A triumph each for the art world and for carnivores

I did two life-changing things today.

First, in painting class, we were assigned to do an in-class painting using only straight paint and a pallette knife. For those of you who don't know what a pallette knife is, imagine a really small pie server. We did have a still life to inform us, but we were encouraged to be intuitive and abstract. For the first time, I let myself go nuts. Now, I'm no photo-realist, but I've always taken the traditional route when it comes to my images. Not today - I used thick paint, I scraped into it, I used arbitrary colors, and I even painted things there weren't really there. I'm not going to paint like this for the rest of my life or anything, but I loved it. And it looks pretty sweet, too.

Second, I got some free food at work today, and it happened to be a chicken bacon broccoli calzone. There was also a little extra meat sauce that I put on top. Imagine my perverse delight when I realized that I was consuming a product from all three of the major meat animals - chicken, pig, and cow. Why does this thought make me laugh so much?

Also, I decided that on top of the two things that I'm giving up for Lent and forever, and to pick up the slack after Optimistic.'s choice for the forty day fast, I would actually binge for Lent - on music. See, Elder M has been loaning me his CDs while he's been gone, and I really haven't listened to very many of them, just the ones I was already familiar with. Realizing this was a darn shame, I've decided to give them all a go before he gets back. In three and a half months.

How are you doing?