Some pictures of new paintings, etc.

Serious lack of commas and modifying clauses placed in weird places, I would say.

Yay Picante!

I would say that natural language does not always "evolve", which implies moving to a higher level of coherence, sometimes it simply degenerates instead. I also object to the concept one should write for the comprehension level of a twelve year old. If a certain word says exactly what I mean, I prefer to use it. If someone needs to use a dictionary to understand it, I see nothing wrong with them learning something.

I find there are two main groupings of artists. There are those who thrive on group energy and find it difficult to create alone. These are the people who attend or teach classes, get together with other artists for painting sessions, etc. The other main group are the ones who are perfectly satisfied creating alone and can find groups distracting. I am in the latter group and quite enjoy being reclusive when the creative juices are flowing. I have friends who understand that and I am careful not to over commit my time in external distractions when I need to create.

I looked them up and both sneaked and snuck are considered correct English. Neither one sounds right. Doesn't seem logical, but then that is the way English is. For those of you who can't handle snuck in the vocabulary, tough. Deal with it! :)



Roybird, you have the same conundrum as Niggle. From http://tolkienlibrary.com/reviews/leafbyniggle.htm

I am eternally externally distracted by myself but I have never snuck up on myself. Might be fun though ^_^

The important niggling question is: are there dahlias on the hills?

I'm sure there are dahlias on the hills in your creation, dahlianut.

I love the Niggle story.

Paj, I'm being totally tongue-in-cheek. Hard to understand sometimes, I'm sure. I revel in the extreme arbitrariness of things linguistic. I, for one, will use "snook" as the past tense of "sneak", since "snuck" and "sneaked" are not tripping lightly off my tongue, nor Dave's.

OK, now the passenger with the gun in his carrion. (Tee hee, I snook in a malaprop.)

Did he really turn himself into TSA officials? (And if so, what spell did he use?)
Or did he turn himself in to TSA officials?

If he wanted to become a TSA official, that would explain why he had the gun. Now it makes perfect sense.

What is TSA? Dave: Why is making art considered niggling? Are you saying that friendships are more important than art? Or that the artist can't see the forest for the trees until he is ill and conscripted in to some sort of manual labor camp where wayward artists are institutionalized and no doubt re-educated? :0 ! Mulch, I understood you very clearly. Yes, my best friend is an artist who works alone and we go weeks without communicating and it is no problem. Obviously, I must to talk to this other friend about what I need to do. She is a sweet person but her life pretty much revolves around physical exercise and travel. I don't think she has a creative bone in her body. We are friends because I love to get out and take long walks, too. The situation may resolve itself as she will soon be going on a ski trip and then to Mexico for a couple of weeks. Thanks, folks, for the advice. I do have trouble balancing the various aspects of my life some times.

It ends up we have that Tolkien book, "Tree and Leaf ". D.H. likes all things Tolkien.

I'm very curious about the "places on the fringe of his canvas".

Mulch, have you been there? I'm not sure you could ever get back, as I've seen what the fringes of your canvasses are like!

TSA is the security people in the airport.

Me thinks that what you create in your life now is what you will be living in tomorrow. Eventually you will fill in the little bit of existence that you can perceive now and will want to expand beyond that.

TSA!?!?! I thought Homeland Security was the Security at the airport??? Who and where are TSA and do they like chocolate??? O bother and here I thought I had everything 'smoothy' with border hopping.

google "TSA and 8 year old boy" and you will find out all about the merry pranksters and their rubber gloved magic fingers

OMG poor seedling :( Security took away a toddler's teddy bear to put it through xray on our trip down in Dec. It was heartbreaking until the toddler called securityguy a 'big poo'. DH gave me a stern look and whispered 'Don't even think about it!'. I wonder if that toddler is on the 'list' now? Obviously the teddy bear is already on the 'list'. Methinks this could give the Great Book of Lists a bad name :(

Oh, picante, I missed the into /in to joke. If it hadn't expired, someone would have revoked my English teacher's license. Here is the one that frosts me at the local grocery store. The sign over the canned goods aisle reads:
"Can Fruit
Can Meat
Can Vegetables"
I think it is kind of like the pointy haired boss in Dilbert who asked everyone to type in smaller fonts n their computers to save electrons. How much would it have cost them to type "Canned" instead of Can. ? But I have to remind myself that the language is evolving and with complete disregard for my opinion.

DH, a physicist who believes a little radiation is good for you, thinks the proposed new scanners at the airport will pose a health threat to people who travel a whole lot, due to too much radiation. He hopes someone will point this out to Homeland Security. DH doesn't worry in the least about too many xrays, but he does worry about those scanners.

