Journal Entries by group; refer to date for updates
• Poland Trip - Summer 2006 last update September 3, 2006
  
• Oakland House - Summer 2005 (123456) last update October 1, 2005
  
• Oakland House - Summer 2006 (123) last update December 1, 2006

Gotta love these fakes on ebay. Here is a John Gamble painting that has all the classic indications of being a fraud. On top of that the painting isn't even close to the same technically. I tried reporting it to ebay, but they've changed some things and don't seem to care as long as they get their cut.

I closed my ebay store, but will be auctioning off some toys I had when I was a kid over the next couple weeks. There's really nothing super great since I decided to keep the lego collection.

I still havent decided what to do with fun Maine images. There really aren't enough from my last trip. Rodrick sent me a link to a video site that has nearly 30 episodes of assorted David Attenbourough documentaries. Normally I never watch TV, but I've found myself completely immersed in these shows. I secretly want David to be my hero it seems. If you notice I'm not painting as much as I should blame Rodrick!

Speaking of Rodrick we are going to do the preliminary work for my upcoming large painting this Wednesday which will be my biggest work yet and it will be composed of everything I know technically. Hmm... I wonder where I'm going to work on it as my easel won't hold a canvas that big.

For geography buffs and clarity - Serbia and Montenegro are two countries now; down in my journal I mentioned them as being one country which at the time was incorrect, but just 2 months prior they were one.

Back from Maine; its terrible. I bought a couple postcards on Monhegan and those will get sent out soon. I also made my own Cincinnati postcard I'll be sending out soon too as a joke. see below

Later in the week I'll add some photos of Maine to the journal. I'm undecided if I want to add a link above like the other years, but we'll see. I really didn't stay long enough or get to know the staff enough to have something to make a link for, but I wish I did.

Sorry I haven't been updating my journal page much. I'm in the middle of working on and finishing my TEFL course and haven't been adventuring much. Later in June I plan to stop in Maine for a week or two. My departure for residense in Poland is scheduled for Mid-late September and I'll be busy with organizing that.

Whats better than 1 model? Two models. See picture below to get an idea. There are a couple people waiting on frog paintings so I took some time out at night and located a toad breeding community near Forest Park in Winton Woods. These two are both males although they aren't showing the black pads yet on their front feet.

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Some of the Polish words are getting tweaked and there are spelling errors showing up in them down below in the journal. This seems to be a result of either the FTP program along with windows. Switching between keyboard layouts is not nice.

I've started my TEFL course. This is for teaching English as a foreign language. When I get to Poland I'll be teaching English to keep me busy and productive. I'll also be painting and selling paintings here as the art market here is solid, but I'm not sure how its going to be in Poland. I'll post more on the TEFL course as it goes, but I just completed the first unit and really don't know much yet :) Its exciting; I never thought I'd be teaching English, but I'm ready for the challenge. Please don't go through my site picking out the english errors. I hope everyone had a great Holiday Season and safe New Year.

Where have I been? not updating the website is where.

Unfortunately I haven't been doing anything super exciting that would warrant a solid update as I don't like to just update with fluffy filler stuff.

Until the other day I had never seen a car driving on the round without a wheel, but there it was. I was on my way to weickerts and saw a large pickup truck driving kinda wierd so I sped up and investigated. Several cars were between us initially, but they turned off. Once behind the truck I noticed sparks coming out from underneath the front driver side wheel. Soon I was able to get along side the truck and for whatever reason the truck did not have a front wheel... it was grinding on the bumper and part of the control arm. This did not seem to cause concern for the driver and he hastily proceeded up the round 10 mph over the speed limit. Soon a police car got behind me and I moved over and the Police car followed the truck up the road for another mile and then up a side street. I opted to follow the cop as I wanted to see the conclusion and it seemed odd to me there was no attempt to pull over the truck. Both truck and cop were driving quite fast so I just followed the scratch mark on the road to learn where they had turned. About a 1/2 mile up the side street the police car was parked in the middle of the road and the truck was pulled down into a residence. The cop had his gun ready while the man in the truck was holding his hands high. I took a good moment to check it out as I wasn't impeeding traffic and noticed that there was a small brush fire under the truck as it was parked on a pile of leaves.

