Latest Painting

Here's my latest painting. Finished it at about 2:00am yesterday morning. This is the third painting in a series. The first one sold before the show opened. The second sold before it could be hung on the wall. This one was reserved by a collector while it was still being painted. For some reason people seem to really respond to these paintings.



As usual, I hated it when I first started and Lezlee made me keep painting until suddenly it magically transformed itself into something I really like.

I can't remember if I've written on this blog about the addition we're planning on building to the back of the house. Our architect is this really cool designer that worked with internationally recognized designer William Brueder. Before we even moved to Phoenix we knew about Brueder because Lezlee's boss's wife was an architect and when she heard we were moving to Phoenix she got all excited and told us about him (he's one of her favorite designers) and showed us magazine articles about his designs. Then our architect moved to Chicago where he's helped design a NATO center in Brussels and worked on that amazing skyscraper in Dubai and the Nevada Museum of Art. The stuff he does is pretty amazing.

Luckily he used to date a friend of Lezlee's and so he agreed to do our design. He visited the house a couple of weeks ago to get a feel for what we wanted and then he'll design it back in Chicago. A friend of his is another architect we really like who has building these super-cool condos in the area. That guy will do the construction administration while the addition is being built.

The idea is to build a bigger studio for me and an outdoor kitchen. For those of you in the north countries, an outdoor kitchen is a kitchen with a roof on it but no walls. It usually also has couches, a tv, a fireplace etc. With misters during the summer and gas heaters during the winter you can use them all year round down here. So basically it allows you to spend most of your time outside.

We're working through the initial design concepts now. There are all kind of zoning requirements and set-backs we have to deal with. Right now he wants to build the studio on pillars and then cantilevered back over our existing house so that it looks like it floats in the air. The outdoor kitchen would be under the shadow of the studio and then he wants to add a two-car garage with a terrace on top if it with a fire pit etc. This would allow us to have a great view of Squaw Peak from there.

The problem is that we've always planned on building a garage but in a later phase. Moving it into this phase would increase the construction costs beyond what we planned to spend right now. So we're struggling with deciding between something that would meet all our needs now and be the coolest design and should we limit the project for budget reasons only. Lezlee is concerned about cost because she doesn't care about a garage anyway. One thing I've never liked about this house is that it doesn't have a garage. I'll keep you updated on how it turns out.

Brennan wrestled in his first inter-mural match on Thursday. We weren't able to attend but his coach told us that Brennan did a great job. Hopefully I'll get to see him wrestle this Thursday. He works out with the wrestling team every day after school. He's earned the nickname Rulon from his coach. Rulon Gardner is a big Mormon wrestler that won a gold medal at the Olympics.

Lezlee has been on very restrictive diet for a couple of weeks. It's under a doctor's care and she has to go in every two weeks for blood tests to make sure everything is going okay. Some of you may have met one of my counselor's Scott Gardner. He's been doing the diet for a year and he's lost 177 pounds. Lezlee lost 16 1/2 pounds in just under two weeks. The doctor proscribes a diet for each patient based on their metabolism. Lezlee can only eat 1 oz. of tuna for breakfast (that's about three bites), for lunch she usually has 3-4 ozs of shrimp and a cucumber and then for dinner 5-6 oz. of meat and some vegetables. The key to the diet's success is the doctor monitors her to make sure she stays in a state called "ketosis," which is where the body switches from burning carbohydrates to proteins and then fat. The trick is that under most diets the body thinks it's in a famine situation and so starts to conserve fats. Lezlee has to take daily tests to make sure her body is in that fine line between ketosis and fat saving famine mode.

I told her that she should set rewards to keep herself motivated. So every 17 pounds she gets a reward. The problem is that I didn't monitor the rewards list. When she gave it to me the other day it had things like a trip to Boston, a trip up the California coast, a weekend at a spa with her best friend, shopping sprees, a Hermes scarf ($300 for a frickin piece of fabric to wrap around your neck!! Does that make any sense?), etc. I think this is going to be a very expensive diet!

Jordan had a friend sleep over last night. Unfortunately they were reading "The Daring Book for Girls" together. So we awoke to a heart attack all over the wall (notes that say they "heart" us), fake blood and they short-sheeted Holden's bed. I'm a little worried because they're in Jordan's bedroom now concocting their next scheme.

Holden has been skateboarding a lot with his friends lately. One of them was good enough to get sponsored by a skate board company. He's not that good and seems to be beat up a lot. He's also really into street art. We figured out that he wasn't eating lunch to save money to buy a special type of spray paint. His friend's mom lets them paint on their brick wall. He's getting pretty good so Lezlee and I have decided to let him have the fence on the side yard to paint on.

And that's pretty much life here in Phoenix. The art store just opened so I've got to go get some paint to paint the side of this painting and then take it to the gallery.