Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Computers die. In this case, we had two computers die on us. All of our computers. Luckily they weren't catastrophic problems and thanks to newegg.com, we were able to get our machines back up and running quickly with new power supplies. Rebecca had a lot of research and presentations to plan, so having computers die wasn't a good idea.

But most of this week, we spent working ahead because we'll be gone to New York for six days. As you remember, Rebecca's research group was accepted to a conference in New York and BYU is paying for her trip [especially nice since we found a cheap enough hotel that BYU is covering all but traveling in the city itself, food, and Wayne's plane ticket. It's a good deal, for sure. -beck]. This should be a good opportunity for me to go see some great museums and gallerys in the NYC area. But it means that I'm going to have a really late Monday night trying to finish two papers that need to be turned in by Tuesday before we leave. And somehow I need to study for a physical science exam I have to take the day after I get back from NYC. Meh... it's worth it, right?

This past week, I began to feel a serious lack of painting in my life, so I decided to go against my decision to only work on conceptual projects this semester and do a bit of traditional painting. Well, traditional probably isn't the right word. It probably was also because I didn't have a functional computer to use for my conceptual projects, so they screeched to a halt and I was forced to use a different outlet for my artistic ideas.

I haven't been posting pictures of the things I've been working on this semester, but I will once I have better ways of displaying them. Right now I'm really absorbed in a digital photography project that takes up a great deal of my time, but it's a bit like carving a stone: it takes a long time and there is always very little to show for your work. It is a new sense of process for me, one that I've never been comfortable with. Most of my work is usually based on neo-expressionistic reactionary work ethic: if it doesn't capture raw speed, then I don't want to do it. I never liked carving stone in sculpture classes. But this digital project is turning out nice, albeit slowly.

This week was somewhat of a blur. Between Rebecca getting ready for a presentation and working intensely on research, and myself painting with a fury and trying to get all class work covered for the next week and a half, we ended up being very busy. We still were able to take some time Tuesday morning to race up to Salt Lake City and get tickets to see Swan Lake. I kept telling Rebecca that we needed to see Ballet West before we left the state, but never was able to do any more than talk about it. My parents graciously got us tickets for Swan Lake as a Christmas Present, so we had to go and pick them up. Unfortunately, the ticket office was a block away from Sam Weller's. Fortunately, we only had five minutes in the store before we had to race to our car because the meter was up. So, instead of leaving with a big pile of books (in five minutes we had accumulated five books from only one small row of books), we only bought one: a book on Susan Rothenberg. But that biography on Marcel Duchamp looked very tempting as well. We're so bad in used book stores. [I second that thought...it's good we didn't have time to visit the cookbook section!]

In other news, I have been helping a friend of mine put together a website for her new gallery. Although nothing is up right now, there soon will be virtual space at GalleryOneTen.com. The guy who purchased the site for her didn't give her any information on how to upload the files. So we wait.

We also made the switch to Cingular wireless. If you remember from before, we've been on AT&T wireless and Cingular had bought out AT&T. But they wanted to charge us $18 each to switch to the service, loose our current plan, pay more, and have to buy new phones. It never made much sense to us. But this week, we got an email from our local Cingular carrier saying that they were willing to drop the $18 transfer fee. We still weren't willing to change unless they dropped the prices on some other things, but since Rebecca's phone was dying we decided to use our rusty bartering skills and see what we could get. And...we were able to get them to drop the price on good phones to a reasonable price (free) and to make our billing charge less as well. So now we're Cingular people, I guess.

Saturday was a good day as well. Rebecca did well at her presentation, I went filming and painted. In the evening we played at Karl and Angela's house. That's about it for the week. See everyone in two weeks.