I've done some crazy things before, but I've never attempted to drive a car without a wheel. I do remember one time having to drive my car home from work in reverse because the transmission went out, but that was only 6 miles or so. It was kinda fun using the turn signal correctly when driving in reverse and I do remember getting some strange looks. Luckily Radar Walt (greenhills police officer at the time) didn't get site of this.

Remember the Wendy's commercial, "where's the beef?" Check out the linked movie from google if you haven't seen it. I had dinner at Wendys tonight and got some hamburgers for my brother. It looks like they've been downsizing their beef for years. Currently the meat is thinner than a slice of cheese and smaller too. It really appears to me that this beef patty is only one molecule thick. I bet the restaurant clerks are trained in applying gold leaf as this skill is needed when gilding the beef unto the bun. What about the adhesive properties of cheese? If my bike broke I'm sure I could glue it back together with a piece of "american" cheese.

This past week I went fossil collecting. I found quite a few nice ordovician fossils, but nothing super nice. Several small trilobytes and lots of good horn corals. As well as fossils I found this mantid.. or rather it found me. Below is the road cut off of Indiana 1 just south of the road that goes from I74 to Brookville. Searching for fossils is always good practice for observation skill.



I also updated the poland trip pictures page with artwork seen on the trip.

Thanks to Masha for sending some photos from Oakland House. Send more folks if you want to share with friends and such.

Yesterday I started painting the largest painting I'll do in 2006; it'll be for competitions and shows this winter. I'll share the process once all done and some digitals once it starts looking like a painting; right now it doesnt have its first layer of paint completed, which is the blues/browns. I'm predicting about 50 hours to complete and I have 6 or so in it right now. I should be more careful with hours logged as it helps determine prices; I'll do so from now on. Tonight is the cincy art club critique group meeting.

Cincinnati has been rather boring, but I'm looking forward to seeing my granny next week for dinner.

He added me to his list and said hi back.

I've waited a bit to announce this, but I'm engaged; She said YES. Justyna and I are going to be married. We have no dates yet and are still working on living possibilities. She is one heck of a wonderful girl and is cute too and I can prove it (see picture to left).

Added 2 more pages to the Poland trip pages (see link above) and added the 2006 maine trip pictures. The Maine pictures are intended for all, but mostly geared towards staff at the Oakland House who were always so nice to me during my stay. If you have some pictures to share with others please email them to me.

I haven't had much fun stuff going on so I decided to send a skype message to Lech Wałęsa (kinda pronounced Leh Va-wensa); hes the primary figure in converting Poland from communism to what it is today. Hes also a nobel peace prize winner. I sent a message saying hello and some info about myself and I'm awaiting a reply. We'll see if he adds me. Below is a picture of this.

I'm going to seperate out the Polish trip pictures and each group will have its own page on my next update. Still to come are the pictures of Krakow, Zakopane, Tatra Mountains, more Warsaw, and more odds and ends.

Random pictures from last trip with quick comment.


First view of the Tatra Mountains.


High elevation lake after hike and semi-tough ascent in Tatras.


The Punto


Monika, Łukasz, Justyna in old part of Piotrków Trybunalski


Ruins of Castle near Kazimierz - its the one visable south of the town. Justyna's folks took us there and it was a very nice trip.


Normal or typical fruit stand in Zakopane.

We got back late last night. Krakow, Zakopane, Tatra, and Piotrków Trybunalski were super nice and there are so many stories and pictures. The Fiat Punto that Justyna's parents let us borrow did perfect and allowed us to see many things not easily available. Unfortunately the lense on my camera was a bit dirty and 1500 pictures have either no noticable damage up to bad light blurs; I'm guessing the lense got dirty on one of the first hikes in the Tatra Mts. Its not that bad though as the images will still be fine for the internet/digital which was the intention.

