Pouring My Art Out

Oh yeah, beginning the editing process on my newest novel…

Posted on May 28, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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One of the things I am going to do while I am in the Bay Area vising my mom, is to start editing my newest novel: The Seven Kingdoms. (You can read a large portion of it, unedited, under the button in my top bar with the same name, and if you are interested in helping me edit it, let me know… I can’t afford to pay you, but I would send you a signed copy of the book when it is published, and do some awesome blog posts for you, as well as naming a character after you in my next book!)…

There are so many characters doing so many things in so many places, that I not only need to look for typos and bad spelling and punctuation, but make sure that I didn’t send somebody somewhere in one chapter just to have them pop up in the wrong place later.

This is why I describe writing novels thusly: All you have to do is take a few thousand mile-long strings… (plot threads)… and hold them neatly by one end in a bundle. Then, you give the other end of each of those thousands of strands to a squirrel that is on crack, and send him into the forest. Now, all you have to do is walk around the forest to the other side, and find the ends of each of those strings, so you can form them into a neat bundle once again.

Posted in Everything Else | Tagged art, books, editing, novels, words, writing | 2 Comments

Well, you knew there was gonna be some more sunset pictures…

Posted on May 28, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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Because I never get sick of the view from the house where I grew up…

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Even though you can only see a small slice of the San Francisco bay, because of all the trees…

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And even though I can get a better view by walking or driving to some places close by…

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But I was tired last night, so I just did the usual view from the deck and the upper level of my mom’s backyard.

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And I am going to try some new stuff with the camera while I am here… but I do have lots of other stuff to do also, to help out around the house, because my mom is like 94-years-old… oh, and we are going to talk about the view… and a big tree…

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And these stupid power and phone wires…

Posted in My travels, sunsets | Tagged art, humor, photography, san francisco bay area, sunset, sunsets, travel | 2 Comments

Uh, I’m pretty sure that isn’t a cat…

Posted on May 28, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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As I was getting ready for bed last night, I walked by the big picture windows leading to my mom’s backyard. I saw movement, and assumed it was the semi-feral cats my mom and my younger brother, who lives with her, feed… but it wasn’t.

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I know, raccoons look cute… but do not mess with them.

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I was just feet away from them, and they were unperturbed. You might think that a raccoon will run from you because you are so much bigger. They won’t. They will look at you with a ‘what the heck do you want?’ look on their face.

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I do like the way you get to experience nature where I grew up. The Berkeley Hills, and my home town of Kensington, are still very much a part of nature. There are lots of trees, and wild, overgrown canyons running down the hills. So you get deer and raccoons and wild turkey wandering down the streets.

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But you should leave them alone too.

Posted in dogs and other animals | Tagged animals, bay area, humor, nature, photography, raccoons | 3 Comments

I will start sniffing around for some Bay Area adventures tomorrow…

Posted on May 27, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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I am too tired right now. I got about four hours of sleep last night. See you in the morning, people!

Posted in Pictures of me | Tagged art, humor, mutant, photography, Photoshop, photoshop art | 2 Comments

Okay, is that high fog or low clouds???

Posted on May 27, 2017 by pouringmyartout

Well, I am back visiting my mom in the Bay Area again, and I did my ‘getting up insanely early to miss the Los Angeles and Bay Area traffic thing’ again. I just have a few pictures I took, as the sun came up over the mountains North of LA.

I have always wondered about the actual, technical difference between clouds and fog. Is fog just low clouds? And if you find fog in a mountain pass, is it fog, because it is at ground level to you, or is it clouds, because it is far above sea level? I passed this fog bank/altitude-challenged cloud bit of fluffy stuff near the pass at the top of the mountain, and it was hovering midway between the top of the mountains and the lake in the valley floor. This just makes it more confusing.

Then I took a couple of quick photos of the sun coming up from the rest area in the pass, before descending and doing the long, lengthwise drive up the Central Valley of California once again.

Now I have one more question for you. What do you want to see while I am here? I mean, this is an interactive blog. A partnership, if you will. So if you like the flower and dog and sunset and city view pictures I usually end up taking, that’s fine. But if there is something else you want to see or know about the Bay Area, I might just try to oblige you.

Posted in My travels | Tagged california, clouds, fog, humor, photography, sunrise, travel | 15 Comments

Get sucked into my blog…

Posted on May 27, 2017 by pouringmyartout

I am on a road trip. Take this opportunity to poke around in the old stuff down there… but be sure to bring some rope, water bottles, a snake-bite kit, a map, compass, hatchet or machete, and some matches.

Posted in Pictures of me, stuff about blogging | Tagged art, bloggers, blogging, blogs, humor, social-media, wordpress | Leave a comment

A tiger, a gorilla, me, my daughters… random photos, that would be a good title for this post…

Posted on May 26, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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I am just clearing out some of my photos, in preparation for something I am doing tomorrow, so here is the last picture I took of the tigers when I went to the San Diego zoo with my little buddy, Olivia.

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And a picture of my daughters, taken some time ago. If you look carefully, you might spot some of my tikis.

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Uh… okay… a selfie I took on Maui, during our second honeymoon adventure.

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And a selfie I took last time I was in the Bay Area not so long ago, which is funny, because that is where I am going again tomorrow!

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Another zoo picture, and I am sort of proud of that one.

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My daughter, Jessica, and I, at the renaissance fair, taken last year in Arizona when I went out there to visit her.

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And my favorite picture from her wedding… see, I am doing the ‘Wallace and Grommit’ happy hands!!!

Posted in dogs and other animals, Pictures of me | Tagged animals, art, family, gorilla, humor, kids, nature, photography, tigers, weddings | Leave a comment

I really need to make myself this shirt…

Posted on May 26, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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Posted in Pictures of me | Tagged art, clothes, fashion, humor, photography, Photoshop, photoshop art, style | Leave a comment

The very last photos of my daughter’s wedding… you know… unless you want to see what the place settings looked like or whatever…

Posted on May 26, 2017 by pouringmyartout

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There I am, with Jessica, doing the daddy/daughter dance. We danced to a song I used to sing to her when she was little. It is called: The Dippy Doo song, and I wrote it. I mean, I write songs with real words, you can hear and see them by clicking the button in the top bar called something like: My Original Song Videos. But this one just has the words dippy and doo repeated over and over to a catchy little tune.

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A friend of mine helped me record the Dippy Doo song with awesome musical tracks that swelled until it was an entire orchestra. He even made my voice sound better. When Jessica was little, she would stand on my size-15-feet while we danced. She did that again. It hurt.

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Obviously, the best part of the Dippy Doo song is the dip at the end of each verse.

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They even gave me a microphone during the toasts. Jessica asked me in advance to write something down, so I would’t just ramble. I did. And then, I went off script…

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Hey, we all knew it was going to happen. And I am good with words, and everybody loved it. In fact, some older gentleman from Jason’s side of the family said it was the funniest thing he had ever heard at a wedding.

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I took a photo of the professional photographer, while she was taking this photo of me. I still think my pictures of that day are almost as good as hers… except hers have more me in them. (Thanks again, Kristina Adams Photography!).

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