Today was a very busy day. I crawled reluctantly out of my nice, comfy, warm bed at 7:50 a.m... wait, let me back up. There's a short backstory to this.
We've implemented our outside-the-box patio sale this week (with mixed but mostly disappointing results) and on Tuesday I met my next door neighbor when she came to check out the goods. We've lived next door (more or less; the lot between us holds her husband's garage for fixing cars) to each other for 13 years and I'd never laid eyes on her before. I was tickled to meet her, and as we talked I learned she was involved in the new Art League/Center of Baytown (the suburb closest to where I live in Houston). She felt like a kindred spirit almost immediately, and for once wasn't someone 20 years younger than me as I tend to meet and befriend very young people, mostly online. I haven't had a local friend here since I moved here, other than short relationships with people who never made it past "acquaintance."
Susan, my neighbor, invited Kara to attend the already-in-progress Kids', (the exact term escapes me) er, we'll go with "Expo." It is three weeks of classes for various age groups, with each group meeting twice a week for two hours for a total of 12 hours per group. They were exactly halfway through as of Tuesday afternoon for Kara's group, so Susan invited her to participate for the remaining 6 hours at no cost to us, which was very kind and of course she jumped at it. I was, for my part, excited to hear the place existed at all. I've been so isolated and it just felt right.
So I got up at 7:50 to shower and get ready to have Kara there at 9. We were about five minutes late, but we made it, and we both stuck around for two hours of class and an extra hour afterward — Kara doing a sculpture while I got to know the other members and took a tour. They've got 10,000 square feet in the old artsy section of town, paid for mostly by the city for a true city art center. Their gallery exhibit space is already almost full, and there are some very talented artists there. Membership is an annual fee of $25 per person or $40 per family, and exhibit space is an additional $25 on top of that for a 4x8 wall space, along with a commission for the center for anything sold. Commission rates vary based on whether the artist volunteers any work time to the center.
They've got 3-D mixed media, paintings, prints, jewelry, pottery, and I'm sure I've forgotten all sorts of things. They're having a chair painting contest with final judging in October and I've been encouraged to enter the chair I just happened to be working on already for my brother (see a previous post). I mentioned my rather unique dreamcatchers and they're interested in me doing a class or a demo for the members, paid, which sounds great. What was really awesome was that Susan paid for Kara and I to join the Center in exchange for me helping her with organizing the books — a work in progress for her right now. I'm all kinds of gung ho and excited.
I met another kindred spirit while I was there today; her name is Donna. I felt so comfortable talking to her that I even gave her the url to this blog and to Rending the Veil, which I also shared with Susan. I understand they were going to hang out today; I've been a little nervous wondering if maybe they checked out the blog and agreed that I'm off my nut. I'm sure they had no time for such trivialities, but I haven't shared myself with offline people on first meeting like this in a good couple of decades. It's a little nerve-wracking. Donna and I discussed channeling and so forth quite a bit today (she brought it up first, too!) but Susan may feel a little blindsided by what she sees here. I want to do a general intro post in the next couple of days, if I can find time. I'll read the sticky one and see if it's enough.
Later this evening, I was blindsided by the opportunity to go see the new Harry Potter movie. It's been a lucky day for me! We went to the latest showing, and as expected it was wonderful and yet suffered massive cuts from the much more densely packed book. The ending was lovely, and all in all much was conveyed in what felt like a short film; I could've watched another thirty or forty minutes without complaint. I would have loved to have seen more on Tom Riddle's history, for instance, but they conveyed the inner conflicts of various characters really well, I thought. Based on the fact that no single movie could ever do the book justice, I give it a B+ on first viewing.
And now I am going to collapse my exhausted butt into bed and sleep. A lot, I hope. Good night.
| Originally published at Infinite Possibility. |