Today I'm moving images around a bit and will have some on the journal page later on today or perhaps tuesday. This wednesday I go back home :( to the Nati.

Today we take a train to Piotrków Trybunalski (Peterscow in english) and will be going to the Tatra Mountains and other places like Krakow, Zakopane, and others I can't spell at this time.

With the metric system it seems like there are small challenges every day, but some things hit harder than others.

Getting jipped out of two eggs felt wrong.

Have fun and I'll be back in 10 days or so with more stories.

Assorted pictures from Wilanów today. Its a mansion with surrounding gardens of considerable size. We didn't go inside today for several reasons, but hopefully we'll be back on a saturday when its free and a tour isn't required.


Here is the center of the mansion; my camera couldn't get all of it at one time. Its basically C shaped and here you can see the inner middle of the C as well as some of the inner sides. Currently its under renovation which isn't so obvious from the front.


Reverse side with garden and construction stuff.


Formal gardens middle backside with angular hedges and bushes with statues at each corner.


A real piece of the original wall that is being restored. I was temped to toss it into my backpack, but realized I didn't have a backpack.


A 300lb man looks absolutely rediculous in a car of this size; I've seen it before.

Yesterday was Warsaw Rising Day commemorating the 63 day battle in 1944 for control of Warsaw. Poorly equipped yet brave Polish underground forces fought against the already occupying and well armed german forces. There is not a lot of information about this in english, but there is a museum and website in english with some good information. As part of the event, yesterday a B17 Bomber flew over Warsaw and dropped some promotional items for the museum. During the battle the British would fly drop missions over Warsaw to deliver food, meds, and arms to the Poles. See picture below. Also at 5:00pm in the old town all activities stopped. Interestingly this day is not a holiday because of communist supression prior to the 90s, but its becoming well recognized I thought. Assorted Pictures below with comments.


We went to Arkadia Mall in Warsaw yesterday. Very nice mall and was one of the only places that had good AC I have been in so far while here. There was a shop inside the store that sold exotic international foods. I never knew M&C would make this list, but there it is in the window. I didn't check the price, but I'm sure it was expensive considering a small bottle of barbecue sauce was $10 or more.


Here you can see the B17 that flew over Warsaw.
I was lucky enough to get a chance to go to a real internation professional volleyball match in Łodz. Here Poland hosted Serbia and Montenegro (one country despite name). They barely lost, but it was most entertaining and the 9000 seats or so were filled with the loudest fans I've ever heard. My favorite Polish player was number 2, but I don't know his name. Justyna doesn't have a favorite player despite taking me there and knowing all about it. Also make sure to see the pre game video I took while there (requires quicktime or similar). Notice the people in the stands shake more than the cheerleaders.
Statue in Warsaw near the Little Soldier memorial statue. I'll hopefully have more info on this soon.

On our way to Sopot we stopped at a gas station. It was a fairly standard gas station and kinda reminded me of something you'd find in the states except a couple things. First thing was the magazines section. There was an entire section of magazines that offered free stuff in addition to the magazine. Some of the magazines seemed very thin and it almost appeared that you were buying the bonus item and getting something to read on the subway as a bonus. Monika was looking through the magazines and taking note of the bonus items as was I. One of them had a nice hand bag, and another a radio, DVDs, music CDs, and one had a hat.







The other is the difference in the food items I noticed. See below. Black dog is actually blood sausage aka kaszanka and is made from pork and beef blood and buckwheat (kasza) notice its bigger than the bun. The other is the cheese cooler with a very broad range of cheeses and other similar assorted things that don't have english translations. There were easily 10 times more cheeses than potato chips.



The last item is interesting and I don't really have any ideas on it, but it seemed a little odd. This item was not found in this particular gas station, but in another. It appears to have both german and english words.



