Back to school

Today is Labour (Labor) Day, in celebration of which I do not labo(u)r.

Tomorrow is the first day of school. Tomorrow, I labo(u)r. Possibly a lot. Tomorrow, I begin a new chapter in life, and start to figure out what some of the decisions we made over the last six months really mean.

For the curious, I am taking five classes this semester:

• Ceramics Studio
• Design Studio
• Drawing Studio
• Painting Studio
• Visual Culture I

The first four are art classes. Each meets once a week for four hours, and I am told to expect four hours of homework from each per week (which will have to be done in the studio rooms themselves in most cases) except for ceramics, where I should expect eight hours of homework per week, all in the studio.

The last class is from the Art History department. I chose it as this sequence (Visual Culture I & II) looks more interesting to me than the traditional, chronological art history presentation, but I could be wrong. Additionally, the class has a new instructor, just hired into Langara College. It will - no doubt - involve extensive reading and writing papers, and thus add to the homework commitment.

It is my goal to post about art here, as well as other aspects of life. As I have previously mentioned, though, I don't yet know how much time I will have for anything other than course work, so time will tell. Please be patient as I adjust to the new schedule and get my life in order, again.

Thanks all!

An ad I wrote for our local freecycle list

Apparently my muse bit me this afternoon while I was composing an ad for our local freecycle mailing list. Someone has already responded telling me they really liked it. That's nice, and it causes me to overcome my usual reticence and share it here. Maybe you'll enjoy the ad too, but unless you live close to me, don't bother asking for the material, and if you are that close, why aren't you on the list already? (Seriously... email me and ask how to join it.)

OFFER: melamine boards (it's a long shot, I know...)

Back in the dark ages - before the invention of electricity and running water - when we bought our home, the previous owner installed a set of closet shelves and rods in the master bedroom closet. Despite my telling him not to do it, he did it anyway, and it was really not the right thing, and I wish he hadn't done it, but he did, and we lived with it for over 2 decades*.  (That's about as long as that run-on sentence, I think.)

A few weeks back we finally got around to taking that old closet system apart and installing something we liked better.  Yay us!  Yay for the annual Elfa sale!

Sadly the old system didn't go quietly into that cold night, or something. Plastic bits broke, metal bits bent, some screws that held shelves together were rusted or corroded into the melamine in odd ways. And, being an aggressive recycler, everything plastic or metal has already been hauled away to help the Gray Bears feed people in need. (I'll bet that donation bought them all of 5% of a banana, or something.)

What I am left with is a bunch of pieces of melamine.  You know the stuff: particle board, covered in white plastic.  Occasionally ground up by unscrupulous business people in far away countries and included in pet food and baby formula to make it look like there is more protein in there than there really is.**

How much melamine you ask?  I'm glad you did. This much:

and:

The small pieces are 16" by about 23", give or take.  The large ones are 42" by 16", again, give or take.

As you can see, some are drilled with holes for shelf pins.  I think all of the longer pieces are like that on one side. Some of the smaller pieces are also drilled, but some were the shelves, and those are hole free.

This is pretty thin melamine - maybe half an inch or a bit less - so take that into account if you are interested.

To be honest, I have no idea if anyone will want this stuff. I hope so, but if not I will haul it off to the dump one of these days, which I kind of hate to do.  But it cannot be recycled by any craft that we, here, possess. It must be taken into Mordor and cast into the very fires of Mt. Doom, where it was forged. I, must do this***, unless one of you has something you can do with it that is more ecologically sound than stuffing it into the landfill.

I must stress that it is not suitable for use as closet shelving again... all of the bits that made it work that way are gone and at least one piece is dinged up on an edge where a screw was firmly stuck in the particle board while disassembly was attempted.  You'll want to use this for some other project.

So... if interested, feel free to let me know.  Somehow I doubt I'll get any takers, but I can hope.

I am on xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Road, and will deliver to reasonably close locations if desired.  Most anyone that would respond to this email is closer than the landfill anyway, so it's a win.

--jeffp

* Don't ask why electricity and running water weren't invented just 2 decades ago. I'm making this up.

** Yes, I know, those unscrupulous businessmen only grind up the plastic bits and not the particle board****. But you'd think the latter would add fiber, right, so it would be good too? And anyway... didn't you read the first footnote? I am making all of this up.

*** If you represent the Tolkien estate, please don't sue me. Also, if you work for or with Peter Jackson or the companies that created the Lord of the Rings movies, please don't sue me either.

**** Yes, I know, they actually use the liquid version in pet and baby food, before it's been applied to the particle board at all. So sue me.  Unless you're associated with the Tolkien estate, Peter Jackson, or related parties. See footnote immediately above.

*****  My there are a lot of footnotes here.

Looking for Writers...

Are any of my (few) readers interested in writing?  If so, I'm looking for help of a sort.

A long time back my friend Doug mentioned in a book review that he liked Steering The Craft, by Ursula K. Le Guin.  It's a book on writing that (so far, anyway) avoids the obvious idiocies of many of the writing books I've seen  I've read perhaps a third of it and I'm really enjoying it.

Now, here's the problem: STC has a bunch of exercises in it that I really should do, but finding the motivation to do them when my life is full of distractions is hard.  If I had people who, like me, were committed to doing these exercises (and/or writing other things) for each other, it would be a lot simpler for me to make progress.  Surely I can't be the only one who is motivated by external deadlines.

So, I'm contemplating forming some kind of writing group.  If you want to write and are willing to get a copy of this book, it seems like a good place to start.  If you're in the bay area we could get together irregularly to share exercise results.  If we're farther apart we can form an Internet based writing group, sharing results via email, at least.

So, is anyone interested?  If so, please speak up.  I'm serious about this - I have a number of writing projects I want to tackle, and a writing group that is open to just about anything (fiction, non-fiction, excercises like this, etc.) could be very useful.

Drop me an email, reply to this post, or in some way get in touch if you're interested.  Thanks much!

Oh, here's a link to Steering The Craft on Amazon.