Dear Barnes and Noble:

I understand that when I place an order and check on the free shipping thingy that you'll hang on to my order until it's complete.  It's a fact of mail order that I know well.  I can be patient and accept this.  But why must you hold my entire order until the day my pre-order comes in, and then proceed to ship the pre-order separately from the rest of the in-stock items?  You're very silly. 

So far, I have received Donato's very pretty picture book, Stephanie Law's gorgeous instructional book and Jim Butcher's latest oeuvre.  They all arrived yesterday in great condition.  But really, my time could have been better spent in poring over them lovingly these past three weeks while I eagerly await Jim Gurney's Color and Light.

I think it very shameless that you should tease and taunt a poor bibliovore like me.

Yours sincerely,

Pat

Update

Well, no new art to post as of yet -- most of the summer was spent *waiting* for our house to be ready to move into, and did I mention the waiting and waiting and waiting? And of course, the waiting was done while most of my art supplies were packed.

But hey! It's all over and done with, and we're all moved. Most of my supplies are unpacked now; I just have to organize things. However it's a little difficult as we have to worry about giant hordes of tiny attack frogs.

Yes. Tiny frogs. A few nights ago, as the husband went outside to smoke, a couple of the itty-bitty little frogs charged him and managed to make their way inside. We were able to capture one of them rather quickly, but the second one eluded us for quite some while. When he reappeared we evicted him as well, but he had been out of sight for long enough to emplace hidden cameras, or *shudder* do things to our computer (just what he did to our computer I dare not imagine!).

Seriously -- they're tiny. About an inch long. And bright green.

And they're so freaking cute!

The first time we saw one, it hopped onto the husband as he walked out the back door, startling him. Here's the culprit, hanging around on our back door:



And here's one I saw this morning, on our kitchen window, backlit by the sun:





And of course, the little blighter pooped on the window while he was there:



And yesterday I saw a frickin' huge moth on our patio door:



He hung out there for quite awhile, even letting me put my hand close enough to him so I could show his scale:



And, since this is really supposed to be an art blog, here's one of my daily sketches I did back in June:



graphite, watercolor, Derwent InkTense pencils, and acrylic.

EDIT: You know those little green frogs? One just attacked my nose. I'd be traumatized if I weren't laughing so damn hard.