This little piggy is living it’s best life. I’m so jealous.

So the last few weeks have brought many changes. The snow is gone, replaced by rain and a couple of unusually hot days for April, but mostly rain. The trees are budding, the grass is greening. The birds are loudly proclaiming their availability to make more birds, I assume. The union is striking.

We took the kids downtown on Friday evening to see some art at the Ottawa Art Gallery. It is an excellent gallery, and I left full of inspiration. I highly recommend you go, when in town. We followed that up with a bite to eat at the Rideau Centre food court, because apparently I needed a reminder why we never eat at the Rideau Centre food court. Let me never forget that again.

If you aren’t dressing up your cat for Easter, I don’t know why you have a cat

It’s that time of year again, when I get very anxious for winter to end, and anything else to begin, but winter’s like “Nah, I’m good.”

Hybrid work started last week for my department, which for me means I’ll be commuting to the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. But then by some stroke of meteorological good luck, an ice storm happened, which I swear I had nothing to do with (unless my emotions control the weather?), and we were told to work at home on Wednesday. So I guess hybrid work starts next week, unless we get more inclement weather, which seems like a fairly significant loop-hole to hybrid work, if we could figure out how to control it. I’m absolutely not doing an inclement-weather-on-Wednesdays-dance over here, so stop spreading rumours and hand me my rain stick. Cha-cha-cha!

Apparently some folks lost power, especially in Quebec, so that’s not great. But it was nothing like the ice storm of 1998, which Lizzy assures me some internet people are comparing it to. If you were in Ottawa during the 1998 ice storm you wouldn’t be making that comparison, but this is the internet so reality has no place here.

Garden update!

I got off my rump and started some seeds indoors:

• Jalapeño
• Bell pepper (mix)
• Chili pepper
• Manitoba tomatoes
• Monster tomatoes
• Tarragon
• Kohl rabi (white and purple)
• Broccoli

Jalapeño seeds are from a pepper bought at a grocery store, so it may not sprout. I’ve had mixed results with growing seeds from store bought peppers, but it’s free and a fun experiment. I think it has to do with the maturity of the seeds, but I’m not entirely sure. Tarragon I’m going to keep inside. First seeds to sprout after only a few days was broccoli. That was a pleasant surprise. Monster tomatoes followed, then Kohl rabi and the Manitoba tomatoes.

So spring has sprung – indoors at least.

Happy Easter, bunnies!

It’s still winter here, but sunny days are ahead. I mean, probably. After the freezing rain, and 10 cm of snow. This penguin is clearly ready, as are we all.

On the bright side, we found kohlrabi seeds at Walmart of all places, so it will be a season of veggie experimentation after all. The Farmer’s Almanac says the last frost for Ottawa is May 13 this year, so I’ll be starting some seeds inside soon.

The 9 Ways to Draw a Person video from the other day still has me inspired. I have some writing to do, but I want to do some simple animation to go along with it.

Onward!

Director, artist, and animator Sasha Svirsky’s 9 Ways To Draw a Person rolled through my feed today, and I found it inspiring. Visually and audibly exciting.

With a rhythmic and kinetic style, Svirksy addresses numerous ways to capture a person’s likeness through association, abstraction, and obfuscation. Drawing from the Dada art movement, he mixes abstract and figurative images into ever changing color schemes, designs and animated mediums (photo collage, ink paintings, and computer tablet drawings) in order to address the idea of Art in a spontaneous and imaginative way. 

Svirsky described is as “improvisational animation”, and I think that’s perfect.

More here: https://vimeo.com/blog/post/staff-pick-premiere-9-ways-to-draw-a-person

Author Dan Lyons had a bit on CBS Sunday Morning about talking less and listening more. He explained how social media interactions force over-talking and promote the belief that success is measured by attracting attention. Truly successful and powerful people talk less but with more intent, and listen more.

Watch it here: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/stfu-author-dan-lyons-says-talk-less-listen-more/

It made me think of the old saying:

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.

Maurice Switzer, Mrs. Goose, Her Book

I’m going to shut up now.

Another little watercolour doodle – this time an astronaut floats on an alien rock presumably above some unseen alien planet, wondering, no doubt, just how did I get here?

Yeah, bub. We’re all asking that question.