Next update will have some pictures of Warsaw and other more interesting things on tuesday. Today and Tuesday we go to the city center and there is an event tuesday that features a real WWII aircraft flying over Warsaw. Check back.

Pictures today. More from trip to north parts of Poland the past week; for now I'm just going to have these pictures on this journal page, but I'll move them over to a travel page of their own later on once the page starts bogging down with images. See descriptions below images and note no editing was done to images other than resize and all are free to share and use with permission.


Marie Curie Museum and birthplace in Warsaw Poland - in the old city. This was actually taken before our trip to Krynica, but somehow got left out of the first update.


Two unknown people that wanted their picture taken within the first wall of the castle in Malbork.


Castle at Malbork (complete front view)


Me at the beach after swimming. It was crazy hot and I burn bad so I couldn't stay in the sun long.


A random picture kinda. Note how large St. Mary's Cathedral is in the background.


Sunset on the Baltic Sea


Real Polish Cabbage grown by Justyna's mom. Her parents own a city garden plot. I'm not sure what the exact english name for such a thing is, but those familiar with Europe know what I am talking about. Anyways they've got it all decked out with fruit trees, greenhouses, fruits, vegies, flowers, small building with bed and radio, and water collection devises. I didn't really get a chance to wander and my camera battery was dying. Justyna and her mom also found a small toad.


I'm not sure what exactly the statue of the dog with umbrella is, but it was on the corner of a very busy intersection (foot traffic) and interestingly there was a small cat under it.


Cookie shop in Torun


Inside cookie shop and detail picture of a traditional pierniki cookie. Its kinda similar to a soft gingerbread cookie and they had different fillings and coatings. quite tasty.


Old city in Torun


Łukasz's car and a large insect that was on the railing outside our room. I didn't keep track of kilometers driven, but Łukasz drove us all over the place and back again flawlessly which isn't easy taking into account some of the roads we had to take.


This is where we stayed - seen in the background. It was very nice, but lacked a couple things semi standard in the states.


Crazy nice selection of real polish meats standard in most any market. Note this is only the kielbasa section. Also noteworthy is the bread, pickle, mustard, ketchup, and vodka sections at the stores; more on this later.


Sopot main street thing within the city. It was interestingly friendly and clean in these shopping areas. There were touristy type shops among normal shops, but quite frankly I didn't really see any hardcore tourists other than an occasional German group. Here you can see Monika and Łukasz just in front of me. This was typical as I was always taking pictures and trying to keep up; they were very nice. Łukasz knows an amazing amount of english despite having been media and self taught only. Monika knew more English I think. Between Monika, Łukasz, and Justyna I got quite a bit of good Polish listening skills in and recognize a lot more words, but still not enough for good conversation.

We are back from Krynica Morska after having left Warsaw on the 18th. Thanks to Łukasz, Monika, and Justyna for driving us around, tour directing, and navigating all over Poland to make a near circumnavigation of the north part of Poland wonderful. Krynica is similar to a small town one might find just north of Miami Florida. There is a beach on the Baltic there with all the traditional sun tourist type stuff... Euro-style. Our hotel was fine and during our stay we visited Gdansk, Sopot (north of gdansk), Stutthof concentration camp, Malbork (with castle), old town centers, Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, beaches, bars, and other real Polish things. Most of the foreigners here are german, but I've heard some english speakers.

In this journal entry I'll expand on one of the worst possible things to happen when being introduced to parents for the first time. Meeting Justyna's parents went very well in general and her father picked up us at the train station. Dispite the language barrier all went well. Initially her folks didnt like the idea of an American dude with their daughter, but once I met them that all seemed to be fine. We ate a wonderful dinner and we had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to catch our car to Krynica so we went to bed early.

During the night my stomach started feeling bad. Bad went quickly to worse and soon I had to go very very baddly. In Poland the apartments are small the every room is close to the next. This was problematic as I basically blew up the bathroom. It could have been worse, but I'm sure all in a 25 meter radius got some of that action either through sound, vibration, or other.

Here are some pictures of Poland stuff.