I discussed this TSA business with a close friend whose husband travels a lot in connection with port security. We both agree that the biggest problem we have with security is stupid people. Someone sold the Christmas bomber a one-way ticket for cash and that person has to have known that he had no luggage. Why did that gate agent not call a TSA hotline and get that passenger grounded. If there is no such hotline, then why isn't there? All the scanners in the world won't help if they are run by idiots. That gate agent worked for an airline. Do the airlines want their planes to blow up in the air? I would think not. Why would the airline not question such a passenger?

meanwhile they are giving 8 year olds the full treatment.

DH won't travel by ar any more, as he is too worried about the various artifical joints and pins setting off the detectors. In the past when I have been treated to the full wand search they were very disrespectful and unnecessarily rough with the pointy things.

For a while every time I flew (always on business) things went missing in my suitcase, until I started putting a letter To Whom It May Concern with a full inventory of the items in my suitcase and a warning that I would call TSA hotline immediately if anything went missing, right on the top where they could see it.

My opinions about security in flying are not polite so I will not express them here. One of my friends flew back from Mexico after Christmas and her son was not allowed to use his ipod to listen to music on the flight. Laptops and ipods cannot be used on international flights anymore. Do we feel safer?

And, picante, yes, I do go to the fringes of my canvases and beyond, and come back. Traveling back and forth regularly actually. What do you think my asteroid is for?

Greenjay, we crossposted. What a brilliant idea about the inventory sheet!

Canada Customs left a little note in one of our suitcases when we got home that they had examined it with a contact number if we had questions/concerns. I thought that was very polite. I think maybe they were checking out roybird DH's yummy homemade jam and then I realized I had put my new fabby tuberknife in that case and they might have thought it was a switchblade. We are SO not supposed to have the autoflicky kind of knife.

obviously canadians are polite even when they work in customs.

The TSA acronym has many meanings. Not many of them are polite.

That's new greenjay. Before everything was just all rumpled about with no note. Never had anything go missing though.

Although I am definitively not a Rocky Mountain person, I was drawn over to this thread by promises of paintings. What do I find but an interesting mix of people whom I know from quite different discussions! How cool! There you all are doing totally other things! And interacting with each other! Wow! Roybird, your paintings are just lovely. I can't work in watercolors at all, so I really admire what you've done, especially all the greens and the nice splashy treatment of the leaves. I like to paint alone, too, although I always have music playing. Having finished three paintings for a small exhibit in November I haven't been to my studio since, though.

Greenjay, that's brilliant about the note in your suitcases. When we've traveled I tried to put as much as possible in my carry-on luggage, but that's probably severely curtailed now with all the new restrictions. Nut, amazing that you ran into a polite luggage-searcher-person. I wonder if they do that routinely now?

Welcome to the Rocky Mountain Forum g_g ^_^

Merci, Dahlianut!

g_g,
You will have a lot of fun with this wonderful wacky bunch. Both roybird and mulchmania are artists and the rest of us just gasp in amazement. Nice to have another artist on board. We have a very wide definition of rocky mountains. Such as, is there a slope in your area? Are there rocks? You are in.

Hi, greenhouse gal, you look familiar. We must have met. Maybe on the sustainable alt. forum.

Just so you know, Mulchmania has an asteroid and Dnut has a weather transporter. Then Sofer, he's got all kinds of gadgets he made himself. And he seems to live right around the corner from a wormhole.

Now, I'm pretty sure I got that wrong. Somebody correct me.

Hi, GG! We've met before. Glad you came to see us. Send pic's of your paintings if you would like. Well, my friend dragged me on a 7 mile walk through town on the black top bike trail next to the rail road. I ended up walking on the dirt edge on the way back. I keep trying to convince her that dirt trails are more fun but she just can't handle getting her shoes dirty! But, I feel like it was probably good to get a walk anyway, as long as my knees can hold up. Black top sucks. Greenjay, the inventory sheet is a good idea. Dahlia, have you tried the jam yet? We opened the maple syrup this morning. Yum! The chocs are, sadly, long gone. I do everything I can to avoid airports. I have never liked flying and now hate it deeply. I have always been taken aside and searched even before 9-11! My tai chi teacher says the security guards can sense my lack of respect for authority. I have even asked what profile I could possibly fit and been told, "oh, we don't profile. It's just random." I can believe that since so many evil-doers just pass right through. Does it make me feel safe? No, it does not.

