Garden of Galadriel

I can now proudly say I am completely back on track with my studies and have caught up and am exactly on schedule. I thought I might be behind for another week, but I finished my last unit last night and began my three new ones today. And my next assignment is due in two weeks and I am nearly done with it. Playing catch-up is hard. I don't think I better take any time off from school again.

Maybe part of the reason I've been able to catch up is that my hours have been reduced at work. I now come home about an hour earlier than I did this time last month. It's not just me: we now shut an hour earlier. So that's about four hours a week that I'm at home instead of work; I now have the chance to study for an hour after work in addition to my days off.

Partner's birthday is coming up soon; he knows what his main present is, and he's asked for socks as his secondary present. I am not getting him socks unless they will fit in his sock drawer. I estimate it will be several years before I get him new socks. This man has a ton of socks. I keep a crowbar in the laundry basket so I can wedge his cleans sock back in the drawer. And closing the drawer is out of the question.

This painting is one I did after we returned home from our inlaws' house at Christmas. Compare with a photograph from an earlier blog entry. It's not a proper scanned image, since I really can't be bothered to go upstairs and fiddle with the scanner, so I just took a quick snapshot of it on my laptop. It was just a little experiment with the acrylic paints. The new set I got came with a few pieces of cardboard. I figured they were for painting on, but I didn't really like the feel of it much. However, the overall result wasn't too bad, really. I was able to get a little texture action going on, and while I am much more used to watercolor, I like the effects of the colors themselves. I find it difficult to get any white space in a watercolor, unless I just don't paint the spot I want, leaving the paper itself showing through. And it's easy to miss and paint over the white spot accidently, and then it's ruined. With acrylics, I just load up some white paint on the brush and slap it back on the paper.