Willisburg.org

To say this past week has been a whirling dervish of change would be an understatement.

I’m going to bullet point recap some of the more noteworthy things:

• The stencil’s progressing quite nicely, and I have an excellent idea of what the whole thing should look like now.
• My oldest friend on this tiny spinning rock is getting divorced, and I’m 600 miles too far away to really be any good to him.
• In the course of less than a full week, I’ve gone from hearing from an old friend and co-worker from a few years back calling me out of the blue with a job lead to being fully employed again (instead of contract work). I start Monday, and I get my own office!
• With the prospect of real income again, talk of the future (the happy and fluffy one as opposed to the dark and grim one) has been floated around in Casa de McClintock (more on this when the time comes).
• I got new license plates on the Willismobile, and they’re the least visually offensive plates I’ve ever seen. Thanks Tennessee for finally giving us something that doesn’t inspire eye-gouging!
• I’ve been drug kicking and screaming back into playing WoW. I’m apparently weaker willed than I used to be.

I’m off to bed now. I’ll probably post an updated image of the ceiling stencil over the weekend.

Random update regarding the stencil restoration work at the mansion.

I’ve finally assembled a 300dpi, 1:1 composite of the three scanned corners of the ceiling. I’m still missing a couple smaller chunks, but I’ve got about 95% of the pattern now. You can see a larger (yet infinitely smaller than the original) version if the image here.

Next step is going to be bringing out the curves and redrawing the pattern. Should be fun.

I did discover some rather interesting things during the assembly process, however.

1) Definitely correct about segmented stencils, as sections aren’t consistent in layout from corner to corner and side to side.

2) The stencils actually weren’t flipped for painting the mirrored side, there appears to be a distinct set for each side.

3) The best I can do is try and authentically recreate the stencil segments, the quirks and inconsitencies in layout from corner to corner and side to side need human error as the original artist apparently didn’t use many (if any) guidelines during the original job.

I’ll have to see how the head curator is going to want to proceed as I go on, but other than that, it’s finally going smoothly. More updates as the job progresses.

Not a long, blathering post today. Nothing educational or anything of that nature, but more fun based.

I got finished unwinding for the day playing a few rounds of KoL tonight, and was hanging out in the Haiku channel as usual. Much haiku was created over the course of an hour, and this got me thinking that it might be fun to spur on a wave of haiku/senryu throughout my little sphere of blogger friends. I’ll likely do an odd mix of mostly senryu prose with touches of haiku.

The rules are simple enough:

1) You must use seventeen syllables, but the structure isn’t ridgid for the sake of creativity. Personally, I like the 5-7-5 form as I’m sure you’ve noticed.

2) If you write haiku, you must work in a reference to a season or to a present moment. If you write senryu, it should have a satirical angle. Extra style points are awarded for contrast. Either form should have a sharp break somewhere in the second line.

3) It doesn’t matter if you post it on your blog or in my comments section, but if you post it on your blog, link back to this post so I know it’s out there and can read it.

4) Don’t expect a prize. I’m doing this for creativity and fun, and am urging you to do the same.

If you need more info, start here.

Springtime presents us
an extreme haiku challenge.
Bring it on, biz-nitch!

Passing a large wind
under my sheets is methane.
Behold! Dutch oven.

Blooming like a fragile flower is my love
that you feed with corned beef.

Burning up the sky,
Summer cut short by a nuke.
Goggles do nothing!

Working on my contract is
laborous and hard.
Windows is teh suck.

Floating down the Nile
my peace and calm is shattered.
Hippopotamus.

Walking the Line is a film
that did not suck.
Reese as June was spooky.

That last haiku broke
my guidelines on how to post.
That is half the fun.

I want to wake up
to find haiku everywhere.
Write one now, or else.