Week # 101 Hello, viewers. Here's what we worked on this week... We have a pile of broken TVs forming in the closet. Well, maybe not a pile...two anyway. The one on the bottom had a fiery end in a lightening storm last year. The one balanced on top is a recent addition to the stack. It jumped to its death. Are we that awful? Jo was hammering a nail into the wall on the other side of the room to hang a frame, and the TV must have inched its way towards the edge with each tap. It left a decent imprint in the hardwood floor where it landed. It seemed for a moment that it was alright, but then we realized while watching the news that the picture was getting fuzzy, and the anchorman had his back to us. Not a good sign. We bought a new TV, but it had a strange discoloration in the bottom left corner as soon as I hooked it up. I took it back to the store 25 miles away and exchanged it. Plugged that one in back home...looked good. Set the speakers back up...same discoloration in the same spot. What a moron I am! It was the magnets in the speakers! They just needed to be set up a little further from the screen. When this one dies, we're going back to puppet shows. -Dylan Week # 102 Hello, internet friends! Here’s what we came up with in our spare time. No, we don’t really have spare time, but it’s how you use the time you have that counts. For the last few years, I’ve spent way too much time sitting in front of the computer waiting for the next page to load. We’ve gone through several new computers in that time, but we never really sprang for the fast one on the shelf with all the bells, whistles, and incredible amounts of memory. We’ve usually settled for tired and confused computers with spotty memory and small price tags. But no more. We have invested in a highly caffeinated electrical friend that makes all those past machines look like slow moving drug addicts. Even as I type now, he has already finished this newsletter, sent it to you, and delivered back your request to be removed from the mailing list. Now that is efficient…and a little bit sad… -Dylan Week # 103 Hello, friends. Here’s that link to our art that’s just so darn clickable. Yes, the newsletter is arriving a little early this week. Most people are setting their clocks back one hour tonight, but I’m setting mine forward a full 24 hours. Actually, I’m writing the newsletter early this week to try to correct a problem that I walk into each year without ever benefiting from making this same mistake over and over. Our auctions ending soon on Sunday, November 4th will end a FULL HOUR EARLY because of the time change. Next week’s auctions will be listed an hour later to get back on track with our normal rut of beginning and ending our auctions at 17:00 eBay time. This week, we’ll be listing even more art on Tuesday, since we weren’t able to finish everything we were working on. We have some close family friends visiting this weekend, so we’re playing hooky from our normal routine of work, work, and more work. They’re all playing a game now, which was the perfect opportunity for me to come write the newsletter. Jo has given up on trying to get me to play games. If there is a canoe to be launched, a bike trek to be led, or a new trail to be explored…I’m your guy. But get out the trivia cards, the board game, or the dice, and I’m going to get busy with those dishes that need attention…or in this case, the newsletter. -Dylan Week # 104 Hi there. Here’s what we’ve been up to… It took me awhile to get used to this art gig. When we first started our business, Jo would tell me, “Now get some watery brown paint and slop it all over the art, then wipe it off. It gives it character.” This type of thing used to horrify me. I’d see her spend hours painting something, then I’m supposed to splatter paint on it? It took me many painful lessons to come to the simple conclusion that Jo is always right…at least where art is concerned. If it concerns which road we should take, she’s never right. Not once. By the time you folks see our art, every last detail has been looked after, but our projects usually start out looking like the contents of a recycling bin. Some online friends of Jo’s have asked to see some work in progress pictures, so here they are. She’s a Queen Anne Doll that Jo made as a challenge for her online group of art friends, Coffee with T. Maybe one day I’ll make a time lapse video of one of our pieces being built. I just wish that I could hide a camera in the box to capture the moment when our buyer opens it. Then there’d be more time lapse photography as it sits on a shelf for fifty years, enduring the abuse of wild household animals and several generations of grabby children with melted popsicles on their hands. I dunno. This video project is starting to sound a bit time consuming. -Dylan Week # 105 Ladies and Gentleman… Here’s the fruit of our labor this week. You’ll notice there are four pieces that you’ve seen before from our auctions a few weeks back. We’re relisting them due to a non-paying bidder. I suppose the theatre is the recurring theme this week. Jo built a miniature one and our daughter preformed in a real one this week. Our daughter has her first paying gig playing the bass guitar in the orchestra for the musical Sweet Charity. They had rehearsals for months, and today is their last of nine performances. We attended last night’s show and sat in the front row, on the advice of our talented girl. They all did a first rate job, and we could see right up the actors’ noses. Our daughter is definitely not your average teenager. She goes around the house singing show tunes and quoting cats like James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. I heard her laughing her head off upstairs at a movie yesterday. “What were you watching that was so funny?” I asked, a bit worried, when she came down. “Swing Kids.” “Oh, thank God. I thought you said you were going to watch Schindler’s List today.” -Dylan Week # 106 Would anyone like a