Snow day...

Well well, an unexpected day of sloth and vegetating. The great thing is that, having already shoveled out tons of snow from my sidewalk and schlepped to work and back (to no effect, it's true), I already feel productive and am thus in prime shape to enjoy the laziness without guilt. Though actually, I think I'll go and work on my current drawing, a charcoal of my kitty sitting under an umbrella and looking worried. It's very cute, and the light is good right now. What better to do than sit looking out at the white snow and turning my fingers black?

I did some reading on persistent hamstring soreness over the long (but now lengthened) weekend. Turns out the most common cause of the problem is insufficiently strong glutes; they don't do as much work as they ought to, thus forcing the hamstring to take on too much and become strained. This could be my problem... in my attempts to strengthen my hamstrings, I haven' t been doing much of anything glute-specific at the gym, and probably do not exactly have buns of steel. Also, it's usually my outer hamstring that feels the pain. So, okay, I will work on my glutes and see if the problem gets better.

Done with kitty picture, I think

Wow, I just started it last weekend and I think it's done. This is the fastest I've done a decent drawing in a long time--usually they take several weeks! I'm still a little insecure about my skills with charcoal... I'm so into detail, and charcoal is so not suited to that, and I want this to be of at least decent quality since it's destined to be a gift. Still, I learned something (namely that 8B pencil can mix with charcoal just fine, and is quite useful for sharpening up boundaries in the not-too-dark areas), and this picture looks cute from across the room. Rumor has it I'm seeing rumgirl in person tomorrow night, so maybe I'll have her look at it before I spray the fixative.

Out out, damned stuff, I'm headed for Europe.

For some reason A and I got to talking about ways to organize our place better (maybe that comment to Horshack about not having room for a TV was part of it). We were mostly talking about buying shelves and/or other holding devices, but then I got all organizational and managed to simply hide almost all of the junk that was sitting in the corners of our second living room. This involved enough sweeping in corners, etc, that the room really looks better. Very cool. Then I started wondering how much crap I had that I could just get rid of. I came up with quite a list including an SNES that I now have an emulator for, a stupid M&M clock radio I got for free, a bag of stuff from the skating club I had no idea I had, an unopened Lite Brite (destined for eBay)... lots of stuff. Why is it so easy to end up with so much? Out, out, damned stuff.

Now I'm sitting around reading a travel booklet for Venice, a place we should really, really find a hotel in for the night of April 12 or sometime in there. Here is the best quote so far: "Born in a lagoon 1,500 years ago as a refuge from barbarians, Venice is overloaded with tourists and is slowly sinking (unrelated facts)." Tee hee.

Venice is also car-free, something I'm going to love. We've totally put off planning this trip in favor of planning the wedding, but at some point we have to get around to doing it since April is coming right up. We're flying into Germany to see my friends M and G, then heading south in some fashion, and flying back from Venice. I had hoped to see Amsterdam but with the terrible planning job we're doing and how far out of the way it is, that may have to happen another time.