Real World Update

I've been doing a lot of stuff lately, but it seems that all I usually post are links to news stories. So here's what's been up.

A couple of weeks ago it seemed prudent to paint some new paintings to show along with the old ones still out at the McKenzie-Mueller Winery in Carneros, where I played with Tom Overton last Saturday and Sunday.

Although no one bought any paintings, everyone seemed to like them, and I did pass out a bunch of cards. Here's what the paintings look like:

This is a view of Miliken Peak from near the McKenzie-Mueller Winery.


This is Sonoma Mt. from Stage Gulch Road, just towards Sonoma from Petaluma.




This is a view of Mt. Veeder, from the lawn right in front of the winery.

I had so much fun painting these that I once again wonder why in the world I don't paint more.

Playing on Battery Power

It was also a blast playing music with Tom. We had so much fun that we played straight through from noon to 4pm each day, except for when we had to move inside when it started to rain Saturday. For the first time, we both did the gig using battery power for our amps. Unshackled from wall outlets! A wonderful feeling. We each had a battery, sold for jump starting a car. I got mine at Costco. I have a 200 watt inverter (a Powerstar POW200) that was part of a package deal when I got my digital camera five years (and 18,000+ photos) ago, and I used my small Ibanez bass amp for bass and my new (used - thank you, craislist!) Roland Cube Monitor for my backup vocals. Tom ran both his guitar and his vocals through his Ibanez guitar amp, which I think he plugged directly into his battery. Four hours straight seemed to be near the limit of what this setup could handle, but it worked fine. Both our batteries read "empty" when we finished, but after a quick charge Saturday night they were ready to go Sunday morning.

Meanwhile, Bonnie's been raising silkworms. But more on that later.