Thursday, March 08, 2007
Another slow week
Not much to report here, except far-below freezing temps (twenty-five below zero! in March! aaaagh!) and few customers. I've officially had it with winter. I'm taking names and sending out memos. And I'm spring cleaning, early. For three days I've been dusting and rearranging the shop - I often think about how certain sections could flow better - and if nothing's selling from a particular section I'll pull a bunch of books outta there, lower the prices, get rid of some deadwood, put some good-looking hardcovers face-out (dust jackets were designed to sell books, after all), dust and vacuum everything, and hope for the best. I've also gutted the back room here to make more space to paint in. This year I slowly painted myself into a corner - literally - as the canvases piled up. Leaned up, more accurately. I use a lot of medium, which takes a long time to dry, hence paintings have to sit in open space with nothing else touching them. Some I can find wall space for and others lean up against each other's edges. It gets to look like I'm building some weird mini-Stonehenge back there. Recently it had gotten to the point where I couldn't walk through the room. I really need a painting storage rack. But I have no money and no lumber to build one. So instead of fretting about it, I emptied a half-used bookcase, turned it on its side, put it in the back room, and am using that to lean paintings up in - I'm very pleased with myself for thinking outside the box.
Just for fun (with thanks to my cousin Shirley for bringing this to my attention): the good folks at A Prairie Home Companion have also had it with winter and are sponsoring a Spring Lyric poetry contest. Submit your poem about spring here. If you win: you receive a nice prize, your poem will be read aloud on the show in a few weeks, and they will send you three dozen roses. That Garrison Keillor, his heart's in the right place. Someone has to win - might as well be you. Or me. I submitted one. Why not? This is a perfectly appropriate time of year for wild and unreasonable (one could say delusional) hopes. Despite the cold, the sap is rising.
Just for fun (with thanks to my cousin Shirley for bringing this to my attention): the good folks at A Prairie Home Companion have also had it with winter and are sponsoring a Spring Lyric poetry contest. Submit your poem about spring here. If you win: you receive a nice prize, your poem will be read aloud on the show in a few weeks, and they will send you three dozen roses. That Garrison Keillor, his heart's in the right place. Someone has to win - might as well be you. Or me. I submitted one. Why not? This is a perfectly appropriate time of year for wild and unreasonable (one could say delusional) hopes. Despite the cold, the sap is rising.
