Not Today

No snow today. Whew. We had wind but no snow. Of course I had to drive across a long, pretty high bridge over the river to get to my haircut this afternoon. That was fun with the wind trying to shove the car over to one side but I held firm and made it. Both ways. The daffodils are still happy out there in front of the brick facade of the house. Still no crocuses but I guess I can't have anything.

 

The biggest bloom on the Christmas/Easter cactus is just about fully open. It's so pretty, even if it is pink-ish. Which I have to keep reminding myself is light red and I like red so I need to get over it.

 

Look what I got in the mail today. It's the very first copy of Spies Don't Retire! I always buy one as soon as it's available so I have the first one. There's a stack of first copies on the desk where I can see them often and remind myself of how much work I've done to get that stack built. The author copies are supposed to arrive on the 11th, just in time for the Saturday market on the 12th.

 

The next prompt in Sketchbook Challenge was to draw pens. I pulled out a couple from the pen/pencil jar on the table and got busy. I didn't color them, mostly because I had to leave for my haircut, but one of them is black and silver so it would have looked like a totally black pen. The words wouldn't have shown since they're silver and I "drew" them in black.

 

I even made time to paint the next to last flower in the wildflower book. It's Asters. It took quite a bit of time to paint this since I had to let things dry after each part. First the centers, then the petals, then the stems, then the leaves. I'm no good at making the stems come together right but I'll keep trying.

 

I visited DS at Zambaldi this morning. He was brewing a batch of Good Dog Porter and also cleaning some of the Brewer For a Day equipment. I thought I'd show you the size difference between the "real" brewing tanks and the BFD ones. In this picture the white tank is for fermentation and the little silver tank is for carbonation and finishing. You can see the big fermentation tanks behind these little ones. The BFD tanks are just a little taller than I am, the big ones are really tall, need a ladder to get up to the hatch tall.

 

This afternoon I emailed the Spies Don't Retire manuscript and character list to the audiobook producer. Her rates have gone up since the last one but I've got it covered so I'm going ahead. I'll find out soon when it'll fit into her calendar. 

--Barbara