Update

I've been pretty busy, hence my not posting so much on this blog. I now have a Fine Art Blog to document my painting progress. I'm nearly finished with my mother's birthday painting and once she receives it, I shall post photos of the painting, including pictures of the stages of painting.

Then every Tuesday I have my painting class, which I eagerly look forward to every week. In between classes, I work on my painting for the class and I work on my extracurricular painting (in this case, Mom's). So I've been staying up every night til 11:00, working.

I cannot fall asleep right away, of course, because I'm caught up in the grips of the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. I'm reading the last book, Breaking Dawn. I read at any spare moment throughout the day - the book's got it's fangs lodged deeply in my psyche! So by the time I fall asleep, it's nearly midnight.

I still get up early, but my alarm is now for 5:45 AM, not 4:45 AM. I don't technically wake up at that time... I stumble into the kitchen and start the coffee machine and lie down on the sofa until the beep beep beep of the coffee maker goes off, telling me it's brewed. It allows me about 20 minutes of snoozing in the meantime.

I've been checking all the links to my expanded book to The Expat Woman's Guide to Living in Bangkok. I've expanded it to all of Thailand and the last few days have been rechecking the web links to ensure they're all up to date.

Then this Thursday, Golf and I are going to record Speak Like a Thai Volume 6, Everyday Conversations. I've been the female native English speaker and Golf the male Thai speaker since Volume 2, Thai Slang and Idioms, so I'm happy and excited to record this next installment.

I've got more in the works and shall blog about it soon, but that's a quick update which explains my absence on Peek Inside.

Recommended Movie

Dad took Golf and me out to the movies last night and we saw "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. If you're considering going, then please do see it! It goes all against our humanness, being born old and growing younger as Benjamin Button ages, and how this movie handles his unique situation in his relationships is emotional. I know this is a good movie when I'm still thinking about the story the next day.

The movie had me thinking about the stages of life we all get to go through and that every human contemplates and experiences as long as they're alive and conscious. Brad Pitt was an excellent actor and of course looked gorgeous as he grew younger. Cate Blanchette was absolutely beautiful and brilliant as usual and I was pleased to see another favorite actress, Tilda Swinton.
Go see this movie!

One of my first paintings

With all the talk I've been doing about my art and painting, I wanted to finally share with you my second painting I've done on my own. I won't bother showing you the practice works we do in art class unless it turns out to be glorious.

I finished this one last night. It's a ginkgo leaf and I just love how they look when they turn that beautiful golden color and drop like coins around the trees in autumn. It's just absolutely gorgeous, not to mention their unique, fan-like shape. So here it is.

Ginkgo Leaf 1
acrylic on 8x10 canvas board