turkey sandwich? No? How ‘bout some art then? Here’s the link… We wasted no time after Thanksgiving. The Christmas tree is up and the boxes of old hand-made ornaments and decorations have been unpacked and skillfully positioned around the house (no thanks to me.) Jo and our son are the elves around here. Jo consistently sits the kids down in front of art supplies at Christmas time each year, so we have a large collection of art made by them. Here are a few examples. Just click on the links below to view them. We call this one by our daughter the French Santa… Here’s our son’s Santa sculpture… Here is an ornament by our daughter… …and our son… Our son actually has a couple ornaments up for auction this week. He wants to earn some money to buy Christmas presents for us. Both our kid have already written their Christmas wish lists. Some of our daughter’s suggestions were pretty entertaining, such as… -40’s style dress (What on Earth is she picturing?) -Flat top swingin’ hat ( “Excuse me, where is your flat-top swingin’ hat department please?”) -Clothes, I suppose…that I’m guaranteed to like (Good God! She wants her satisfaction guaranteed!) Our son’s list is more predictable for his age. Even though we have a house full of guitars, he wants the Guitar Hero III video game so he can press buttons on a guitar shaped controller. He’s actually good at the guitar…and yet. I know that the holidays are traditionally about aggressive driving and shoving people at department stores, but I hope that some of you manage to have a relaxing time this year. -Dylan Week # 107 Hey, there. Here’s the link that launched a thousand browsers… Here’s what I wrote on Sunday just before the lights went out… We’re in the eye of the storm now, so it’s calm. OK, it’s not a hurricane, so the storm might not have an eye. It may be an ear. It’s that time of year again here on the Oregon coast. High winds. . . Power outages. . . Floods. It’s all so exciting. We have candles at the ready, a new cooler for the food, and a propane stove to heat up hot chocolate for us to sip in the dark. But as I said, we’re in the ear of the storm, and the lights are still on. The wind tried to push me off the road earlier today, but fortunately our ‘88 Volvo Wagon is made of a retired WWII tank that was melted down and recast into a slightly less stylish shape. This time of year does have its charms. I like going to the beach and getting chased by the water to higher ground. I’m usually the only fool down there. But who can resist such entertainment? The waves throw trees around like they’re toothpicks, and the sand is cluttered with porches and other lumber ripped from houses like ours along the swollen creeks. It’s sort of the neighborhood lost and found department down there on the beach. I have a ridiculous mountain man hat that I wear for these trips so that it will be clear to everyone driving by that I really am a fool, in case there’s any misunderstanding. -Dylan Well, now it’s Tuesday night, and a lot has happened since then. Until a couple of hours ago, when the house finally became bright and alive again, we were sitting in the dark making shadow puppets on the ceiling with flashlights. Jo is extraordinarily good at it. Her bunny even has a twitchy little nose. My clumsy sausages just look like a confused caveman no matter what I do. Jo headed to the casino buffet this morning with our son. It was the only place in town with power. All the traffic lights in town were out, making each intersection a four way stop (consult your driver’s manual.) Unaware of that fact, a man driving a pick-up truck rear ended Jo and our boy as they waited their turn to cross the intersection. They are both unhurt, but Jo was “strapped to a board” and hauled off to the hospital by the paramedics. The EMT apparently talked to our twelve year old son the whole way there as if he were three years old. Jo was soon released and brought home by a family friend that had about the only working phone in town. I was at home washing dishes by hand in the dark (always fun), completely unaware of what had happened. I’ve retrieved our poor car since, and it is at least a foot shorter than it was yesterday. The back is crunched, and all of the doors are jammed shut. The radio and fuses jumped out into our son’s lap in the impact, so it was more than just a little jolt. Jo’s a bit sore, but they are both OK, thankfully. Tomorrow I’ll start car shopping, which is one of my favorite activities, second only to washing dishes by hand. -Dylan Week # 108 Hello, drivers. Here’s what we managed to make while taking care of a thousand other unexpected things this week… We didn’t have electricity after that big storm for a couple of days earlier this week, so we couldn’t work in the dark. Jo was in that car accident and got whiplash, which kept her from her work for a few days. I was car shopping in distant towns and Jo was dealing with the insurance folks on the phone for much of the week, whittling down our work hours further. In the end, it was a miracle that we made anything at all to list on eBay. Apparently, I’m not very good at smiling when there’s an overwhelming problem, like not having a car. I couldn’t think of anything else until the right car was bought and parked in our driveway. I got us another Volvo. No surprise there. The first Volvo that I looked at this week took me to a town about an hour and a half away. We measure distances in driving time out here in the Oregon wilderness. The ad for it read like an old man with suspenders and a pocket full of maintenance records had written it about his baby that he was sorry to part with. The car and the seller didn’t fit that mental picture I had built. The seller was a 2o year old pot head, who informed me that the title was lost, and that he was selling it for a lady 50 miles (I mean one hour) away. Apparently she liked to let goats or something eat her seat cushions, and figured that one oil change per decade was enough. I finally bought the car I was meant to have from a crazy old coot that liked to slap me hard in the chest and laugh maniacally over nothing at all. He had a shop that specialized in old Volvos and really knew his stuff. I like folks that have that gleam in their eye that could be love of life or simple madness. I might be one myself. -Dylan Week # 109 Hi Hi Hi, Here’s the link to our art. Click away… I think I’ll let someone else get a word in edgewise this week, since I have no idea what to write about. Jo has started a blog with some pictures and her account of the CBTH experience. Here’s a link to it: Jo's Blog The other voice I’d like to be heard this week is from a customer of ours in Astoria, Oregon. Her house was attacked by trees in that last big storm we had. Here’s her account of that experience… Hi. I have an amazing story for you. So, I got the package but I didn't open the box, although I really wanted to, because the husband was SSSOOOO interested in it and it's for him for Xmas. "Oh, it's just some eBay thing" I said. I knew he couldn't peek if it was taped shut. Then Dec 1st and 2nd we got hammered by that giant typhoon. At 3 am I got up because I heard some scratching at the door. Well, Dale had opened the door at 1:30am to look at the storm and he let Sputnik out but didn't know it. That little 20 pound dog was out in 100mph winds for an hour and a half. I'm pissed, so I start acting all passive aggressive, yelling at the dog when I'm really yelling at Dale, "oh how did you get out! You are such a mess!" So Dale hears all the noise I'm making, comes downstairs and WHAM!! the tree hits the house and cuts it in half. We are both downstairs at 3am, which has never happened before in our marriage, and we are just fine (well it got Dale a little in the head but he doesn't bleed alot.) So we start taking pictures off the wall (it's raining) because we think we're so unlucky, Dale's lived here 43 years and a tree has never fallen on the house. Then trees start hitting the house over and over. You can see by the pictures I sent you of Sputnik before that we live in the forest. Trees smash our bedroom, our guest bedroom, the 2 bedrooms at the back of the house. A big spruce smashes through the attic and upstairs and breaks the joices in the living room, but not the beams. A giant spruce smashes through the attic, both bedrooms in the back upstairs, breaks perpendicularly placed Paralam beams (warehouser product, strong as steel) in the kitchen and comes crashing through the ceiling right above where Dale is looking out the window. I see this with my own eyes. The paralam is strong, though, and stop the tree about 4 feet above the floor and Dale lives. For 7 straight hours trees smash into our house. We have half of the living room still intact (even though it rains in there) and this is where we stay for the 5 days it takes them to find us and cut us out. There are 600 trees on our driveway, and 25-30 piled on top of each other on our house. We get a quarter page aerial picture in the Daily Astorian. The governor and state senator tour our property, because it is the most damaged in the county. But, in the thick of it, I tell Dale what I got him for Christmas to try to pass the time (because we don't think we are going to live, we tell each other what we got.) The next day, he goes upstairs and comes down with the box untouched. He said a tree knocked it on it's side, but it is untouched. The picture I sent you of a bunch of trees with a bannister/ledge/railing thing in front of it is a picture of our computer room and those are the trees my 66 year old husband crawled over to get your box. Can you believe that? So it still is taped shut, and that is why I haven't emailed you about it, that and the fact that I no longer have a computer/internet connection/house. Dale drives around in it in our one remaining vehicle (we lost the house, 2 trucks, 3 boats, 2 sheds, garage and car port) because he doesn't want to let it out of his sight. I thought when I bought it it would be the best Christmas present ever, but now I know it will be. Amazingly still alive and thankful, Linda I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I sent her the wrong package. (kidding) See you next week when I regain my voice. -Dylan Week # 110 Merry Christmas! Well, almost. Here’s what we have listed on eBay now… We’ve been taking a lot of time off to spend with the kids this holiday season, so we won’t get back into full production mode until after Christmas. I wanted to do something special for you for Christmas, so here it is. I wrote and recorded a Christmas song with the kids on their instruments. I couldn’t stop there, so I made a ridiculous video for it too. It’s hosted on YouTube. If you want to download the song itself, you can go to my MySpace page and do so… Dylan's MySpace The puppet that you see in the video was made for a video for my band, Paperhand Lincoln. It’s designed to put a photo face on top, but I used a Santa head off our tree for this video instead. I couldn’t quite get it to play the drums the way I pictured, but my attempts were so horrible that they were more entertaining than my original vision. This video was really a practice of sorts for more music videos to come in the future. Maybe this is not your average Christmas song. This is my 35th Christmas, and I’ve felt all kinds of ways about the holiday. Sometimes I’m full of joy this time of year, and sometimes I’m depressed. It seems like winter and the end of the year make you look hard at where you are and what you’ve done. That sort of self examination can throw you in either direction emotionally. I’m feeling better than I ever have this year, but I couldn’t help giving a nod to some of those other feelings when writing this song. I also couldn’t help mentioning (albeit cryptically) that we’re still at war. I hope you all have a happy Christmas! Don’t let other people tell you how to celebrate it. You know what to do. -Dylan