A Very Busy Saturday

I spent my Saturday doing stuff around the house. Most of my effort was spent painting my backyard wall. I have a concrete block wall around my backyard. Since I'm on a corner, the west side of my wall faces the street. It's stucco-ed to it looks nice. About a month ago, I noticed some of the paint was flaking off so I scraped that area and painted it. I used paint that was left by the previous owner and since it was exterior paint, I was sure it would match. It turned out that the exterior paint matches the outside of the house, but not this wall because the wall wasn't painted at the same time as the house. So, I now had a spot that was obviously not matching the rest of the wall. I debated what to do and ultimately decided to just paint the whole wall.

It's difficult to tell from the pictures, but the wall was a mixture of gray and white, making it look dirty. Now that it's pure white to match the house, its a huge improvement. People were walking by all day today (because the weather here was absolutely fantastic) and saying how nice it looked. It makes me feel bad that it looked so bad for so long.

After painting, Bentley and I went to the dog park. There's one not far from the house but this was the first time I've visited. Bentley is always a little weird around other dogs but he did fairly well on this outing. It was a gorgeous day and I enjoyed soaking up the sun. After the park, we came home and crashed for a nap. I woke up around 5:30pm because Bentley was whining for his dinner.

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I spent the rest of the evening sewing. The sculpture in the living room above the fireplace needed a face lift.

I made it in college and it's called "Critter." The reason it's named that was an encounter with a complete stranger who asked me "what kind of critter" I was working on. Can you tell I went to school in Texas? At the time I was working on a number of pieces of art that focused on distinct differences between inside and outside. The idea stemmed from containers that hold precious objects to an investigation of things people have inside them (metaphorically of course) to simple objects with contrasting interiors and exteriors. Critter doesn't mean anything, it was strictly a study in design. I suppose you could apply this to a person if you wanted - hard, spiky exterior and soft, squishy interior. At times I've thought of it that way.

Critter is made out of an adobe-like substance (concrete, clay, and sand) on top of a wood frame with wire fencing. Inside are cloth balls. Ever since I moved, I've been meaning to change the color of the cloth balls to compliment the living room a little better. Tonight I didn't have anything better to do so I sewed up some new insides for Critter. Even though I haven't seen it in the daylight yet, I'm quite pleased with the new look.

Friday Night
Last night I had dinner with my neighbors, Christy and Matt, at Bahama Breeze. Then I headed off to Homme for some dancing. It ended up being a great night for me. It started slow since I wasn't digging the main DJ (Rick Ramirez). But before the night was over, one of the upstairs DJ's (Chuck?) rocked my socks off. Good stuff. And I ran into Jason, a new friend from Refresh Phoenix. That was a pleasant surprise! Chatting with Jason made the perfect end to a very fun evening.

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