SIGNS, POOPY COOPS AND A CONCERNED FRIEND

          It's been a wee while since I wrote anything here and the reasons are because I had some signs to make and when I finished those jobs, after dropping them off at the Farmer's Market to my customers last Friday, I became kind of sick - a strange sickness where I was shivering under a bunch of blankets for no real reason and then beginning to sweat.  A friend told me that I may have gotten pneumonia and then another, the flu - but the strange thing is that I never really lost my appetite that much.  I still consumed breakfast, lunch and supper, albeit not as much as I normally eat but it was still an adequate amount of food and I never did feel like heaving it back up - very strange.  Although a great many of my joints ached, my stomach ached during the night, I never really had a headache or felt any nausea - hmm - anyone have any idea what could have been wrong with me.  I'm not totally alright yet but feel a whole lot better and seem to be improving..

          Since I may have left a few people in a bit of a lurch about how the Lawrence sign turned out, I thought I should post a couple of photographs of it.  The first one contains a rough sketch of their cottage and a drop shadow.  After I painted the illustration and its border using 1Shot lettering paints and a small chisel-edged acrylic brush, I then used a 1/4" squirrel haired lettering brush to paint the outside border and edges to complete the job. The customer was very pleased with the result and said if anyone asked about who had don it, she'd be sure to put my name forward.

          When I used to be in business, I found my best form of advertising was a satisfied customer.  However, now that I'm no longer really in the sign business, it's become more of a hobby, it still feels good to know that people are satisfied with the results of my signs, especially since I don't get paid anywhere near what I used to - there is such a difference in pricing than when I lived on Vancouver Island. I still have some small magnetic signs containing only one word to do for a fellow in the state of Maine - traded him for seven bales of hay for our goat - now how's that for a deal - have always enjoyed the bartering system because it often makes everything affordable to both the seller and the buyer - sort of a win/win situation.  I've enjoyed painting and sketching a few live nude female women over the past years using that same system - I couldn't afford the price of a model and they couldn't afford to pay for a painting.  

          Feels good not to be sort of semi-alert or partly comatose today and not just laying around on the couch watching mundane B-movies or mindless sitcoms where the characters seem to more or less make sarcastic jokes about each other because that's all we seem to access on Netflix.  I'd pretty much watched most of the better programs before.  However, having said that about my health and laying about like a couch-potatoe, doing this morning chores and then the evening chores, I've once again broken into a sweat - hoping the chills don't start occurring too - time to end this Blog.  

         But before I do, I'd like to mention that a young friend of mine, Justin, showed up this morning to clean out the chicken coop for me, which is incredibly cruddy at the moment, because I became sick the day before I was going to clean it out.  However, since the chicken poop was frozen to the floor and every where else it seemed to collect and it would haven taken a jack-hammer or a hand grenade to break it loose, we sat down for the better part of the morning over a hot cup of coffee and discussed a lot of things that doesn't seem to interest a lot of people these days - the sort of stuff that I'm criticized for being a sort of doom and gloom guy.  I have to admit it was refreshing to hear from someone that young who was concerned about the environment and upset that everything has a dollar value attached to it.  In times of a crisis or a natural disaster, a man like him might be a good person to know.  So few people from my generation forward (most likely including me as well) are lacking considerably in the ability to survive a real crisis - let's hope the power never fails, oil never becomes non-existent or if they do, there is still plenty of fresh water to drink and food to grow for at least those remaining that still remember how to tend to things and not just go to the local grocery store with their plastic cards - cheers, eh!