The First Part

How I spent the first part of my two week vacation:

Saturday I slept. We had lunch with Judi and Paul at the good strip-mall Chinese restaurant. I was up late, watching Hanna on Amazon. I've been wanting to see it for years. It was good but not great.

Easter Sunday, I slept in a bit. Dave took Saba to the vet while I slept. Then we went to the studio for the first time in a long time and I made an ugly plate. We took Judi some filled Peeps, which she loved. She was going to take them to "The Girls," a group of college buddies who get together once a year for the last, what? Fifty years or so.

In the afternoon, I began the onerous task of cleaning off and reorganizing my desk. I got about halfway done before I needed some down time. In the evening, we had homemade pizza for dinner, then I took a nap before bedtime. I got up, watched a movie (Hello, My Name Is Doris), then went back to bed.

Monday, my brother and I went grocery shopping then picked up some burritos for lunch. (Carne adovada! YUM!) I came home just before the plumber came to set up the swamp coolers. After he was gone, I made some tapioca pudding for dessert then fell asleep watching a new series on Amazon, "Sunshine Sento Sake," which is about a Tokyo salesman who plays hooky from work to go to a sento (public bath) and then for a beer and snack after. That's it. That's what happens in each episode. It's very funny and very...Japanese.

Later, I tried to watch Viggo Mortenson's last movie, Captain Fantastic, but though I love Viggo, the movie was needlessly depressing, so I just turned it off. 

Tuesday was a very lazy day, spent at home. While looking over my acrylic paints, I found my stamp carving set so I ended up sitting down and carving a stamp.

You can see the progression from the Posada illustration (on the far left, under the blue Speedball box) that was the inspiration, to the finished stamp.

I'm drawn to these strange images. I assume the tuxedoed figures that Posada used are radish-headed, probably the kind of radishes that get carved into jack-o-lantern-like beings for the Day of the Dead.

The stamp took awhile and while I carved, Dave worked, and we listened to a new (to me) group that I like, Bleachers.

After I put up my carving stuff, I made a frittata for lunch, using pasta leftover from dinner the night before. It was an unexpectedly dense and heavy fritatta. I was so full after lunch that I didn't want dinner until very late, around 9 p.m., when I ate a bowl of cereal and a banana.

In the early evening, we did some grocery shopping--milk, chocolate, and a few other less necessary things.  Then I carved a bit more, another Posada-inspired stamp:

Along with the illustration that inspired it: