During the winter, I grind to a halt. My body goes into a bad state, arthritis and stuff just gets nasty this time of year. My online life does the same, it slows down, the holidays are usually hectic and I get lost for a while. It was a very low key Christmas this year, but as the years go by, that suits me just fine.

We have a brand new president, and the guy, his wife, and his kids are cool. What a refreshing change of pace, a guy I feel comfortable, a guy I feel I can trust, a guy that’s walking the walk, a guy that’s breaking down the barriers of business as usual in DC. I love it, I’m glad he’s in charge, I can’t bear to think of McCain and Palin muddling and bluffing their way through what this country is facing. Barack must be nuts to take on the job he’s tackling. That’s a hell of a man that is willing to face such insane obstacles.

It’s been a bad week, my sister has been hospitalized and is fighting for her life, and it’s not looking good. What makes this more difficult is that what’s left of my family are all in California, and I’m in East Tennessee. I can’t travel via airplane due to medical stuff, riding in a car that long is out of the question, and a hospital is filled with sick people and diseases, which is the last thing I should expose myself to.  So I’m trying to get through all of this via random phone calls day and night, at all hours. We’re all trying to get through this as best we can, but it’s been rough, to say the least.  Being the oldest of 4 kids, it’s sort of my job to be there during a crisis, especially one like this. But it’s just not possible to be there, and that’s hard to swallow.

I’m working on some art projects, a new set of animated fractal videos to be marketed as relaxation or meditation videos, as I’m going to record a music track for them with the midi keyboard I bought a few months ago. I’m going to send a couple out to The Square Room on Market Square in Knoxville, so they can use them to project onto the big screens and backdrop behind the stage of this new music venue.

I’m also working on releasing a CD of my artwork to be used for computer screen wallpaper, or in digital picture frames. They’re being rendered in a wide format, so they’ll fit nicely onto laptop screens or the big monster monitors some people have. I’ve been rendering thousands of pieces of artwork for over a year now, Frankenputer in the corner has been rendering day and night rendering large artwork.

I need to do another show for 2009, so I’m taking stock of where I might be able to do a show without paying a lot of money to hang on the gallery walls. Last show left me $100.00 poorer to hang for a month, and I had zero sales. It’s not good business when things don’t pan out like this.  I’m going to make a pitch to a gallery that I enjoy, and seeing if I can do a solo show. I’ve got more than enough framed and finished artwork to do a solo show, and it’d be cool to see it all in one place.