Life By Lindsey Rae

In the past, I wrote a bunch about the animal paintings at the Nashville Zoo that we bid on at the silent auction. I first saw them a few years ago and elephant paintings were the first thing that I saw that got me hooked on animal paintings. (We don't have an elephant painting yet...just the meerkat one. Although we did get one for Jerrod's aunt for Christmas).
But, anyway, most of them that I have seen are mostly just random brush strokes of colors...more abstract, that sometimes turns out to look like something recognizable.

I just saw this video on YouTube of an elephant doing a painting, and it is amazing. This elephant can draw better than a lot of people can. You must watch this!

Have you seen this rabbit anywhere?



This is probably the most famous picture of Oolong the rabbit; It's made it's way around the internet quite a bit.
I discovered Oolong a few years ago, when I was living in Japan, and spent quite awhile one night going through his website checking out the many many pictures of Oolong with random things on his bunny head.
You will not believe the number of pictures this guy has with things on the rabbit's head. Here's a little sample:






I have a link to Oolong's website in the sidebar, but you can also view it here.
This is in Japanese, but you don't need to understand it....just click on the links. No explanation needed...just see the pictures!
Unfortunately, Oolong has now passed away. However, I thought I would share this site, even though it's a little older. I think a bunny with random things on it's head never quite looses it's appeal!
Haha.

We've been thinking we needed to get some dirt to fill in some areas in the back yard that got trampled when the neighbors behind us put in a fence. The workers make huge trenches in our yard because it was rainy and muddy when they were doing it. We called the builder and asked them to come fix it, but they did a really mediocre job and we needed to do more to make it better. There is also a lot of water that runs back there into a drainage area when it rains so we needed to build up the dirt and work on re-seeding it to get the grass to grow after the damage.

We saw that some other neighbors behind us were putting in some new stones for a patio and they had dug up some of their backyard and made a pile of dirt. Jerrod saw them and asked if we could have it and they were very happy to give it to us, since they weren't sure what they were going to do with it anyway.
So, we spent awhile shoveling it into some wheelbarrows and hauling it over (not too far, thankfully, and closer than if we had borrowed it from elsewhere). It was just enough to fill the spots we needed, so it worked out pretty well. I learned that dirt is really heavy. Dirt in Tennessee is mostly hard clumps of clay and rock and is not easy to spread and break up...

It was good to meet these neighbors. They seem pretty nice. I wasn't really sure who they were, but as it turns out, they are a young newlywed couple. We talked with them for awhile and funny story, they told us that the night before when they were putting their patio stones in, they had some friends over helping them until late at night and had their cars parked on the street...so guess who got parking tickets?
They got three of them! $60 worth! They said they didn't even know about the no-parking-on-the-street-after-1:00am law. So, they were quite shocked and surprised to hear that I had recently got a ticket too.

I actually had a couple of semi-interesting thoughts today I was going to write about, but I have a super bad migraine tonight and so now I can't focus enough to write anything...so I may have to try another time...
Ahh! My head hurts sooo much!!!
Well, at least it's better than it hurting everyday like it used to...every few days is somewhat bearable.

Ok, one funny thing that I learned today:
So, this receptionist from one of my Dr.'s offices called me and left a message on my voice mail, saying, " This is the doctors office Just calling to remind you about your follow-up appointment on Monday. You can call us back if you have any other questions."
Uh, yes, I do have a question: Who are you? I have at least 5-10 doctors that could be calling me for a follow-up appointment, so I'm pretty sure that's a question I need to find out.
I called the number back and say, "Uh, I hear I have an appointment, but who are you?!" haha. They told me that according to HIPAA law they can't say the name of the Doctor or clinic. It's just the "Doctor's office". Kind of weird. I never knew about that before...at least none of my other doctor's offices do that...

I downloaded the GIMP software today and now I have another thing to distract me while I try to figure it out. It's pretty cool for being free and all. It's kind of Photoshop-ish, but it doesn't seem quite as difficult as Photoshop....(although it's been awhile since I tried to use Photoshop).
I used to do all my photo editing with Microsoft Digital Image Suite, which was pretty OK for what I was doing. It is fairly user friendly and I knew how to use it well enough to get things done fairly quickly (except for the fact that I am a perfectionist and everything takes me a long time).
We can still run Windows in a virtual machine inside our Macs, but then to use the Windows machine, I still have to switch back and forth. It's not difficult, but then not quite as convenient as just using one machine.

Speaking of pictures, I need to post some more. But, Jerrod is going to re-build my computer again in the next few days and I am not uploading much onto my machine until then...so when I get completely settled with my new computer, I will have everything again and hopefully will be able to post something more interesting with pictures and video!

Did you know that pigeons are smarter than you?
Ok, maybe it depends who you are. haha.
Anyway, this is some interesting stuff.


Pigeon Genius

I think I forgot to mention that last week I got a ticket for parking in front of my driveway. Yes, this is a true story.

The city of Mt. Juliet has a law that you can't park on the street between 1:00 and 5:00 AM. We usually keep all our vehicles in the driveway, but I happened to move my car out this day because I was trying to be thoughtful and helpful and do something nice as Jerrod was going to mow the lawn (for the first time) and I was trying to make sure he had enough room to get the lawnmower out of the garage.

Around 2:00 in the morning I realized that my car was still parked in front of the driveway and not IN the driveway and so I ran out there to move it and sure enough, I already had received a parking ticket, courtesy of the Mt. Juliet police. I can't believe they don't have any bigger crime to find than me on my quiet street (which is partially still under construction), and give me a ticket only an hour after the no parking time. It's a $20 ticket! For parking in front of my own driveway! (Actually, with the right 2 wheels pretty much in the driveway anyway). Not nice at all!

Jerrod is giving me his Mac this weekend. I'm excited to get it. I'm probably going to want to play around with it a bunch, but I have so much other stuff to do right now!

I have an announcement to make:

After two and a half months of living in my house, I have managed to keep my side of the closet clean. It has not been messy yet! Even Jerrod acknowledges that I am doing a good job with it, and I think he is very surprised about it, considering my past track record.
Since I started sharing a closet with Jerrod in this new house, I knew I would have to try harder to keep it clean to prevent excessive stress on his part.

It's funny to me, because I hadn't even thought much about it until recently. Now, in the past couple of days I've realized that after I started hanging up my clothes, it magically stays clean!

I've been very neglectful in writing anything here in the past while. I have just been either busy, tired, both...or not feeling like doing anything. So basically, I guess what I have been up to recently is:
- Songwriting
- Painting, both a bathroom with Jerrod and an old cedar chest I acquired a few months back. (more on that disaster later.)
- Practicing some recording with my new at home set up
- Playing with my camera and starting to make some videos
- Thinking a lot about what to do for my Primary class
- Planning lessons and shopping and making things for my Primary class
- Reading
- Researching things I am working on for music, art, primary, etc.
- Hanging out with Jerrod
- Doing a little scrapbooking, here and there...
- Sleeping more than I want to and feeling not so great some days.
- And more or less of the usual...It all sounds pretty usual!