What made me smile today: this. To understand it in context, you should probably visit this page first. Heh. Brought back memories of life on the streets and waaay back, when I lived in Chicago.

What else- I had started an oil painting of a skunk cabbage flower a few weeks ago. Today I finished it. The name sounds kind of nasty, doesn't it? But it's quite a striking bloom, a shocking yellow streaked with chartreuse green spathe embracing an oblong pistil studded with knobbly protrusions. They grow in swampy areas around here. When I was a teen and still strongly in my tomboy phase, my brother and I used to take the ripened fruits, which are about the size and shape of a grenade, and hide behind logs and throw them at one another. They'd bust into a lot of pieces, which made the game more realistic. I didn't know if I'd be able to capture the essence of the flower on canvas, but when i look at it now, I can almost smell the skunky odor...so I guess I succeeded, particularly when the smell/taste of alizeran crimson is still in my nose, don't know how a paint could have a taste but it does.