Speaking of alien hellscapes, it’s still snowing here. The going consensus is it’s never going to stop, and this is just how life is now. It is kind of amazing walking up the local side streets where the city has removed the crowded snow banks. Left behind are vertical walls of frozen snow taller than me, telling the story of every snow fall, every slight thaw, every frozen day. The strata of winter.

Anyway, we’re all sick of it and it can go away now. I’d rather be stuck on a rock floating above some unseen alien planet.

We had a bad case of tomato blight last year. Every plant turned black and died. All the fruit rotted on the vines. It was sad and awful. Gardenbot would never have let that happen! Good Gardenbot!

Now with spring around the corner (it’s around the corner, right? Right? I’m looking out the window at like 10 feet of snow…) I’ve been thinking about what to plant in our smallish garden this year. Tomatoes are going to be sidelined for other plants. There isn’t a lot of sun in our back yard, so they don’t grow well here anyway. Plus, because the blight fungus tomato plague whatever is apparently still in the soil, I can’t plant tomatoes (or related nightshade plants) in the same dirt anyway.

So this is an opportunity to try and grow something different. Probably beans, maybe a cucumber. Possibly broccoli, or Brussels sprouts (yes, that’s how you spell that, I’m as surprised as you are). If I can find the seeds, I’d like to try kohlrabi – it’s supposed to be like a wild cabbage, but sweeter, and less leafy. Anyway, these cabbage adjacent plants apparently don’t need full sun, and do not recognize tomato blight as a real threat. Suck on that black death!

I don’t often look at problems as opportunities. That’s some eye-rolling LinkedIn manager-speak bullshit right there. I look at problems as problems. You solve them, or you don’t. But I spent most of today throwing a personal pity party celebrating my apparent lack of artistic talent. It was a blast, and brought on by some clearly unhealthy habits I’m trying to shake, and a rotten night of “sleep”. Maybe my creative problem is an opportunity. Maybe I need to plant something new.

Anyway, Gardenbot (above) was a little watercolour and ink drawing from last year. Please enjoy responsibly, and send warm air my way. This snow business is getting out of hand.

I spent a half hour trying to write something pithy to go with this illustration of a scared cat with it’s fur all poofy, but instead I just complained about work and commuting, and I don’t want to be that guy so I deleted it and here we are. I’m exhausted from all the complaining around me, and I’m not blameless in that regard. But you don’t need to be subjected to that foolishness.

Instead, just enjoy this silly drawing. Be happy, be helpful, be curious. Later gators.

Baby your mind is a radio

Three years ago I became so frustrated trying to streaming music from my iPhone to the Apple TV that I gave up entirely and bought a radio.

Initially it was the spotty nature of the streaming itself – sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t – and it was making me angry when I was supposed to be chill and happy. I just wanted to listen to some tunes in the morning and start my day in a positive space. But instead, it was making me miserable.

Then my being angry with inanimate tech made me angry with myself, and it was a whole spiral thing that was just not good, man.

In additional to all that, the tv had become the central part of the home and I really didn’t like that. I despised that it was on all the time, even just to play music. I hated that all the furniture was pointed at it. I wanted the tv turned off when we weren’t watching it. I wanted a simpler life. I wanted a radio.

I bought the Tivoli Audio Model One in walnut. Not the cheapest radio for sure, but it was very pretty, and the visual and interaction design appealed to me. It’s currently one of my favourite things.

Radio is what it is. It can be repetitive, and the DJs aren’t always great. But we have a tolerable alt rock station in Ottawa, plus CBC for the other times. Or when we’re feeling saucy we’ll tune in something from Quebec.

We also continue to stream a lot of music. The services and tech used to stream has changed and improved over the last few years, and I’m fairly certain the issues that led me to buy a radio are no longer issues. All the new music I listen to comes from streaming, or YouTube. In the same way that ebooks didn’t kill the publishing industry, streaming hasn’t killed analog radio. There is a time and place for all things. The mistake we often make is thinking we must replace working systems for new ones just because they are new. We don’t need to, and maybe even shouldn’t. There is a balance, a happy space where the new and the familiar coexist.

Plus, did I mention this radio is one of my favourite things? A Braun analog alarm clock is another. But I don’t have a painting of that, so you don’t get a story.