thinking ahead to valentine's day

in the publication business, creation has to start very early, xmas art was done a few months ago and now i am working on valentines day. earlier this week i created some ATCs (artist trading cards, see previous post "nice hat weather isn't it?) for one of my projects. here are a couple of them. i'm thinking of making them bigger than ordinary ATC, meaning a bit more substantial and giving them to friends after theny have published in somerset studio magazine (www.stampington.com, see publications).. as most my smaller work does. love that magazine.

today kathy and i covered a lot of ground - we got up to escodnido early as planned and took down my show and put it up again in my studio there. then we began our tour of stores. we missed going to stamping delights in poway because of one small mistake i made on the freeway; somehow i ended up in the HOV toll lane which shot us straight out of the area south about 20 miles. there was no way to get off that carpool portion of the freeway. kathy had me worried too, as she said the HOV changes the direction in the stream of traffic from south bound to north bound about mid day. and it was mid day. that's a hellofa way to run a freeway, if you ask me.
nevertheless we managed to find plenty of stores south of our destination. then west. and then east. we found many bargains that we were sure we needed - er, someday.
tonight gastone, my hubby, is away on the ocean enduring a fishing trip that a friend bought him as a bday present. i can't wait to hear the story behind this. my husband is an unlikely fisherman. he is a total homebody; loves to spend the weekend with his family and pets and remote control. i don't think he has been on the ocean once in his life. and i know he has never gone fishing.......
the other thing is, gastone is very much like Saint Frances of Assisi. at least, i like to call him that. (sometimes i think of him as a bald, hairy chested snow white too, but he fails see the humor in that----actually he fails to see he humor in st. frances for that matter, but rosie and i always have a good laugh).

anyway, all animals come to him and hang out. our pets - anyone's pets...gather round him.....if he goes outside in our back yard to smoke a cigar, bluejays will come and land on the iron fence behind him and sing to him. we even name the wild birds, they are so familiar. (actually, i call all of them "chip" as thats the sound they make).
the other funny thing is ...like something out of the bible, all animals get alone with one another when he is with them. the cat and dog curl up together, the bird and the cat occupy the same space without hassle. all is right in the animal kingdom.
so i really can't imagine him killing a fish. he is not a sportsman nor hunter, like the friend who bought him this excursion. his friend, lets just call him "alex", has a big personality and is a huge gamesman. he goes to africa all the time in hunt of large beasts that he later has the heads stuffed and mounted on his walls. gastone loves hearing the africa tales, but that is because of the way alex tells them. alex is very entertaining. but, i think alex has misunderstood gastone's interest. all i know is, my poor husband was already suffering from motion sickeness before he left the house tonight. he wanted to put on the sea sickness "patch" 3 hours before the "all aboard" blasts. he said that the boat cruises five hours west while they sleep, then when they get up sometime around sunrise, they start fishing. hooboy. something tells me we won't be eating fish in the near future.
perhaps i will make a "fish" valentine ATC for him. or perhaps one with a prince and a castle. ahahahahah, oh poor gastone. just teasing, baby. hehehehe