From:  oddlystrange <perky@obscure.org>
To: blah2@obscure.org
Subject: ART: Like Water for Hair

So I was forced into a work thingy last night. We all had to go out to
one of those ceramics painting places (which I enjoy doing and all)

<can I have a big ole BUT>

BUT...

We were givin this tile thingy and we had to paint it, and whatever we
painted was going to go up on a wall in our new office building.

This is all well and good except that

1) I can't draw
2) I can't paint
3) this is going on display                                                    

Ed, Kirsten and Dave can all vouch for my "pure" art abilities --
especially when I'm on painkillers and the like.

Gimmie some pixels to arrange in a pleasing manner and have me send it
off to a printer or display it on screen -- fine. Hand me a camera and
tell me to hit the shutter release when something neet happens in front of
it: dandy.

Gimme a pencil, a flat surface and some paint: not good.

So after sitting there for a little while, I painted the tile purple (it
was a good start, it looked rather nice at this point).

Made a little splatter of paint that looked like a flower. So I painted
two things that vaguely had floral-like qualities. But in the middie was a
big hole and the design sense in me told me something HAS to be there.   

So I was going to put some kind of witty saying like "Xperts RULEZ" or
something equally profound. SO I drew a little oval thing for the words,
but
it ended up looking like a giant light bulb. So I made it a light bulb.

Everyone knew I was done when my floral lightbulb themed tile had the
word "ART" written pretentiously across the top of it. If Ed ever gets
hired at Xperts he'll be the only one who knows for sure who did the
lightbulb/flower tile.

So I'm walking a tile that any 6 year old would be proud of down to get
fired in the kiln and I decide to see what other people are making. This
was a bad mistake because I went to the table where all our creative
services people are. They are painting these complex lifelike self
portraits, or true-to-life farm houses with flowers and stuff. Hell even
their abstract "Stick figure in a maze" had some design merit to it. 

I have a bad cartoon of floral like splotches of paint, a lightbulb-ish
thing in the middle and the word ART across the top. It was like the
kid in art class who got more paint on himself than the paper.

Now you all are prolly wondering where the Water comes in.

That was later. Like the morning. I get up and get all ready for work by
taking a shower. I have an all day meeting in Riverfront, the good
news meaning I get to leave an hour later (which means I got to sleep
in an extra half hour, how much more sleep I can get is one of those
mathematical equations that fails me in the morning...)

Anyhow. SO I get up and go to take a shower and get right to the point
where I'm putting in my refreshing mint conditioner when

BAM! 

Just like that there's NO water coming out of the shower. Its like
little udnerwear gnomes are turning off the faucet.

I tried the bathroom sink -- no water. I try the toliet, no water fills
the bowl.

WTF? Think I, clad in nothing but mint scented conditioner.

Then I remember that they're doing all this work on the street and
OH SHIT MY CAR IS ON THAT STREET AND THERE"S A BIG FUCKING SIGN RIGHT NEXT
TO IT THAT SAYS YOUR CAR CANNOT BE HERE AFTER 8 AM

The news breaks into the 8 a.m. block

OH SHIT, thinks I.

So a few minutes later I am in sweatpants, shirt and caot with lots of
conditioner in my hair running out on Grove to move my car.

The good news is when I got back we had water again

I made it to the meeting only 22 minutes late.

Jen