The teacher is new by the way…. real new…. kinda shiny. So she decides and open forum is good and opens the room for discussion. As you can imagine there were a few interesting suggestions, you give hormonal teenagers, male and female, especially of this day and age an open forum… It’s pretty much an open forum for mischief and maybe a little bit of mayhem. Listening to the others pipe in Bryan is waiting for his chance but he figures someone is bound to ask what he is thinking. Nope. So as usual trying to get a giggle Bryan raises his hands and asks… “Is a Dr. Seuss ok?” ~~~laughter~~~ The teacher says “No” then before she can move to the next student he asks “Well what about playboy?” LOL!

Gratefully, she smiled, shook her head and moved to the next student equal audacious suggestion. I am sure she had much worse suggested. Now he has a stack of books given to him by his step father to take for approval. And I have one more embarassing story to share at an equally embarassing point in time in the future…. like right now.

Recently we had a day off … it was my birthday and it was in April but I forgive you for telling me happy birthday …. belatedly.  LOL.

Anyway here are a few images of the animals we encountered.  I must say with the heat here in Texas I did spend quite a lot of the time worried they were hydrated and had shade.  Which is more than I can say for the human’s who I often think are more on display for the animals than the animals for the humans.

 

San Antonio Zoo & Japanese Tea Garden

 

San Antonio Zoo ~ Edited

]]> http://artistrystudio.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/life-is-a-zoo/feed/ 0 Jax http://artistrystudio.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/osama-bin-ladin-dead/ http://artistrystudio.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/osama-bin-ladin-dead/#comments Tue, 03 May 2011 23:16:06 +0000 Jackie Anderson http://artistrystudio.wordpress.com/?p=625 ]]> Today we have triumphed, we should take the hands of our soliders and their family and friends — fully taking our hands and grasping them into a hug of complete gratitute and pride for their many scarfices.  While we want to have the ‘Ding Dong the witch is dead moment’  remember that this is just a chapter of our history and that time and strength of character will be what we need now to handle the fallout. We must prepare for those who do not agree with us to take this chance to make a statement.  Celebrate Wisely. I myself am joyful for the loss of a powerful man who hurts for self rightneousness… now we mush wach how that power and hatred reinventents itself. Does it want to find a middle ground or does it want to strike blindinly into the night?  I will remain watchful… yet joyous.

Anyway… I have always like the haunting, spooky effect other digital artist seem to be able to capture so I decided I needed be able to do that also.  Yep, you guessed it, multiple tutorials and quite a few to many precious moments of my time and poof this is what I have…  ~  cough ~  achieved?

This weekend we returned to McAllister Park, I mentioned this sign in my last post. I must say I am disappointed I only saw the other species, no feral hogs, no coyotes, no snakes, no bobcats and especially no mountain lions.   I am wondering how this is supposed to warn anyone when this sign is at the beginning of only one trail, not posted online at all and on top of that the trail starts right behind the largest playground in the park.  This sign seems to be here for the wild miniscule chance that one of these species will show only for plausible deniability. “Well, we did warn you.”

Mountain Lions, Bobcats & Feral Hogs... Oh My!

Anyway, last walk here I was happy to have gotten several shots of some of our local deer, even with my husbands panic of them being so close. This time we successfully traversed the trails without getting lost once, even plotted out a path for the next time we go walking there.  There were a few logistical debates and a compass app involved but Whoo-Hoo!

I only took a few photos during our walk.  When I started looking at the photos I thought one in particluar could be edited to look like the path a character in a suspense/scary movie would be travelling down.  So I had  some fun playing with the image.  I was going for spooky what do you think?

McAllister Park Map - Trails

Unbeknownst to us they have done a few upgrades since our last visit and prompltly got ourselves lost.  McAllister park is beautiful and I knew it had severl miles of trails however I didn’t realize that with the expansion it will have 25 miles of trails.  The park is now going to be part of the Salado Creek Greenway which links three of the large parks on the North – NorthEast side of San Antonio.

Salado Creek Greenway (McAllister Park to Lady Bird Johnson Park).

After about 30 minutes of walking we decided to head back, we thought we were on the same trail we started on and … oops we weren’t.  We were in the new part of the park and didn’t realize it.  After about 15 minutes of unsuccessfully finding our way back we asked an unsuspecting lady walker with her dog how to get back.  She was startled but told us we could follow her back to the mail trail and we did, to bad it was the wrong trail for us.  After getting our bearings we took some educated guess and successfully got back to our car. Yeah team!  Our walk ended up being about and hour-forty.

It was a lovely walk.  There was a sign that told us to use caution because there were Bobcats, Wild Hogs, Snakes and a few other lovely city dwelling creatures. [I regret not taking a picture of that sign - I will next time.]  We did see some deer and my hubby made me laugh.  There were a few bucks and due to being in this area they aren’t scared of people, wary but not scared, so they kind of just walked around us.  Chris insisted we ‘go’, the does were fine but the bucks weren’t.  The antlers were used for attacking and he didn’t want to tempt fate.  LOL.. such a city boy.