Storks with baby stork. Storks mate for life and are quite common in Poland.


Despite the popularity of Baywatch the fashions are still on speedos and this is a standard example; you don't want to see the extremes.



Pelican feeding young pelicans statue in middle of huge castle in Malbork
(edit: corrected bird type)


Justyna's Mom next to a future saint


Sunset next to boat flying flag of Poland.

Warsaw in July. Its nice. The other day was crazy hot, but today its cool, breezy, and very nice. I've got some more pictures and have been to some new places. So far I've been on most forms of public transportation; the only thing left is long distance train. Tuesday I meet Justyna's parents in Piotrków Trybunalski. Pictures below with comments.


Warsaw Cultural building I think - it said something to this effect on the outside. We went up inside and saw the entire city. Here the picture is taken from the subway entrance.


Justyna on the observation deck. They didn't let us into the smaller deck just below the clock, but the view was nice.


View of the observation deck.


Saxon Gardens in Warsaw. I think its the oldest garden here and was destroyed during WWII and has been rebuilt like pretty much everything here. At the end of the park was the Tomb of the unknown Soldier memorial. There were 2 guards that guarded the shrine. They seem to change every hour or so and march across the square there. The girls were taunting the guards and secretly I think they enjoyed it, but showed nothing.


No explanation needed. Polish like their vodka. I have yet to try any, but have sampled some of the beer here. This store was a small corner store and similar to most others. The shops here tend to be somewhat hazardly placed and the strip mall or shopping center hasn't been incorporated. There are very well organized malls though.

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Today we see a movie at the teatr and get train tickets. I really havent started getting serious about taking pictures yet and plan to start doing that in the near future. Most won't be worthy of the internet, but will provide inspriration and stock for paintings later on. Color studies and compositions will be the focus. The palette of Warsaw is interesting. Its kinda a mix of miami florida and an urban park. This wednesday we leave for Krynica Morska which is a resort town on the Baltic and I hope I don't get burnt.

I'm in Warsaw Poland now. Plane from the Nati to Chicago was late and I barely made the plane here and I have no idea how they got my bag transferred. Lot (the carrier) did an excellent job flying and taking care of us. This was my first time in the international section of a major airport - in Chicago. It was cute how each group of people were in lines formed at the carrier to their home countries. I wonder how a blind person would explain this.

On Thursday I was up most of the day and went to bed early. Today we went to the old city area in Warsaw. See pictures below






At first it seemed to be very similar to a normal american city, but after 1.5 days here there are some major differences. I'll list.

• no houses. most all family units are apartment buildings of about 8 stories.
• grass is brown. every piece of grass I've seen is brown and uncut. Spraggly weeds poke out here and there. In general landscaping is mainly placement of trees and thats it.
• diversity. its not very diverse here racially.
• Grocery stores have better quality food and lesser selection.
• no AC. It wasn't so surprising to me that none of the apartments have AC, but it was when we went to this large supermarket type store. It was 10 at night, hot and humid, and the lines were very long, and no AC. In the states all the fat people would have given up and walked out in a scuff, but not here. The heat of the day brought the shoppers at night it seems and this was the result. The people on TV seem to have AC, but the prime minister's brother appeared to be quite hot in one of the government buildings on TV.
• Public transportation is very good here.
• Cars go from normal size to micro small, but I haven't seen any 76 Caddy Eldorados
• Bread - hands down the Poles would stomp the states in a bread showdown - every store here has fresh bread of one type or dozens of others.
• Media and advertisements are full of english.
• There is quite a bit of graffiti on some of the older buildings and even some of the newer and this is not the ghetto I am used to where graffiti isn't as bad.
• The people here are thinner and the girls more attractive. The guys seem to be in better shape (compared to me for sure) and are thinner too. Cranial shapes are different here as well. Personally I think my head is very long compared to the norm here. Some prolly think I'm an alien or something
• Roads are about the same, but not marked very well. Driving seems a little fast, but its comparable to a larger US city.

Today I leave for Poland. A quick stop in Chicago first and a total travel time of about 15 hours. I'm crazy busy getting the last minute things done and packing so update is brief.

The frog has been named. Jerome the frog will be under the care of my brother while I am away. Hes got an aquarium all set and hes become quite innactive, but I think thats because his belly is always full of crickets. Jerome spends his days folded up like a leaf and nights he walks around a little, but not much. Interestingly during the day he is brite green and at night hes more of a brown color.

I'm so not looking forward to being on a plane for so long. They don't make those things friendly to anyone my size or larger at all. At 6' tall I don't consider myself tall, but it'll be tight. If you want to contact me in Poland use the email contact on this website.

I've got some serious artist block going on right now. Its normal and I think its the result of anticipation of my travels to Europe. I'll be leaving in a week and a half.

My brother just came back from Louisiana with a boat he bought on ebay. Inside the boat he found a frog that obviously came from there. I'm looking for someone in the south to recieve the frog in the mail. Here is a picture of the littly guy. If you live in Louisiana or in a similar southern state and want to email me your address I'd appreciate it.

I don't normally watch TV, but I was earlier today because I didn't have anything to paint. There was a commercial for dish network I found kinda funny. It featured a family and they were discussing the benefits of satalite TV or something. At one point they said their kids school teacher recommended the safety features of dish network in blocking certain programming. The next scene has this "teacher" and she starts talking about the quality programming for kids and stuff. At first glance it appeared fine, but then I noticed what she was wearing. she was wearing a bra for a top. kinda like that seinfeld episode, but not as bad. There was a nice jacket, but I could very clearly see the bottom of her bra.

I'll be posting more and lots of pictures once I'm in Warsaw.

Finally mastered the tomato bread. Its hardcore good and easy to make. Here is recipe

• 2 1/2 cups unbleached flour + 1/2 cup more if needed
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 12oz can tomato paste
• 1 package instant dry yeast
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• water
• 1 egg (optional)
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1-2 teaspoon italian seasonings

Optional items

• 1 small onion diced
• Dill seeds, Carroway seeds, salt, pepper
• Oats (any cut)

Put all tomato paste into 4 cup measuring cup and add brown sugar. Add hot water to the paste/sugar until it reaches 2 and 1/8 cups. Mix a little and add the yeast to the liquid. Mix with a blender and allow it to sit for 10 minutes. In a large wide mixing bowl combine all the flours, seasonings, and optional ingredients. Mix with a blender or by hand. make a well in the center and add the olive oil and egg and pour in the tomato paste/water mixture. With a spoon mix the liquid ingredients while slowly incorporating the flour. When its too hard to mix with a spoon use your hands. Add additional flour slowly to build a soft dough that doesnt stick to your hands or counter top. Knead 10 mins until dough is stretchy and smooth. Coat dough with olive oil and allow to rise in a large bowl for 1 hour with a damp cloth over it. Best rising will happen in a warm place. grease a bread pan with olive oil and reshape the dough for the pan and allow to rise in the pan for about another hour or 2 - covered with damp cloth. It should be sticking out of the top of a normal bread pan about 1-2 inches. Brush an egg onto the top and sprinkle some oats or something on it make it look good if desired. Cook at 350 for 40 mins. If you put an onion in the recipe it'll take 5 more minutes to cook.

Great bread to eat alone or toasted with fresh vegies or cheese on the top.

Map of Poland

In exactly one month I'll be in Poland. Here are some interesting facts:

• Land Area: 304,465 sq km
• Population: ~40 million
• Religion: 95% Roman Catholic
• Literacy: 99%
• Capital: Warsaw (Warszawa)
• Currency: zloty
• Language: Polish
• Random word translation: hinge = zawias
• Name of cutest girl in Poland: Justyna
• Mountains in the south: Tatras
• Some Famous Polish people: John Paul II, Marie Curie, Copernicus, Dr Albert Bruce Sabin, and Tadeusz Kosciuszko

It took some time to get the best price on a ticket and I finally got one at a reasonable price. Of the places I looked Orbitz came in first by a couple dollars.

