I’ve not had the opportunity to update this blog for some time. Not that I haven’t composed numerous entrees in my head but absolutely no time to get to it. My life has been inundated with administration duties for a local recreation centre, since Jan of 09. Silly me volunteered to be part of a recreation commission and ended up being elected chair. My duties are colourful, from helping write new policies, stemming floods in the basement of the facility, calling out prizes for a New Years Dance to fielding fierce questions from the public during meetings. I have worn so many hats for this job, I am having trouble fitting the artists beret back on for getting work done in my studio. I was so desperate to do some artwork the other night that I started filling in a quick demo sketch for my drawing class. Did I forget to mention I’m teaching printmaking/paper making to handicapped individuals, a children’s drawing class, a mural project coming up and possibly an acrylic class next month? So that’s where my time is going. I’m also forever doing e-mails on my computer to make sure everything is running smoothly. I may be starting to wear grooves in the keyboard as well as wearing the letters off. The ‘e” is fading into the ether or wherever ‘e’s’ go. The dog just looks sadly at me as all these duties have cut into our walking time and I fear that I’ll turn into a tuna. Weather hasn’t cooperated much either. The other day I went cross- country skiing on our lake and ended up in soggy snow over my boots, effectively freezing the locks. When I got back, I did not have the strength to undo more than one ski and couldn’t hop up the bank to get back to the house. After flopping about like the tuna I just mentioned, I was finally able to get out of the second boot and made it back to the house on one socked freezing foot and one ski boot. Huddling under a blanket for quite a while inspite of uttering rather a lot of hot language finally got the situation under control. Need I say I have not dared ski there since. The lake is actually covered in a layer of water now which may require skates when it freezes, but the last time I looked for my skates, there was only one and I can’t remember why. As for my drawing classes for kids 8-13, we are now into the second session having completed the beginners then intermediate last fall and now starting beginners again. Since the class is after school, I treat the class more as an artist mentor to other artists so they have to make all sorts of challenging decisions on their own. It was fun to give them an exercise that started with basic lines for a butterfly and then they could either finish that or see if the lines could produce another animal or object. The results were just amazing. What a talented bunch! Hopefully, it will not be so long before my next entry. Happy New Year everyone.