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Car 2 Go - haven't actually gotten into a car yet.

Yep. I haven't actually even been inside of a Smart Car 2 Go. If you're in Ulm, Germany or Austin, Texas, you may have come across this little car share program. It's a pretty good deal. I did some math and I think I'll save about $1800/yr. using Car 2 Go. That was based on 4 uses per day, over 50 weeks, at 10 minutes each. If I'm saving this much, I know some people can save even more.

That's all fine and good if the service works, but after 3 tries I have been unable to even step foot in the vehicle. To the company's credit, the customer service has been fantastic. I think they just have a few little kinks in their system to work out.

I got up extra early for work to catch my first Car 2 Go, last Thursday morning. I checked the website and it turned out there was a Car 2 Go right behind my house! I walked over there with a cup of coffee in my hand, thinking "I'm good. I got plentya' time." When I got to the car I swiped my card and I looked at the screen. "Reserved" with a blinking red light. Ok. That sucks. I didn't know that you had to reserve a car 15 minutes in advance, to make sure you could use it. In fact, I didn't even know about that feature of the website. A co-worker late explained it to me.

OK, fair enough. My fault. In the time that it had taken me to walk one block behind my house, someone had reserved the car, since the website doesn't show reserved cars apparently. Fine. Whatever. I go back to my house to find another car. This time when I arrive at the car, a few blocks further and in the rain, it was "available." Sweet! I swipe my card. Nothing. "Card Suspended" or something analogous flashed before my eyes, "call service center." Ugh. Whatever. I call the number on the back of my card, starting to stress over getting to work on time. I reach a very jolly chap, from The Netherlands, who was nice enough to check on my account. However, he doesn't have any answers as to why my card was suspended. He tells me to call the Austin office at 9:00 a.m., 30 minutes after I'm supposed to be at work.

The Austin service center calls me at 9:30 a.m.! A very friendly person tells me that the Car 2 Go I scanned my card into the very first time thought that I was renting it, and that's why it locked my card when I tried to swipe the second Car 2 Go, even though the first one was reserved...

um...ok...

So she told me to just "watch out for that." Fine. Whatever. They reimbursed me for the time the vehicle was rented.

This morning I thought I'd try it once again. Every new system has a few hiccups when it's first implemented. So, I find myself a Car 2 Go and reserve it online, which took a little doing as a first time user.

When I got to the car and swiped my card, "Card Suspended." I threw a little hissy fit. I called Car 2 Go at 9:30 a.m. A very warm and comforting person assured me "that was weird," and that he would reset my account, and reimburse me for the reservation expiration fee, which I didn't know about until he told me.

When you enter the vehicle for the first time on a rental you have to enter your password. Luckily, I asked if my online password was the same as my Car 2 Go rental password...

...it's not.

Friscolating Dusk Light

Dawn and Dusk 36x36

This is definitely a circle. I suppose you're inside of it and looking at it from the edge. But if it were rotated 90 degrees on the x axis it would look like a circle.

This is the first time I've ever used spray paint on one of these stripe paintings. It was nerve racking, let me tell you. But now I have twinkly stars in my night sky!

This painting was created as a wedding gift for my friends Christopher and Katie Aldridge.

BOB ROSS FORCED TO EAT OWN HEART OUT!

Our Secret Clouds (...and if you tell anyone those clouds are there...) 30x20

I really love this painting. It represents so much. I branched out in so many new ways with the techniques I was using. I really went wild with my restrictions, giving myself more and more allowances to be suggestive of the different details of the landscape. This painting is not a circle, unfortunately.

It also has some water damage at the top right. Not sure what that could be. It did rain a few times over Christmas, which marked the inception of this painting. The color palette of the ground reminds me of Central America.

The title is a little mysterious. It's a triple reference. This painting was not going so well in my eyes from the get go. But my friends, Devon and Nico, convinced me to keep working on it. I'm so glad I did.

One reference is to The Family Guy, for Devon. And from that starting point, it's a Bob Ross reference because I allowed myself to cheat my own method a little bit and use techniques, normally forbidden, to create a real 'landscape' look with mountains, and clouds, and the like.

But it's also a secret reference.

Checking The Boat Listings

Listing Boat 60x48

Of all the churning random hearts
Under the sun
Eventually fading into night,
These two are opening now
As we lie, I touch you
Under fuller light.

Girl, if you're a seascape
I'm a listing boat, for the thing carries every hope.
I invest in a single light.
The choice is yours to be loved
Come away from an emptier boat.

-The Shins

Don't mean to be trite by posting a bunch of shins lyrics, but I really did get the name from this song. I love the melody of the verse right at the moment that James Mercer sings the lyrics "I'm a listing boat." There was resonance in that combination for me. Hard to say why. But this painting looks like that lyric and melody sound together. Combined, there's a multidimensional sensory experience, I guess. Maybe hearing the sound of the melody with the meaning of the lyrics, whilst staring at my own painting is similar to what synaesthetics experience. WHO KNOWS? Tell me that. Who knows?

I'll tell you what, when my friend Brian Hudson and I rode our bikes to Portland, OR, we rode right by James Mercer's house, which used to belong to Elliott Smith...purportedly, anyway. Yes we sure did.

What luck?

Happy Accident (rain in the desert) 30x20

This painting is cyclic in may ways, like all of the striped paintings that I do. It is a dessert landscape at dusk, that is shortly about to receive some random rain. Like money from someone rich..."mmmm...money...mmm....double money." It screams, "there's always hope, even in the bleakest of circumstances," etc. But seriously, I endeavored to create the mood of serendipity.

I went over the tape a little on each layer of the sky in order to suggest rain beginning to fall from the clouds, delineated by the edge of the tape. The the 'ground' layers share alternating angled brush strokes to create a sense of slope for the dunes. I'm considering dropping the tape thing altogether, though. I'd like to just go free hand. But a part of me likes the restriction of tape, and the random fractal-esque patterns the water and paint create under it. I just don't know. Which means it's time to experiment.