Relaxation..

Today is my day to breath. The past week has been a busy one for me. I have done two inventories, which means that I have to be at work at 3 am! Its just not human to have to be working that early. Those shifts always kick my butt, I think that I am finally caught up on my sleep. I have to do that 3 times a month so I will have to say that I have a hard time getting up that early, especially if my body is dumb the night before and doesn't let me fall asleep when I want to. I always have it in the back of my mind that I will just take a nap when I get home but that is so unrealistic with the construction that is going on by my apartment. Well I can't say that it is all that unrealistic, I was able to fall asleep to them jack hammering and shaking my whole apartment!

Now I get the next two days off and today was payday. I've got a list of a million things that I am wanting to cram into the next 2 days, but right now I am working on all of my wash while Brad is at work making the big bucks! Its just one of those jobs that is never ending but I will have to admit that I love doing laundry, its right up there with cleaning the bathroom. There is nothing better then having no dirty clothes in the house and crisp clean sheets.

Today when Bradley gets off of work we are going to go to the Woodland Zoo here in Seattle. I am excited to go to a real zoo, sorry Hogel Zoo. I have driven past the zoo here so many times and just from the outside it looks awesome! I think that I have also been talking about going to visiting the zoo for the last couple of years so that will be one thing that I can check off my list :)

Last Friday, Bradley and I went to the Bellevue Art Fair. That city is made of money. There was so much art that we looked at that towards the end we were getting sick of it! I don't understand it completely but some how it is 3 separate fairs going on at the same time but they are just within a block from each other.. I think that it is just an excuse because they were not able to fit it all in on location.

While we were there we found out that as the Art Fair was going on the Bellevue Arts Museum was free to the public and located in the middle of all the excitement. We decided that we wanted to go check it out. All I can say is wow..there were 3 really interesting shows that we going on there. One of them, and I didn't catch his name, was of these ceramic people that were maybe just a little taller then Brad. I would have to say there was around 15 of these guys.

The second show was an artist named Cathy McClure. She is an artist that likes to work with metal and she used mechanical toys that she had deconstructed and build them into other objects. The theme that she used for her show here was carnivals. There is really no way to describe the show, it has a lot of kinetics and was very visual. There was creepy clown music playing but once you got past that it was a good show. It would give me a head ache to sit and think about how to make sculptures that move. I don't know how they do it.

The last show that was there that was worth the time was an artist name Michael Cooper. He makes sculptures out of wood. I have linked his name to his website. If you have a couple of minutes you should go check it out. Your mind will be blown. His work was simply beautiful. He mainly works with wood and gets results that I never thought would have been possible. It was real hard to resist not touching his sculptures for some people, there was one family that got yelled at twice in a two minute time period which resulted the guard to walk through the rest of the show with them. Brad kept saying to me, "do you think that he sits in these when he is done?" I don't see how you couldn't.

On the floor of the Cooper exhibit they were out of fliers for the show so we stopped downstairs to see if we could get some more info on him so we could go home and look him up. We were informed that tomorrow that he was going to hold a lecture about his art at the museum for free. I know what Brad and I are going to be doing tomorrow night :) First Fridays are the free days at the Bellevue Art Museum. This is something that we are going to have to keep in mind and go check out when they change out their shows.

I have gotten a plan in my head and Bradley is going to help me fulfill it. I want to learn to draw faster so we are going to go to different places around the city and do quick sketches. We have been brainstorming on where good places would be and have came up with a few. I would like to do this for a little while and once I feel like I have gotten better at sketching we are going to be I would like to do some en plein air painting. This is something that has been interesting to see people do and I would like to have a go at it. It will also give Brad an excuse to paint some of the places that he has always said he would like to paint.

We did our first sketch last night. It was from a photo, but that is ok. I haven't seriously tried to draw since I was in Adam's class a little over 5 1/2 years ago. I still have the internal struggle of a drafter in me. You could tell this when you compared mine with Brad's. I felt good with my final result. All things considering it was not to bad. There is only one place that my work can go and this is get better.

After we finished our quick drawing I decided that we needed to go for a walk. There is a building that we live by that has some real interesting stuff going on that I would like to draw so we headed that way to see where the best angle would be to capture it. After we walked to that building, which by the way is only a couple of blocks away from my house, I asked Brad where he wanted to go next.

The walk that we ended going on lasted over 2 hours and we made it all the way to Green Lake. This is another park that we have always wanted to go see. We were there just for a little while but it is a place that we will be heading back to, especially knowing how close it is to us and not that far of a walk. To circle all the way around Green Lake is about 3 miles. It reminds me a lot of Payson Lake with the little trail but a whole lot bigger and busier. I was not planning on walking that far last night and I wore flip flops for shoes. Brad was the same way with his shoes, not prepared. It was nice to get home and not have to wear shoes. Next time we are going to plan it out a little better :) Every time that I am over in that area I think of my friends that I grew up with in Dugway. Their dad was from the Green Lake area and I heard a lot about Seattle with out even really realizing it. Good people.

Well got to go get ready to meet up Brad soon. Almost time to head to the zoo!