The only downer was that at about the hour mark my body did decide that Fibro didn’t like being lost.  I had to push to get back to the car, the trip made longer because of my slower pace.  I did have a flare ending in having to take my meds at home and pretty much crashed out for the night. I feel better today if not still a wee-bit paying for my extra long walk.  Ah well!  I have plans of repeatng the walk but not the extra laps.  I downloaded some trail maps and we will plan better for this coming Saturday.

I think that inspiration, true inspiration has to come from within.  The spark of that inspiration can come from anything, there are no limits.  It could be by simply varying your daily routine, stopping to talk to someone you’ve don’t know, or asking a outrageous question to someone you thought you knew so well. It could be from stubbing your toe — even creative language counts.  I’ve hear some awe inspiring successions of curses when someone is emotionally compromised weather it is the coffee table or road rage.  I believe I’ve had a few of those inspiring moments often once the initial inspiration is over it has ended in laughter for me.  Which is always inspiring.  You see what I mean.  Inspiration is in the moment.

Although this is something that is with us every second of every day it is extremely [you know when you say extreme it is the hardest -- lol] … it is extremely easy to loose sight of that inspiration when doing the daily grind, or when stress or health overwhelm you.  I seem to have fallen in this rut.  I call it a rut because that is just what it is, a grove that has been worn by time into the road that you are journeying on. Wow that was almost poetic.

Illness sucks.  Chronic Illness blows.  Once when I opened my eyes it felt as if the force of my passion and inspiration was there waiting for me and everything was in the way until the moment I could grab it and put it on paper, canvas — anything that would stay still long enough for me to scribble, doodle or draw on.  Now when even before my eyes are open the first sensation I feel is pain.

Pain can inspire but carting it around with you with every cell is daunting.  Upon waking I have to take stock on how my body is working — or if it is working — there are days where taking my arm and nudging my husband is all I can do.  No speaking no moving no anything.  I literally shake my head and he knows.  He brings me my cell so I can text my boss… that I won’t be in.  I also have a very understanding boss, the day they offered me the job I explained my medical conditions.  There are a few  but the Fibromyaglia is the one that is the most overwhelming.  I was lucky and she had a passing knowledge on Fibromyalgia because she has a friend with it.  She was concerned but taking the job at a bit of a pay grade less than I am worth got me in.  I’ve only called in maybe a handful of times like that and again I am fortunate that I can work via remote. Which means that after the meds [pain killers] kick in I can sit at my computer and work from home.

Usually it takes a few minutes to move – more a grin and bare it instead of any real heroic effort.  I have mastered the art of stretching in bed without waking the hubby. Although I have fallen asleep in a yoga pose … that’s funny to jerk awake in some sort of contorted position, disoriented and usually an appendage is now numb to add to the fun. I have a heck of a commute to the gym, I roll of the bed to the floor.  After a few stretches and a little more of my dad in my head [he was a Marine Drill Instructor] saying “insert any funny raunchy inappropriate drill instructor quote from any movie here’ – yep that’s my dad. Or maybe my mom, who was raised by a single mom during WWII in the middle of the nowhere South — yep no whimpy quotes come to mind.  And its off to start my day.

See you can be inspired by a string of creative language.  So you think this is taking forever, its not even 7am yet.  This is my block… this is what hindering me.  I was a faithful blogger for some years then life naturally got in the way.  If that stops then the whole possibility of blogging is kind of a moot point don’t you think? Anyway, I push myself and struggle  through the day — yeah can’t take my ‘real’ meds at work  they make me really blonde… like an etch-a-sketch with broken handles.  It’s part ignore it, part mind over matter and part no choice grin and bare it.  My job isn’t helping, its more technical than creative so there really isn’t any inspiration happening there.  Might be the constant hum that I feel from concentrating so hard on what I am doing so that I am not feeling the sharp, dull, hot, cold edge of pain, but I could be wrong.

I digress… I am wandering to much through my running commentary.  My intention was to start to inpsire myself.  I’ve started a new painting.  Even going so far as to post the ‘work in progress’ in a group I opened on facebook, inviting a few artists I feel impressed by to join and share some feedback on the work.  Basically I am going to attempt to jump start my own inspiration again.  Hopefully, I will post regularly and maybe between the two I will by guilt or mere routine inspire myself.

If you have actually read this entire post you are nuts and I like you so leave a comment and share with me.  Who knows you may cause some inspiration.

Well It actually snowed in San Antonio. I haven’t seen snow here since the winter I moved here about 1985/86. This part of the world is not used to this kind of weather. We had less than an inch of snow and they basically shut the city down.

Click to view slideshow.