Happy New Year’s Eve!

The last day of 2008 has been my first in here in sunny Melbourne.   Today started with a much needed shower which after spending nearly 24 hours on the train from Brisbane was long overdue.   I’ve spent the entire day roaming the city learning about Aboriginal art, opals, and people watching.   There will be fireworks above the city this evening and apparantely they are expecting over a million people… a far cry from the serenity of the farm but an interesting contrast none the less.  My time is running out so i have to run.

I LOVE YOU ALL VERY MUCH, MISS YOU TONS, AND WISH EVERYONE HAPPY NEW YEAR’S!!!!!

Interesting photo op.  Here are some pics taken of Wat a couple of weeks ago.  In one, he is wearing the same Tux as Josh wore in a pic about 30 years ago.  Wat is about a year and a half older than Josh at the time his pic was taken.  The Tux is dark blue but the camera saw it as black on Wat.

My, my, my how time flies.

Here are some pics from Wat’s 4th trip to Santa’s knee.

JJ is a week old today.  I thought I had some pics of him on this site, but I don’t see them.  So, here goes again.

[Posted by Rae]

Last night I drove to Barkley to have dinner with Timothy and work at the Incubator on an Art Swap piece. Before heading to the studio, we ran Brian (co-worker) home since he lived so close and the the evening was wet and cold.  I noticed on that run that my contacts were hurting me, but I ignored the discomfort and decided I’d switch to my glasses once we made it to the Inc.

So, we get back to Baltimore and 18th or whatever and I turn right down the dark, not-very-well-lit alley they call a street, see the perfect place to parallel park, and excitedly begin to maneuver my car into the space.  Instead of doing the traditional parallel parking, I could tell that I had enough room to pull my nose in first and realign afterwards.  Well, that was a fine and dandy plan except our Camry, our little Lola, scraped along the driver’s side of the white hyundai parked behind my spot.

My heart sank, but I held out hope that maybe it barely left a mark.  

We went to examine the car and I was mortified to see not only his driver’s side door affected, but the whole front panel and bumper.  It was unbelievable what I had caused and there was no one in site to confess my mistake.  The “Good” angel on my shoulder (probably Timothy ) made me write a note of apology (including my phone number), enclose that in a Ziploc and carefully attach this tiny package underneath one of his windshield wipers…we even used a bright colored piece of paper from a magazine to grab attention.

Well, as you can imagine, the whole night went from “Carefree-I’m-Excited-I-Get-To-Paint-With-Timothy!” to “Son-Of-A-Ho-I-Have-Just-Ruined-Someone’s-Ride!!!!” I called Mom and Bill for support, phoned David Martin (State Farm) to report the soon-to-be-claim, and tried to paint with my shaky hands…knowing my phone was going to ring any second with a disgruntled driver on the other end.

Right as I began to calm down, the phone, sure enough, rang. The guy (Michael) seemed incredibly nice and when I told him I was at the Incubator he said he had just left there…so he came back to meet me and discuss my note.  

He got out of his car and I immediately apologized.  His face kinda turned confused as he asked, “What happened?”  I, equally confused, pointed to the whole front of his car and said, “That! That happened!  Because I wasn’t paying enough attention!”  Michael started to laugh and said, “You didn’t do that!  I got side swiped on the highway the other day.  Let me look at your car.”  Upon examination of Lola, which was a little scraped up on the right passengers side, he explained how that was way too low to have caused the damage on his car.  Together we looked closer at the Hyundai and found the exact place on the bumper where we had connected — it was enough messed up that he could easily have taken my information, but he waved it off quickly and the conversation turned towards introductions and Arts Incubator instead.  

What a relief!  And how ironic.

My mind reeled in the events of the evening. I flashed back to Gabe’s most recent hit-and-run when he got stuck with hundreds (or thousands?) of dollars of repair on his truck…all because someone didn’t step up and admit fault.  In this case, I began to play the “What If” game, too.  If I had made the decision to NOT admit my mistake, I would have carried a guilt with me FOREVER (because that’s my nature)…which, in fact, would have been undue guilt…because I didn’t actually cause much damage…but I would have never known that.  

It was cool how this unfolded because honesty paid off.  On both sides, really — I left a note, and he didn’t “take me” or pretend everything was my fault.  

I suppose you could say that last night reinforced my belief in “GOOD.”  

Oh, and I should mention how much I love and appreciate Timothy, Mom and Bill, too.  NOT ONCE did they make me feel bad for my error…very, VERY kind.

[Posted by Rae}

As DK would say, “This makes me emotional.”

[Posted by Rae]

After watching all the coverage of obscene voting lines due to such patriotic turnout, I decided to have a little fun this morning.  The poll opened at 6am, so I woke up at 4:45am, made a huge thermos of green tea, packed a couple of magazines, my current book of choice, an itsy bitsy book light (since it was still dark outside), my iPhone, an apple, granola bar and small camping chair.  Got there at 5am and, aside from a few cars, I was the only one crazy enough to get there that early.  Jumped in line around 5:30am and by 6:10am I had completely filled out my ballot — gotta say, it was AWESOME to see Barack Obama’s name on the same ballot at Josh Reed’s.  I was higher than a kite walking out of that place…and by 6:15am the line was 100+ deep.  There was a young black guy taking a picture of his two kids, and, in the spirit of this historical moment, I asked if I could take a group shot for him.  He was ECSTATIC… as was I!

Here are a couple of shots of what was left of colored leaves at the farm a couple of week ago when we were there to do more work on dirt mountain.

The 30-minute piece Barack did tonight on networks like NBC, MSNBC, FOX, etc. WAS INCREDIBLE!!!  Personally, I appreciated the documentary on real-life American struggles and how he proposes to fix some of the problems.  In fact, I was so pumped that I decided to mosey on down to the swimming pool for a nighttime swim — my little SwiMP3 along for the exercise. Let me just say…THE SHUFFLED MUSIC THAT DROVE MY PACE APPEARED TO BE COMPLETELY IN SYNC WITH THE FINAL WEEK OF THIS CAMPAIGN because Michael Jackson’s Black and White came on, not to mention Marc Broussard’s Yes We Can and Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered.  Seriously ironic considering I have dozens of others for the little bugger to chose from.