I was trying to add a title to this but WordPress wasn’t having it. I get it. You don’t want me to post it? Ah well.

Beautiful skies this morning after a rough night. It’s November! As I look at the calendar, which says “Oh fuck, it’s nearly Christmas.” No joke there. It’s that crazy rush time. At least there’s some time off coming.

The weekend still had a lot of school work. I need it mostly done before I take the weekend off for an art/hiking retreat. I did cut more stuff out on Friday night…

And then finished it up, 10 hours in, on Saturday night…

And last night, I sorted all the pieces out by the 100s…

Tonight, I’ll need to clean up the studio, put all the fabrics away from the last quilt (which didn’t get into the show I made it for, ironically…or normally…however you look at it).

I do like this next stage, picking all the fabrics. It’s more creative than the last few stages, but still meditative. Lots of standing though.

We did break up the grading for a 4+-mile hike on Saturday, the other side of the Helix Flume hike that we did a few months back.

We really need to leave earlier if we want to meet in the middle…the parking lots all close at 6. There’s El Cap.

It was warm at the beginning, but cooled off nicely.

Once you get up to the level of the flume, it’s mostly flat. It’s the climbing before that which is a bit much. Starting on the El Monte Park side was easier…I think.

Definitely has been some fire damage up here, but a while ago.

Creative fence building. We only saw one group of people on bikes…otherwise, we were the only ones on trail. The only wildlife this time was birds and bugs. And fresh coyote poop, plus possible footprints that weren’t there when we went through the first time. It’s good to hike. This weekend, we’ll be hiking in Joshua Tree National Park.

The cats were glad to see us. Or maybe perturbed.

Nova looks perturbed anyway.

We tried the silly hat on Calli.

She goes to the vet today to suss out her tumor on her side. The one on her nose is the one that will probably kill her, unfortunately. Inoperable. But the one on her side is supposedly benign…just has opened up and is rather disgusting and smelly. Sigh. Poor baby. It doesn’t hurt her at least.

This was Saturday night’s dinner drawing…

They don’t get finished because someone brings the food. I don’t remember if I posted last week’s drawing…

This is about the only drawing I’m doing at the moment. There just isn’t enough time for all the work and the art and actual sleeping and stuff.

Old timey photo of the kids, circa 2005.

Back in the day. The neighbor kids yelled “trick or treat” from the driveway, where we left the candy in a bowl in the wheelbarrow full of dirt, a skelly arm, and a pumpkin. I wasn’t ready for 23 kids coming up the stairs to the door. I live on a tiny street without traffic, but the neighbors invited friends over. We don’t really have that many kids on the block. It just sounds that way.

Well it’s a short week for me, but I’ll need to do sub plans for Friday. Then next week is even shorter because of Veteran’s Day. Then one full week on and a full week off. Work to do before all that. Grades are due next week…which is difficult. Ah well. I did go to school on Saturday and get one art assignment out of the way…there are two due Friday though and I won’t be there to collect them, so that should be interesting. Bad timing on the retreat, but I didn’t pick the days, unfortunately. OK. Off to work. It’s time.