The roaches seem to be gone. I saw one outside the other day, but they aren't hanging out on everything like they were the week before. Luckily the June bugs aren't too bad in this area; my last place had them very bad and you could expect them to crash into your hair if you were doing anything outside.

I went to the summerfair outdoor art show thing in Cincinnati today. It was the first time I've actually gone there and it was busy. Normal art type vendors and some good painting type art, but mostly jewelry and crafty type things which is perfect because that stuff sells better outside. There were some ladies singing in this half circle thing that sounded not so good. I've got a couple pictures, but nothing super fancy or exciting. Note how clean the Ohio River looks - its normally a thicker brown/green paste. And for whatever reason I didn't see any tires, shopping carts, or matress frames on the bank.

This time last year I was heading to Maine for the summer. Another month and 12 days I'll be leaving the Nati for Warsaw, Poland. I'll be updating this journal page near daily while away (except for the first week) with travel experiences.

For whatever reason Avondale has an infestation of oriental roaches. I'm cool with spiders, ants, flies, mantids, aphids, bees, wasps, hornets, scorpions, and just about anything else, but roaches I consider putrid. I found a couple IN my studio last week and investigated. Inside they don't really have any place to go and were easily removed. Wielding a flash light I monitored the outside areas around the studio and the building next door. The dumpster and pretty much every hard surface had about 1 roach per square meter. The three steps off my porch had 6 roaches. The next day I bought some roach bait traps to put inside. I'm not sure if I got any inside, but later in the week after continued activity outside I tried putting one of the traps outside for a couple hours. I'm trying to just get the roaches as I don't want to harm the ant and other insect populations. Here are some random digitals taken from my front door using a flash while the trap was out.

    

It was too dark to see anything when I took the picture, but when the flash went off you can see the activity. I don't even want to know how many were down in that crack. At one point when I went outside with a flash light I found a roach upside down on top of the trap with his legs running full speed; I found it kinda funny and have no idea how he was able to achieve this feet. After some research it seems that this type of roach likes mulch beds and decaying organic matter. There really isnt any mulch around here, but the dumpster for the apartment building next door seems to be quite the mess hall. I'll be monitoring the activity. The harmful effects of sprays and general pest control products far outweighs my personal feelings towards the roaches so I think we'll just all have to get along... as long as they stay outside because they aren't paying rent.


Weickerts has been crazy busy and I've had little time to paint anything other than a couple commissions I'm working on which are coming along well.

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Turtle and snake sitings at a creek in Hamilton county (cincinnati, oh). Turtle was somewhat afraid of me, but he did allow a couple digitals before packing up and closing the door. Snake was not interested in me as well, but this is as close as I got because I didn't have my creek shoes on. It was good to see the wildlife in the woods I used to play in as a kid.

I talked to my mom tonight and they are getting staff in at the hotel and things are picking up with the Oakland House. There are some folks from last year, Patrik, Masha, Nathan, one other, and the regulars. I'll be there for a little while late in the summer to help with the weddings.

This is a rant. Early last month I won a makita pad sander on ebay and payed within 2 minutes of the auction close. My other sander was stolen a while back and the one I have been using is about to quit. Back to the ebay sander. The person I bought it from had 1 feedback and it was good and the auction looked good. It did note that she only sends out stuff on saturdays which was fine also. A week went by after that first saturday and no sander. I sent a very nice email confirming everything with no reply. I waited another week and sent a more direct email with no reply and the next day I sent another more sarcastic email that again was not replied to and still no sander. At this point I noticed the seller had a negative feedback on some cloths she "sold" so I started the complaint system with paypal. They cover purchases up to $200, but have a $25 service fee. So basically the $41 sander yielded me $25 in losses although I recovered $16.

