nice shiny newness

Such is the miracle of on-linery, you have no way of knowing that I am writing this post on my brand new Macbook Pro laptop, the one that is subtly shiny in a way that only brushed aluminium can be, the one that has subtly drained my bank account of all shininess. You'll just have to take my word for it.

I have resisted the allure of portable computery (are my new words making your teeth ache?) for many years now, but have decided that it's time to be able to take things between studio and home, to have less of an office presence at home (and therefore the big clean-out), and that it's nice to be able to play on-line scrabble in bed.

So aloha to my computer set-up, the most fitting word because apparently it means hello and goodbye; very soon I will be (fruitlessly, I suspect) trying to sell bits of my old set-up on ebay, trying to get something back for the vast amount of money I've spent on it through the years... something, anything.

In other exciting news, I just dropped Bumblebee off at school for his Year 7 camp, and the wave of parental excitement at having THREE WEEKDAY DAYS OFF was palpable. I surfed the wave, then I jumped into it, and am now thinking how nice it will be to hang around tonight at the art school for an opening rather than dash home to argue (yet again) about whether the tv can be on during dinner or not. They are headed to the Snowy Mountains for multicultural tasks like dragonboat racing and gladiator challenges. B looked highly excited this morning, wearing my old red giggle hat that he has always coveted (but since he last saw it, it has faded to a charming shade of rose-pink that none of us were game to point out this morning in case he rejected the use of it outright. Luckily none of his mates seemed to care either, calling it a 'cool hat').

I haven't been in my studio since last week, because I spent the weekend at Megalo with some of the Canberra Bookbinders' Guild learning how to make marbled paper with a wonderful teacher called Joan Ajala. I was particularly interested in the 'Spanish' technique, where the marbling ripples on the page to create a pleated-silk sort of effect, and I'm pleased to say that I managed it by the end of the weekend. I've got them pressing at the moment, then I might remember to scan some and show you...

I'm still in the process of transferring files and preferences and things, and moving furniture and gasping at deadlines that need to be met, so forgive my probable once-a-weekness for a while. Today at work I have the unenviable task of getting all the workshop's teaching notes on to the new ANU intranet thingy (called WATTLE). And I'll meet all the new students, and catch up with all the returning ones. I do like hanging out at the art school.