another busy week

I don't know if I just don't have anything interesting to write about or I'm just too damn busy these days.

Tuesday we started a new landscape in the watercolor class, a sunset reflecting on water which will have a sailboat and a line of vegetation when done. All we did was the sky and water, very loosely done with washes. This is Gay's example to follow. I wasn't happy with my first attempt so I tried it again and now I have two to choose from next week. Sorry, apparently I didn't take a picture of either of mine.

I did take my painting to class Tuesday to show Gay my progress and she was very complimentary, made a few suggestions for the female bird which I attended to. So here's my progress on that. Now to do the male bird and then the background.

Wednesday I moved all the plants back out of the garage and the house and got the small plants set up on the etageres by the back door and finally found the little frog I'd been hearing off and on and it turns out there were two little frogs hiding amongst the plants and they were both still alive. 

Then I moved the truck and swept off the concrete apron and brought Jade's rug over from the shop to roll out to vacuum it. It's a big rug, 8' x 10' or so, and it needs to be seriously cleaned but first it had to be thoroughly vacuumed to get as much of the dirt and dog hair and people hair off as possible.

While I was doing that Rocky came by to let me know he would be here Thursday to see if we could finally find and fix the leak in the roof/wall of the shop/studio and fix it. You might remember several months ago I climbed up the ladder in the studio with a can of FlexSeal paste to plug up the holes we could see and I did a fair job but some water was still getting in when it rained. 

I decided the sheet metal panels of the overhang needed to come off where the leak was so we could get a better look at where the roof of the shop met the wall from the outside and hopefully find where the water was getting in.

I had bought a tube of F/S paste for a caulk gun and after he removed 5 of the overhang panels outside, he climbed up on the inside and used all of that plus 2 cans of F/S spray on top of what I had applied previously and then he climbed back up on the overhang and he called out to me to look. There was a crack where the caulk was oozing out from the inside and so we're pretty sure that was the culprit. Even so, he got a strip of metal flashing which he jammed up under the edge of the shop roof panels and then replaced the overhang panels under the flashing and then screwed the flashing down onto the overhang panels so that rain runs off the roof onto the flashing and then onto and off the overhang. So now we wait for a good rain to see if we (ha, he) was successful. While he and his helper were doing all that, I was cutting back winter damaged plants over there.

Because of all that, I didn't go to SHARE but they weren't open to the public as they had some repair work done on the building on the inside and it was a day to move everything back where it belongs and we'll open to the public next week.

And on top of all this, when I left to get Robin yesterday morning and take her to work, the check engine warning light came on and then the fishtailing car warning light came on. I got my sister to follow me to one of the local mechanics where the woman who runs the place is so abrupt she borders on rude and told me they couldn't work on my car til next week but she would look at it and see what the problem might be. So she plugged her little computer diagnostic device in somewhere under the dash and told me that the engine was running rich and was my gas cap on tight. I shrugged, popped the little door and turned the gas cap another couple of clicks and both lights went out. She may be rude but she didn't charge me anything whereas if we had taken it to a dealer they'd have probably charged me $100 for the same.

Well, I guess I do have plenty to say, though I'm not sure how interesting it is, so it must be I just haven't had the time.