Well, I still fly around a bit, but not as much as I would like. I am not fond of flying, but I am very fond of arriving places -- New Orleans, places where there are Iris Conventions, and soon, I hope, I hope, Tahiti. I used to be terrified to fly because I was once involved in a single engine plane accident when my father was flying. Believe me when you lose the engine in a single engine plane, it is really scary. But my dad landed the plane perfectly and we flew on in a rented plane ( the first one was borrowed) to Jackson, Wyo.
After that I was terrified of flying for maybe 30 years. Then I began taking anti-depressants and lost all my irrational fears. Not long ago, I decided to try living without antidepressants and found out I was cured. Now, I don't want to claim antidepressants are miracle drugs or anything, but they sure cured my fear of flying. We will see if it comes back when I go to Tahiti this summer. The flight from LA to Papeete is really long.
Anyhow, during my union days, I was frequently searched on flights -- and I was doing a lot of flying during that time. Coincidence, right. After I retired, I the searching stopped, except last trip I made to the farm or somewhere, I was actually patted down for the first time in my life. It was a little more personal than I am comfortable with. I must look like a terrorist?
But I still have a great joy in arriving places where there are flowers and great food and other wonderful stuff. So far I am willing to put up with it -- and a good thing, too. DH is planning lots of trips for work and I am planning to tag along. Japan, Rio de Janeiro, and who knows where else. He has done something that needs to be proclaimed to the world. Yippee! I will help! Soon as I figure out what it is.
Congratulations on surviving your walk, roybird. In the future, just do what Nancy Reagan recommends, "Just say no." Yeah, I know it isn't that simple.

A 7 mile walk is a good thing but I could think of better venues. I always take a valium when I get on a plane but it isn't enough. It is claustrophobia, I think. The only time I enjoyed flying was during a snowstorm trying to get back to New Mexico from New York. The plane sat on the run way for 6 hours, so they bumped us all to first class and gave us free drinks. We flew to Atlanta, to Chicago and finally to New Mexico. All the passengers were drunk and/or passed out but feeling no pain.

I recommend drugs for dealing with flying. I don't need them anymore, but I certainly have used them. I used to have a prescription for Xanax to be used for air flights. Oddly enough, it really didn't help. Alcohol didn't help. Nothing helped until I took paxil. That worked. It is great for phobias. Don't know whether it works for depression or not, but it worked on me for fear of flying and I really didn't think anything would work after alcohol and tranquilizers failed. Now I am a happy flier without drugs. I can hardly believe it myself. Still don't care for TSA, though.
Canadians are so civilized, Dahlia. I love the note from the person who searched your bags. What a thoughtful touch. I hope Homeland Security is reading this. Well, maybe not.

Can you just take one paxil when you get on a plane or do you have to take them all the time? O.T.C. allergy pills knock me right out so if I had to fly I would try to sleep. I have not been on an airplane since I started meditating either, so that might work. I do love road trips, though and have no plans to leave the country.

Your friend needs to walk in her feets not shoes roybird. Feets like squishing mud through their toes. Haven't had toast since we got home. Making bread tomorrow though and mmmmmmm warm fresh bread with jam mmmmmmm g_g has the very luvly Kittatinny Mountains http://www.summitpost.org/view_object.php?object_id=171004

How could someone not like getting dirty? But, she never has. Her husband is a manic clean-freak and I think she has been brain washed. It would be easier to wash my boots than my brain, come to think of it. This has been a Long day.

Hallo! Picante, I do post on the sustainable alt. forum, so mayhap that's where you encountered me? Nut, I do NOT have Kittatinny or Kyttyntinny or Kyttynleady Mts anywhere near me. I do have a nice steep slope going down to our little river, though, if that will allow me to be an honourary Rocky Mountaineer. Does it help if long ago I drove across the Rockies in a snowstorm in a TR-3? Rabbit Ears Pass was closed so we had to go the long way. It was definitely an Adventure.

Paintings - hmmn. What to show you... Okay, here's a little girl whom I photographed in Paris and then painted; that's the carousel at the Tuileries in the background.

And here's another Tuileries painting:


Mmmm, fresh bread! I have to make some tomorrow, too. I do the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes type, but my current favorite is a super easy King Arthur no-knead whole wheat recipe. Warm fresh bread indeed! Major yum!

It was very kind of you to walk seven miles with your friend, Roybird. I have bicycled ten with one of my friends but she is too competitive for me and likes to go fast, whilst I like to look about, watch the birds, see the flowers, and enjoy myself!

O WOWSER I luv the way you have the skipper rope! g_g everything counts on the RM Forum. Even thinking about mountains counts. There are no rules except once here you can never leave MHWAAAAA HA HAAAAAAA (very evil scarey laugh).

Here's another skipping rope, Dahlink. This one's my GD:

And yes, I do think about mountains, but I really didn't like driving in them. The mountains in France are even worse - no guardrails!

ooooooo she looks like she is kin to fairys which is so how one should be. She is SO going to cherish that painting when she is older. Thanks for sharing G-G. I like driving in Europe. Petal to the metal ^_^