Valentines; mysterious and otherwise

I received three valentines today.

The first is the image, above, of a red stylized heart on a white ground. This image has been plastered all over the windows of my little city's downtown businesses for years and years. No one, or very few, know who the mystery lover is. But that just adds to the pleasure of coming downtown to the red and white love-liness of it all. 

The second was an orange shasta daisy (with a sprig of greens) given to me by my dear next door neighbors, fellow college alums, renters to me of my studio, and artists, not necessarily in the order. A gentle surprise and shining with pride of place on my kitchen butcher block table.

The third valentine I just discovered when I went over the studio to give my friends a reciprical valentine and to retrieve my water bottle from my studio. I was carefully walking across my very icy driveway when I saw a large piece of paper attached to my mailbox. What could it be? From a distance it didn't look like an ordinary advertizement. Ah, no, not an ad at all!

Actually, it's a limited edition valentine from my favorite small press printer - Kelly, of mayday studio. If you squint you can see she only made 15 of 'em. Such a select group! So sweet of her to think of me! I can't remember the last time I enjoyed Valentines Day so much.

Is it finally coming true that once I've let go of expectations I actually get what I want? I woke up grumbling a bit "Oh, yeah, it's valentine's day, whoopee." But I didn't expect anything from anybody (I had even momentarily forgotten about the downtown plasterer). So it's been pretty sweet saying Happy Valentine's Day and being greeted with equally friendly returns.

If you're reading this please consider yourself officially bestowed with a personal valentine's, from me.

Love,

Eva

Snow, Love and Posting Update

Thing A Day has totally inspired me. I have a friend in New York City (one of my oldest friends because her mother and my mother met when they were in undergraduate school together) who is also an artist and she's participating in the thing-a-day thingy linked above. I just talked with her last night and was noting how I haven't been posting very much the last few weeks, partly because I feel like very very few people come to the site, and even fewer post comments. It's kind of discouraging, but after going to thing-a-day I feel a lot better and I'm ready to post my heart out once again!



Above is a photograph I just took of my back porch (the chair is for scale) to illustrate how much snow we've got around here. Too crazy. I've reached my AAA limit in free service calls (until August or something) so now it's $45 everytime I need to get dug out of my own parking space. Really frustrating and I'm counting the days until I can park with impunity again. Or, I should say, get out of my parking space with impunity.

Meanwhile, Valentine's Day came and went, without any genuine activity here in Eva's Icons land. But wait, I have to show you this "dark" valentine I got as a consolation prize (from a friend, Rachel Rice, who makes art that's dispensed from an old cigarette machine now known as the GLAD-iator).







Nice, eh?

Oh, I almost forgot. Dr. Love did have a space walk (read all about it here), but not on Feb. 14th. Everything, it appears, is subject to rescheduling when it comes to outer space.

Dr. Love scheduled for space walk Feb. 14th

It's true! This web site Spaceflight Now has the whole space shuttle Atlantis story including Dr. Stan Love's planned space walk (with another mission specialist, of course) on February 14th. Stan is my cousin-in-law. Stan Love is married to my one and only first cousin, Jancy McPhee. Jancy also works for NASA, but she's trained as a microbiologist, and is not an astronaut. Anyway, they are both awesome.

I was so excited on Thursday when I heard the news (that the shuttle had successfully launched into space) on the radio, I went out to the formery and told all my co-workers (I was in the back putting labels on bread bags when I heard the news on NPR). During my break I looked up the mission update and saw the (not-a-joke-at-all) post about Stan's schedule on Feb. 14th. Over the next hour I told whoever wasn't in the formery at the time what the big news of the day was: Stan Love's in outer space, and guess when his space walk is scheduled?! Nearly everyone guessed correctly. SO CORNY! I LOVE IT!