The last two cars in the lot

These two cars belong to me and friend 'C'. They are frequently the last two cars parked in the school lot. It's cute to see the two hippie cars snuggled together in the lonely lot. At least they have each other. As do me and 'C'. I'm going to miss her next year.

I miss my NPR but at least I have Fleet Foxes

It's been a couple of weeks that my car radio reception has been decidedly less than optimal. And now, every morning when I get on the Northway (the highway between home and school) my radio goes completely fuzzy and the only station I can get is a religious Christian radio station, which is seriously not my cup of tea. So the nice people at my auto dealer are ordering a part (an antenna amplifier?) and in another week I should be back listening to the friendly voices on North Country Public Radio. Yeah!


I've been bringing CD's to keep me company in the car (my drive is 1/2 hour) - the Avett Brothers and Mumford and Sons are my latest favorites - but they aren't the friendly voices of my friends at NCPR. Anyhow, the Avett Brothers are great to sing along with but they weren't in my car tonight, and Mumford and Sons are pretty angry and not what I needed to keep myself calm in bad driving conditions.

I had left work in the dark, after it had started snowing and sleeting and I needed music that would keep me relaxed on my lonely highway, especially for the moments when big trucks would fly by me splattering my windshield with wet snow and freezing rain. My music of choice: The Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues. Lush, layered, and lovely, the Foxes engaged me and lifted my spririts all the way to my cozy house.

Another blogger adventure!

This is me (on the right) and Janis from http://www.dreamdrawcreate.com/ on the left.

A while back we discovered that we live maybe an hour from each other, so today we met in the middle (Saratoga) for some coffee, tea, bagels, and conversation. How about this: our birthdays (including the YEAR) are just days apart! My astrologer brother would probably say that it makes sense we both became art teachers. It always amazes me what a small world it actually is; this is the 2nd time I've had an opportunity to meet another blogger. I posted about my other blogger adventure last winter here.

Anyhow, thanks Janis for a fun morning. Let's keep in touch and hopefully we'll both be at the NYSATA conference in November. I'd love to have you at my workshop to learn how to make a trihexaflexagon!

By the way, for those of you who are newer readers, that's my sweet car we're in front of. You can read my love story for my Subaru in my blog posts here and more here.

No snow day

(This is a love story.) We did NOT have a snow day yesterday, though many schools around us did. We did NOT send the kids home early, but at 3pm, once the kids were gone, so were we. No reason to stick around when it's snowing and sleeting and there's white-out conditions!
So I drove merrily home, listening to my favorite public radio station and composing haiku out loud to entertain myself and keep myself sane as I drove (but is the pattern 5-7-5 or 7-5-7?). My haiku were all in praise to my Outback - the queen of reliability for winter driving. She never even once slid, slipped, or skidded, and got me home safely (though it took twice as long as usual). So today I stayed at school longer to make up for yesterday's quick exit, and took these pics when I left after dark. The snow is pretty at night.

Sleighbells ring, are you listening?

I've actually posted this photo before, but what the heck, my sweet Subaru deserves the recognition. Because today's ride home reminded me why she is mine forever. I drove my 30 miles home from school around 5:30pm in, what the radio announcer nicely called, a "wintry mix". The temperature hovered around 32 degrees and the mix included freezing rain, hail, sleet, and wet gloppy thick snow. It was flying so hard and furious that the dotted lines had all but disappeared, and the view of flying snow out my windshield reminded me of going into warp drive on Star Trek. Saw a truck stopped on the side of the highway on a hill, saw some flashing police car lights further down the road, but me, I made it home just fine (OK instead of going my usual 10 mph ABOVE the speed limit I drove about 10 mph BELOW it). But not a problem. Winter has arrived and I love my stick shift, love my car.

On a more serious note, I just read a very thought-provoking post over at Artful Artsy Amy's blog, and I'll include the link here for you. http://http//artfulartsyamy.blogspot.com/2010/11/what-do-you-do-with-problem-like-maria.html
And while you're there, take a look at what else she posted today. There's interesting stuff there, and different than what's in other art blogs.

Like I said, I'll doodle on anything...

My trusty Subaru!

A couple of years ago, I almost traded her. But I (thankfully) realized what a mistake that would be, and to apologize to her, I decorated. Each summer I add a little more; I think this summer's addition will be the hood. Maybe more dragonflies, or a big sunburst? What do you think?

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I just read a comment below (thank you!) and thought I'd add a little explanation about the process. The flowers are actually custom decals, like the kind used to detail trucks and cars, not paint. I designed them and worked with someone to vectorize it on the computer. It was done in sections - once a little was done, I wanted more more more! So to make things easy (and less expensive) each time I added a section we cut apart what we'd already done, rotated, reversed, changed colors etc.

The man who did it kept asking "are you SURE?" and "what's your husband going to say?" to which I responded: "first of all, it's MY car; second of all, if he doesn't know what to expect from me after 20 years, isn't it a little late to worry?"

I get smiles when stopped at traffic lights, and kids drag their parents over to see my car in parking lots. As a matter of fact, I get stopped all the time in parking lots, by people asking and commenting, and I've never had a negative reaction. When I got stopped for speeding though, I thought... boy, I'd better be more careful from now on... with a zillion silver Subarus around, mine could be picked out of a lineup pretty easily!

Meanwhile, when my son, 19 years old at the time, had it for a weekend at college, he got a lot of interesting reactions! But hey, it got him where he was going!