the painting to the right is not on a metal shelf like most of the other recent pieces, it's on some appliance part__ I'm guessing that it's the top of a dryer, but I really don't know. I found it out on the curb in front of aliza's neighbor's house a month or two ago and brought it home to paint on. I like painting on a square format and although this isn't quite square it's close enough to make me think that maybe for my next group I will paint on squares. it wasn't really ever an option with the unstretched canvas or burlap pieces because they would shrink into irregular shapes, and of course squares are all about regularity. Part of the reason I like the square is that it negates the significance of the format... of course that's not true, you could argue the reverse, but maybe you understand what I mean... I remember my dad telling a story about buying a painting on the street in Paris, the artist asked, "do you want thissy way (moving a finger back and forth) or thissy way (moving his finger up and down)?" after which, my dad came to understand that paintings could be divided by those that went either thissy way(horizontal) or thissy way (vertical)... well the square format gets beyond that... I suppose. Although this one isn't quite a square and so it is clearly thissy way (vertical).

I didn't get around to writing yesterday... let me see if I can recall the day. worked for awhile in the morning trying to get the photos section of my website caught up with the new stuff I've been doing. It still links to the old site as soon as a viewer navigates away from the main page. I've begun creating new pages for each sub group, but that's a bit laborious, simply because I need to write an explanatory note... or at least I feel that I need to... or at least I want to have explanatory notes to accompany each section and I, so far, have made slow progress. but there really is no great hurry.

Michelle called while I was working on that, she'd stayed home from going to laguna with her dad because she was sick. she let me get some movies for her at the library, she was reluctant at first for any sickbed favors, but she's taken care of me so many times when I've been sick that I really wanted to do something for her____ she was already well stocked on juice, soup, vitamins, bath salts, etc. Aliza called, she'd been in bed working on the computer all morning__ I guess she called before michelle did. she was having difficulties attaching a photo to an email, but other than that, seemed to be having a pleasant morning. she called back after I'd spoken to michelle to ask to borrow my tripod, but we never ended up getting together for me to give it to her. she wanted to go photo the fires, but I'm guessing that she decided against it either because the fires were pretty much out by yesterday afternoon, or she just couldn't get anybody to go with her___ she didn't want to drive her own car. either way, I just spoke with her (as I was writing the above) and she ended up going out with jenny somewhere late and sounded pretty tired and we'll probably go for breakfast in a little while.

back to yesterday: got off the phone with aliza the second time and I guess I had already gone to the library and gotten movies for michelle (and myself) because I went straight over to michelle's, where her entry gate actually worked for the first time in recent experience, so that was easy. went inside and sat on the couch talking for quite awhile (an hour?)... don't remember about what, but it was pleasant. I left Michelle's and went to the 99cent store and bought toilet paper and baby ruth candy bars. Then I came home, worked for awhile on the website, probably made chess/scrabble moves with lucy, didn't hear from bruce 'til this morning, although I guess he had made a chess move sometime last night. somewhere in there yesterday denise called, I think it was before michelle's first call, we talked for quite awhile, but it's ok because she's got a good transatlantic phone deal, things are going well in london, but she and sara both miss venice. they'll be back in the middle of december for ten days then they'll go down to spend christmas in mexico and then back to london around new years day or shortly after I suppose.

last night, I just watched movies in bed. ben hur first, which I haven't seen since I was little and all I remembered of it were the chariots and lepers. I was struck by the clearly drawn metaphorical depiction of the romans and the roman legions as representing the bush administration and the US military, which then casts judah ben hur in the role of a contemporary iraqi insurgent... hmmm, I wonder what charlton heston would think. oh, I almost forgot, after ben hur I went up to gotta have it to get money for sara's ipod. then,which was kinda late, I watched Godzilla, which must've come out a few years ago, it was an updated americanized version inspired by the old japanese films. It ended up being an interesting look at the out of control monster that nuclear weaponry development, proliferation and testing have created... probably not just the material monsters/threat/danger, but also the whole cultural and paradigmatic impact that nuclear threats have brought about. of course mostly it was just a silly action movie with a little bit of a half-hearted love story... but it's nevertheless fun to look for a message.

typing this is all I've done so far this morning, I'll try to write more tonight.