June 2009 Archives

Two illustrations I've been working on today. The parental thingy, and the now finished Polish line drawing. Colouring is for tomorrow. And thanks to my dear friend Dinah my house is fuller again, sigh. No, it's a good thing, really. Michiel can't seem to stop using these horrid hanging file systems for his paperwork, and we never had a proper filing cabinet to put them in. Dear Dinah found one on the curb somewhere around Danforth Avenue. And neighbour Paul happened to have his brother Colin over, with his big pickup truck. How's that for convenient. Colin's wife found an original Walter Trier in a thrift store for twenty dollars, can you imagine? She googled Walter Trier and then spent hours reading my blog. She didn't find out until today it was me writing this blog.

I've got a bag of groceries myself, neighbour Marilyn brought it. She is going away for a few days, and she brought me the content of her fridge, yummie. All organic and farmer's market goodies. She barged in while I was on the radio, and the host greeted her before a live audience. Marilyn liked that very much.

Pride weekend is almost over, and some of Piffin's guests are getting ready to catch early flights. They expressed their gratitude for my putting up with a house full of queers. But I assured them that I have met many way way stranger people than those very nice and polite queer girls, or boys, or however they want to refer to themselves as. They think they are so extreme, it's just sweet. I feel old, with so much youth around me, that's all. Fortunately I drank wine with two fifty something males last night.

I hope I can keep myself from working over the weekend, I should really take the weekend off, and spend some time with my dear son. Chances are though, he won't want to spend time with his dear mom. Piffin will take care of herself, it is pride weekend, and she has a few dozen friends over. She cleaned her room for a week. I took a peek, it looks amazing. I'd like to sleep there myself.

This client asked for a very rough sketch, a scribble. Well, that's asking for it. I don't get very much rougher than this. And because I am the world's best planner, I didn't even have time for much more. My dear children needed new passports, and nonsense like that easily takes half a day. How do other people do that? Do they work nights? Or do they travel without passports maybe? There is always so much nonsense to take care of. I freaking vacuumed *after* dinner.

With my fan full blast and half an eye on the tweets from Iran, what can I say. Willem is home from the hospital, but still very weak. Michiel is going to teach his gifted class tomorrow, Willem had been lokking forward to coming along to watch, but he is really too weak.

No, this certainly wasn't a full days work. But I also had a friend come over to explain health insurance to me. Michiel's entrepreneural adventures have health insurance consequences, and I am such a buff in health insurance. But I think I am going for the semi-private hospital room. I also explored Poland, my next drawing will be about Poland. These past two sketches have to wait for approval, so you know I'm not just lazy.

The weather is way too nice, and there is too much distraction from people walking in and dropping by, kids home for the Summer, etcetera. But I am pretty much booked up, so I scheduled myself five day work weeks. I am not complaining. And Otger passed all his courses, he can start grade eleven with confidence this September, woohee!

Came home from Amsterdam only to find my mailbox overflowing with work, I am not complaining. I should have checked my mail while I was gone, but you know how it goes. Now I only hope that some clients didn't already call someone else because I didn't get back to them right away. I also visited some clients and it is very nice that I can now put some faces to some email addresses. I made sure to visit the parental advice people! Anyway, I did this parental advice thingy on my first day back in Toronto, and I collapsed after dinner. Turned myself inside out in the bathroom all night, then pain and fever over night, and I shitted water yesterday. Welcome back. I seem to be recovering as quickly as I got sick, so I figure I'll be back at the drawing board tomorrow. Oh yeah, and Michiel boarded a plane to Amsterdam last night! What a week. His dad is not doing well. He already went to the hospital while I was there, so at least it wasn't one of these Skype medical emergencies this time.

Okay, okay, a photo, I hear you. Here's my book at Scheltema in Amsterdam!

And a photo of my Noah's ark print in restaurant Bordewijk in Amsterdam.