A Couple of Things from the Weekend

First up, my employer is a big fan of Southern antebellum and Civil War era history and heads off to Natchez, Mississippi each year for Fall Pilgrimage. She often takes a handful of people from the office and they basically get a 3-4 day paid and largely free vacation for a trade of about four hours of hosting tours in an old plantation home one afternoon. My wife, whom I work with, went a few years ago. She thought the place looked right up my artistic alley, so this year, I've bitten the bullet and I've volunteered to go for a few days this fall. Not being much a of a people person, I've dodged it for over four years of being employed by our advertising and marketing agency, but figured it time.

So, I'll be growing the beard out all summer to look the part of a antebellum plantation worker of the non-forced variety and I've also finally fitted a river cane stem into this old Civil War era clay pipe I've been threatening to make usable for a year and half. In spite of the crack it has along the outer left side of the bowl, it does smoke pretty decently. I had some Morning Coffee blend out of it on Friday, when I was done.

Secondly, my daughter, being something off an odd little duck at the age of eight and a half, loves herself some oddly morbid but cute artwork and cartoons. She asked me to do a pyrography image of a Mexican Sugar Skull and this is what I came up with. She was quite happy with it when she awoke this morning. I knocked it out after she went to bed last night.