shoes again, drawing, burning, streaming

And this is why I don’t like buying shoes online. My orthos came yesterday and they feel great and I like the way they look but I think they are a half size too big. My feet measure 9 1/2”. My current sandals, size 8, according to the chart on their website, measure 10 1/4” toe to heel. The chart on the ortho website also said 9 1/2” feet, size 8 but the shoes measure 10 3/4” toe to heel. So now my quandary is do I send them back and reorder 7 1/2 or order 7 1/2 and compare the fit and then send one pair back for a refund? I have 60 days to return them. Here’s a comparison of the two size 8s and how they fit.

Thwarted again Friday when I tried to torch the burn pile for the third time still with no success and it’s been 3 weeks since we had any rain. The first time it had been nearly a week after rain and I used my usually successful method of twisting up newspaper, sticking it in near the bottom in three places and dousing it with trimmer fuel and lighting the paper but the debris was still too wet. Second attempt a week later same method still wouldn’t light. Yesterday I used the newspaper and charcoal lighter fluid and liberally squirted it all over including the paper. Fuel burned, paper burned, debris did not. It should have gone up like a torch. My grandson Mikey came over Saturday with some old diesel fuel and got it to burn so today I emptied the truck and then used the diesel fuel he left for me and torched it again because all signs point to a burn ban starting tomorrow.

I’ve started a new drawing, well, I transferred faint outlines to the page in my sketchbook, a buckeye butterfly. Here’s my first day of working on it, one of four wings

and today’s effort

but when I was working on the first wing Friday I was thinking I really can’t call it a drawing since I didn’t draw, only traced the main lines, more like working in a coloring book so what do I call it, a coloring? But today as I was working on the body of the moth, I did redraw the shape more accurately from the faint outline so I don’t know. Maybe the next one, I have another butterfly lined up. Or maybe something different. Once I get the buckeye finished I plan to add a little watercolor background.

Other than going to SHARE Thursday mornings, working on the butterfly, and burning tree debris I haven’t done much else. We’ve been streaming Continuum on Prime. We’re not quite to the middle of season 2 of 4. In the future of 2077, corporations have total control and with high-tech surveillance the police, called Protectors, keep the population on a very short leash and tightly controlled; no dissent allowed, books are contraband, history is treason, people are constantly in ‘citizen debt’ (think of company towns on steroids). A terrorist group trying to break the hold of the corporations is sentenced to die but instead escape via time travel and a Protector is inadvertently taken with them. But instead of the 5 years in the past they planned, something went wrong and they went back 65 years. Liber8 is still trying to prevent corporate takeover, Protector is trying to preserve her future, the genius responsible for all the tech that keeps the population under control is now just an 18 year old kid. And lots of other stuff mixed in. It’s really good if you like sci-fi.