Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Bums don't carry cardboard signs anymore. That's what we learned yesterday. We wandered around San Jose and Santa Cruz looking for someone with a sign so we could buy it off them. Wayne and his classmates are becoming art collectors for a bit here. If we can find any panhandlers carrying a sign, that is -- and convince them to sell it [a long explanation to this one... so only ask if you want to hear it. -wayne]. Didn't they used to stand on medians before freeway entrances?  read more »

That's right. I went back to school. This late into the year. While everyone else has been in school for several weeks, I had my first classes today, which turned out to only be one day's worth of classes on Thursday. Pretty uneventful, but at least I'm finally getting back into school.  read more »

This was my last real week of break before school. I have been trying to take advantage of the last relaxing moments of my life by sitting around and doing nothing, but this week I sort of worked on painting at home. We stopped by campus late last week to pick up my paints and stuff so I could paint from home. And it worked, because I did paint from home this past week. I received a commission from some friends who wanted a monkey painting for their nursery room (they have it safari themed), so I took care of that early on and then dove back into some technical skills projects.  read more »

I like being busy. I can say that now because I feel like we're working on things and making progress, but I don't have to stay up all night to finish a project for school or a paper. :) Oh, I loved school; I just also love being able to work on my own projects in the evenings.  read more »

Because we got into San Jose on the 31st (last Sunday), and stayed up for 22 hours straight - we kind of skipped writing our email that week. Which is unfortunate, because we had so much going on that it will be hard to keep it straight now. But we shall try.  read more »

What a fun week. We spent the first half of the week getting ready for our trip. I made sure I could connect to work remotely, since we were planning on having me work remotely a couple of days so I didn't have to dip into negative PTO hours. We packed and cleaned out our fridge of almost all our food. We took our keys to Star's sitters (and enjoyed a silly, fun movie called Shaolin Soccer with Chris and Alyssa). We arranged for the taxi to come pick us up. And then we laid low until Wednesday morning.  read more »

Rebecca and I have decided that this year was a terrible year for movies. After eight months since we've last been to the theaters, we rented Pirates of the Caribbean 2, to see if it was worth it. And I think the first time we watched it we were just as confused as the first time we watched Master and Servant -- totally lost. Not only could we not understand what half the characters were saying, but the plot made no sense. So we watched it again. The next day. And then I think I can reconcile it as being an "alright" film.  read more »

I had a great idea this week. Christmas is my favorite holiday of all, mostly because we have such great traditions that we enjoy and look forward to. Some holidays (like the 4th of July) we end up doing something different all the time so it's just...different. There's something to be said for persistent traditions. That said, we started off the holiday season with our advent calendar (with little chocolate pieces in each day) and reading a story and singing a Christmas song and reading a scripture about the Savior every day until Christmas.  read more »

being so close to the end of the semester always wears us out. even when only one of us is in school.

and being worn down means that we are more vulnerable to sickness. which is what we had most of this week.

sickness aside, we still managed to get out a bit this week. we even stayed out until two in the morning working on a show friday evening, which probably wasn't such a smart idea for our already weak bodies.  read more »

The main event of the week was Thanksgiving, of course. It was the first Thanksgiving I've ever had that wasn't with family of some sort. We were invited to the house of one of Wayne's colleagues. Julie had 12 people over, including us, most of the people having some connection to art. I was a little stressed before we got there, because for some reason I felt like the cake I made needed to look really professional, and I thought it just looked messy (the frosting was dripping everywhere...).  read more »