I get pretty bent when people take advantage of someone, me included. I contacted paypal and ebay and both of them are unable or willing to produce address information about this person, although I was able to get some stuff, but not a street address. So much for "putting buyers and sellers together". I'll keep working on it, but I'm not going to waste too much time.

To top it off her account got closed before I could leave my negative feedback... she had 5 other negatives by the time she was removed. I'll leave my negative feedback for her here. Shopt4baby2 is an indigent, filching, ebay hock jockey. Her actual ebay name was shoppin4baby2, but I made it past tense.
Here is the information I could get on this thief:

NICOLE GREEN
WILSONVILLE, OR
(503) 378-4049

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I'll have some useful journal entries coming up soon.

Been painting and goofing around with some side projects. I'm waiting on a VCR for the police movie things. I'll get them up soon with comments.

The bread recipe from below yielded another fine loaf. I added some chocolate chips to it to see what would happen. I cut them into quarters or so. To my amazement they are completely undetectable in the final bread after cooking - not even brown stains within the bread. Perhaps next time I will monitor this phenomenon better. I'm not sure if they were absorbed in the kneeding and baking process or just the baking. Its been warm in Cincinnati and the yeasts are very happy now. A damp towel over the rising dough has helped me some too.

I had something else to say, but I forgot. Oh... the box. Here is a picture of the wood box that I just finished for Justyna's folks. They don't speak english and probably don't check my website so I figured I'd share prior to actually sending it. Its Sapele, Maple, Babinga (top), and Padauk (base)

The fossil thing on ebay turned into more. Not only are there fake fossils coming out of china, but also look for weapons, books, lithographs, paintings, clothing, purses, jewelry, meterites, gems, wood boxes, china (e.g. porceline, clay, pottery), copper bowls, walking sticks, and even traditional chinese art. Good stuff. I saw a civil war sword being sold as authentic that is shipped from china. I think the intention here is to sell it to someone who will try to sell it again here (the states) as legitimate. Its a sad world sometimes. Personally I'd rather starve and wipe poop on my teeth than to deceive someone into buying something like this. Its all bad karma and someday a bus, or even worse, a train will run over the people doing this.

I wanted to have an example of something so I did a search for "oil painting tuscany" and came up with this auction for a painting from hong kong featuring a scene from Tuscany. This is a real painting and is very authentic (although a poor copy of something that might have sold well on ebay). The person that painted this has no connection to tuscany obviously and I've seen this particular painting done a thousand times. Lets give it a serious critique. Normally I don't break copywrite laws, but since this painting is a copy of a copy of a copy aimed at filling in art trends on ebay... I think its okay.

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• Horizon is crooked and its hard to start looking at a scene when there are errors as big as this.
• I am happy with the treatment to the water as it goes into the distance though.
• The sky forms are okay, but rather symbolic and bland.
• Personally I've never been to Italy and don't know much about the buildings or trees, but lets assume its correctly portrayed in theory.
• Perspective.... its off and not off to a degree of intention, but off to a degree of ignorance. Perspective has been known about for over a thousand years and Giotto used it in paintings in the 13th century and then later it was mastered by Brunelleschi in the 15th century. The research is done already... you are allowed to use it.
• Lack of focus. Its a sofa painting and I give it that and its meant to not have a focus. The background up to the foreground has the same tonal values making it flat and boring.
• Greens. Greens are hard to get a hang of and these are straight off a tide box. nothing against tide, but the tree forms are getting a lot of attention because of this. Some of the tree forms bleed into the building too which wasn't intentional; paper towels or a knife can removed paint not intended for an area
• Light. I have no idea where its coming from and see it shining all over the canvas in no particular concern. Its kinda in the same ball park as the perspective. I feel like an ancient human before we figured out how to climb a tree to get the coconut
• In closing the scene is trite and lacks anything that might inspire or promote any type of feeling or relation. I don't believe that the artist knows anything about Italy or Tuscany. I wonder how many of these were painted in a row and if one person painted the entire thing or it was done on a line.

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