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Twitter Updates
5/10/2008 Busy is a relative term it would seem. For the last few months I didn't have much in the way of photo research work. But I did have three bonsai shows since January and I have been busier than ever doing other bonsai stuff. But now things have changed and I actually feel busy. Bryce has been keeping me busy, this past week he basically stopped taking naps. He took one today, but that was the first time in almost a whole week.I started carving bonsai stands that are meant to look like roots of a tree. I saw some while I was in Japan....oops, I guess I went to Japan since my last entry. I was there for a week with some other members of Bay Island Bonsai. It was a great time. Dory's mom and sister came out to help with Bryce while I was away. Anyway, while I was there I saw many bonsai related things; some of them captured my imagination. When I got back I started thinking about whether or not I could duplicate some of the carved wood stands that I had seen. So, I tried. This was not really my first attempt at carving; I took some photos of the stands that I liked and worked from them. In my previous attempts I had just worked from memory and in a way that I thought would be good. My more recent attempts look very much like some of the carvings that I saw in Japan...I don't know if that's good or bad. Shane called me a copycat. The way I look at it, copying is the best way to learn, then you can make something original. But the stands that I was copying were $400-$500 in Japan, and I felt that I could make them for a bit less than that. The first one that I made took about 20-25 hours of work, the second around 15 hours. All the carving has come to a halt this week though; Bryce's lack of napping, combined with me picking up some new work contracts has made me actually busy in a non-bonsai way. I met with a photo editor from Pearson publishing on Tuesday, they are starting to give me photo research projects. Unlike what I have been doing for Cengage, which has been increasing amounts of paperwork and decreasing amounts of image research, this actually promises to be interesting. I think I'll have to start drinking a cup of coffee around 8pm if I want to do any more carving, because usually after dinner I am just a vegetable on the couch...despite the fact that there are 2-3 hours of good working time before bed. There's more than that I suppose if I stayed up a little later. I may even have to start drinking that cup of coffee to do my research work since at the moment the largest chunks of time that I get are while Bryce is in his class at school. We had Bryce's initial IEP in March, things went well enough that we got funding for the rest of this school year. We'll see what happens next year. 9/22/2007 8/24/2007 6/28/2007 5/11/2007 3/27/2007 1/5/2007 11/23/2006 10/1/2006 9/1/2006 7/20/2006 5/30/2006 5/20/2006 4/25/2006 3/22/2006 2/22/2006 1/25/2006 12/20/2005 11/17/2005 10/27/2005 10/8/2005 9/11/2005 8/26/2005 8/9/2005 8/1/2005 7/20/2005 7/5/2005 6/17/2005 5/27/2005 5/1/2005 4/15/2005 4/5/2005 3/24/2005 3/13/2005 2/5/2005 12/28/2004 11/29/2004 11/3/2004 10/2/2004 9/10/2004 8/23/2004 8/8/2004 7/21/2004 7/2/2004 6/8/2004 5/4/2004 4/20/2004 3/28/2004 3/10/2004 2/10/2004 1/15/2004 To reach entries prior to January 2004 click on one of the older entries on this list and scroll down to the bottom of that entry. e-mail Eric |