but I think he'll be getting his own one of these days:)

Big Head Todd and the Monsters

"Bittersweet, sweet and bitter, bitter and sweet." The Big Head Todd lyrics perfectly capture my feelings about this time of year. It is cooling off. We have to go back to school. We will get another beautiful bloom from our roses now. The light is changing and the daylight hours are fewer.

I haven't gotten much painting done. The last one I completed may turn into a collage...
This is the first stage... I liked the sky and had fun with it, but things went downhill from there. Oh, well. It's only paper and paint. It's only paper and paint. (I don't know what the heck that black mark is. I somehow managed to save it when I was resizing the photo, but it wasn't on the original photo. Hmmm.)

I finished 2 mysteries by P. D. James last week. It was the first time I'd read anything by her. I liked both of them.

By the way, is anyone a Big Head Todd and the Monsters fan? I love their music.

Gratitude Friday - Madame Lee Pivornick

This post is eleven years late. Jim and I are very fortunate. We had fabulous teachers in high school. Madame Lee Pivornick was one of them. She taught French and English. Jim was in her French class and we both had her for senior English. She was elegant and eccentric. She wore silk , chiffon, high heels and a French twist. (This may not have been the fashion of the day, but she had her own definition of hip.) She expected excellence and good manners. She was classy. She loved Europe and the United States. She loved Las Vegas. Her enthusiasm and upbeat attitude just bubble in her writing - she wrote a book called Continental Fling. Jim and I found a copy in Special Collections at UNLV yesterday. We had so much fun going through it. It was a travel guide written in 1965. She flew from Las Vegas to New York and then cruised across the Atlantic to Europe. The captain and crew on the ship were French. Champagne was served at dinner. There is a photo of Madame on the bridge with the captain. She is steering the ship. She said that she and Madame de Gaulle are the only people besides the captain who got to steer the ship. She said that the passengers were all practicing their French with the crew and learning new words on the way over to Europe.

In addition to teaching high school, she taught French at UNLV (Nevada Southern University at the time) and she wrote travel columns for the Las Vegas Sun and the Las Vegas Review Journal. She was the French Club advisor at Las Vegas High School. She took the French Club to France in the summer.

As adults, Jim and I talked several times about contacting Madame, but we never did. Oh, how I wish we had. She died in 1999. I wish I had thanked her for getting Jim through French grammar and getting us both through Great Expectations and Macbeth. Most of all, I wish I had told her how I admire the way she lived her life. She was so special and she did exactly what she wanted to do. She was a superb teacher. I hope she was happy in her personal life. Jim and I think she must have been. She did so much traveling and in class, she never seemed to have a bad day. That has to be a sign that all parts of your life are good.

We took notes on Parisian restaurant recommendations she made in Continental Fling. Paris is on our list. When we go there, we're going to one of the restaurants she recommended and we will drink a toast to Madame.

Some of the Sweetest Faces You'll Ever See

Wild burros on the road to Bonnie Springs Ranch - aren't they gorgeous?