I was just looking at my stats, really 700 people have looked at this.  I didn't think so many.  I was setting down to use this as a diary today, now maybe I am a little shy - ha ha.  No, I'll still do it because probably no one is really reading close.  Stop the news feed to so I can think clearly.

As I have written in the book-format diary, I need to focus a little more on money in the coming weeks.  I have gotten the house as settled as it can be until the rest of my stuff arrives.  The fish tank is in the place and furniture is placed wisely (I hope) to get good fengshui for the immediate future.   These things were bothering me so I am glad I took care of it even at the cost of a bicycle which I desperately want this morning.  I had it in my head to take week-end rides to the Virginia Highlands and other cool spots as I am totally sick of driving to these places and walking takes much too much time.

Back to money, it is not really money actually, it is more along the lines of having more control of what's going on i a professional/career direction.  It must be about art since I am at that age where changing career directions would slow me down.  I teach art right now and to those ends I have made some progress in the creative thinking project.  Other teachers have responded to my forum post and given good insight and ideas as well as feedback.  The information is not analyzed just yet but that is ok, still early.  Something I do need to get on is pushing the application and seeing what else is out there.  I did some simple drawings but these need to be more finalized.  Bill Eisner was one I wanted to talk to about this.  Project Zero is another group of people I need to make contact with.  Additionally I will need to look at student reflections.  I should spell the current development out more clearly here:

At the moment I am working with the idea of story-boarding as a creative thinking tool.  The students were given a sequential art unit where they are to create a book as well as a short animation sequence using clay.  I introduced the idea that they story board not as a planning document but as a thinking document.  Th concept comes from a Merce Cunningham quote. What I expect to happen is the students think about and then arrange a story into bite-sized parts.  From here they can re-work as needed or perhaps this act will move them into directions they didn't think about earlier.  I just stopped for a moment here to looks at Bloom's Taxonomy and I believe this ideas falls into the category of 'Application'.  Not as high up on the list as I thought, nonetheless it is good to have it in there somewhere.  Now the task of applying it properly to the task and ideas arrived.

Another thing a friend turned me onto to is Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics which I have only read articles about, not the book itself.  I looked to see if it is on iTunes - no luck.  I'll check the book store as well as the school library and the public library as well.  Something that stands out to me looking at the Wikipedia entry is the six platforms - Idea/Purpose, Form, Idiom, Structure, Craft, Surface.  Just writing and reading about this stuff gets my brain into a creating mode.  I am thinking about my octopus making his way around town or in a space, is he cure or scary?  Don't know, but he must be eye catching.  I did a story-board for him before but it was quite simple.  I want to drop what I am doing now and get to it, but I won't because I have made a lot of art recently.

Now onto something different - design. Not really me making design, more along the line of me selling design.  I want to sell both quality, Chinese furniture and also Tibetan items from my friend Zhuoma.  The key here is to understand the market/clientele before I begin spending money here.  There is that artist Joy I met.  He said he sells things, if I understood him correct.  I have told myself to contact him but have not yet been able to get myself to do it.  I would be curious to see how he goes about it.  This is where living in a more communal area would do me well because I could be making connections and learning about who is out there and if they are buying anything.  This is sort of the rich part of town, but that is not to say I have made any friends around here.  How should I go about this?  Get on online sites and see what people are selling maybe.  This idea is far more rough and I do not have a lot to go on.  This one defiantly needs a brainstorm before I will make any progress on it.  The same is somewhat true of the vintage business.  I sent things off to CZ this week but that is not really a whole lot of anything.  The conversations I had with Pearl hae been much more productive.  I read up on activating my business fengshui in my den which is not there yet, but I have to put off buying things to make the fengshui better in here, low on cash.  I considered at times painting these items myself.  Again the issue here is not knowing the clientele well enough.  I am not sure what is needed there and honestly CZ has not been much help.  I should get Jimi in on this because he is probably easiest for me to deal with.  I had a good idea looking at the web-site Pearl sent me.  To buy 501's which are in abundance here and put the ATLBJ logo on them as well as some other cool stuff.  I was reading in Fader that floral patterns are cool so maybe I'll do that as well.  Here we go again, just writing about this stuff gets my juices flowing and inspires me to work and make some patterns and go get jeans and call Jimi and all that cool stuff.

I got caught making graffiti the other night.  I thought is was an abandoned building, however, it turns out someone lives in it.  He wasn't upset and we got into some good conversations.  There is a design opportunity there but I think there are other opportunities that are better.  I hope he sends me his email.  He is a combination preacher/social activist.  Of course help him with his logo which I wouldn't charge him for, I would just want apercentage of his enterprise.  But more importantly I would like to help him make short films, iTunesU stuff, and political graffiti to make Catalina happy - haha.

See this is why I don't any friends to go out with, because I always have things I want to work on, intellectual pursuits.  But to turn these into reality I will have to have friends to tell about and to help me find an outlet for.

Last thing:  Ihave been blowing the trumpet lately, the trombone too.  The urge to get a guitar and bass has been big but I have put it off because of lack of money and also so as not to serve as a further distraction.  Make beats in Garage Band before your purchase turntables, instruments or anything else.  Maybe I should peruse the local rags for bands that need musicians.  Should I get back into rock n roll again?  Oh well plenty enough here.  Get on to something else.