Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

This is our 200th post on our blog! So to celebrate, we turned on our heater. It's not that cold here actually: highs in the seventies, lows in the fifties. We're just being wimps at the moment. We'll probably turn it off after only a few minutes.

We watched more hours of television this week than usual. Eight hours (or in Wayne's case, ten) this weekend alone! I suppose it wasn't technically television, I suppose, since we don't get conference on TV here in CA. But radio is closer to television than we usually get! Well, except for the occassional movies....

We just found a flea on our cat. I didn't know what they looked like, personally, but after we found it and identified it using the web, I remembered seeing one or two on the kitchen floor shortly after we moved in to this place. So quite possibly, our apartment complex gave our cat fleas. Lame. After all, the only other place she's been since living here has been the balcony. Can fleas jump from the ground to the balcony? Or fall from trees? :) We'll be talking to a vet and the apartment manager tomorrow, you can count on that. In the meantime, Wayne was strangely excited to give Star a bath in an attempt to drown the little sucker (the flea, not the cat). We only found the one, so hopefully it was a male flea and it ends there.

Otherwise, I worked a little bit on research yesterday (for the first time since we moved). We wanted to answer a few other small questions before submitting my thesis work to conferences, and Wayne finally got me back into the groove of things after he got back from Priesthood session last night. Before he left for the session, my friend Kate and her new husband Robi unexpectedly stopped by for a visit since they were in our neighborhood. It was a fun visit.

Wayne had a couple of presentations in his classes this week, which went well but he didn't quite get the feedback he was hoping for. Apparently the professors don't know quite what to do with him. They badger other students for giving unqualified opinions like: "I like it," but then the professors turn around and can't say much else to Wayne either! At least he's learning lots from the New Media teachers. I wouldn't be surprised if he switches focus from pictorial (painting) soon to the new media concentration. [After a 30 minute presentation on the crux of my work being on questions of social responsibility, my professor's only comment was, "well... keep working." I'm paying 7000 a semester to have an instructor simply tell me to keep working... - wayne]

Work is going well for me. I'm not sure what comes next; we just went through more bugs (aka "change requests") than normal for this product since it is new and being released to the customer soon. But we just finished them all, so I'm not sure what comes next. We'll get feedback from the customer and "they are not shy," I'm told.

That's about it for the week, I think. Otherwise, we both read quite a bit this week and played games with friends and with ourselves (gotta do something when you're doing laundry on a Friday night!).

What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?

-Irv Kupcinet

Rachel Ray's Three Cheese Pizza
------------------------
1 ball fresh pizza dough (might we recommend this?)
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Handful parsley leaves, finely chopped
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 (5-ounce) round soft cheese with herbs, crumbled (recommended: Goat's cheese)
1 teaspoon lemon zest
2 cups shredded provolone cheese
1/2 tsp thyme

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Stretch dough out and form a thin round. Use a little flour or cornmeal on your hands if dough sticks. We really recommend cornmeal because it makes the pizza dough taste better. Mix the garlic, parsley, ricotta, herb cheese and lemon zest. Spread the soft cheese mixture across the pizza dough to the edges then top with an even layer of provolone. Scatter thyme over the cheese mixture. Bake until crisp and bubbly-brown on top, 18 to 20 minutes.

For example, Monday we ran errands. And I can't tell you what those errands were. Other than we were at Target and they were having a good sale on kitty litter, so we picked up about 60+ pounds of the stuff. That's how exciting the start of our week was. And it only went up from there.

Work and school happened every day. Somewhere in the week we watched two documentaries recommended by the Rocks: The Sweetest Sound and Sherman's March. Then we submitted my film to the Slamdance Film Festival. It would be nice just to get into the festival, but I know it is a far-fetched wish. I guess I can still dream.

Rebecca was asked to teach the CTR 5 class at our church. I should have known that Rebecca would be called to primary because Melissa was. Now I won't be able to sit with her for most of church, but I'm glad she's got a calling.

One highlight of the week was playing the game Killer Bunnies. We picked up the game half-way through the week; we've been eyeing it for a while now. Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Harris for the birthday gift! It is truly a fun game. [lots of silliness like aducting your opponent's bunny and trying to find the magic carrot :)]

Saturday morning, we left for the Oakland temple. When we arrived, we decided to have lunch [so we'd concentrate on the session better] and as a result missed the next session. [apparently they skip a couple of sessions in the middle of the day...who knows why] And ended up staying at the temple from eleven until four. It was a nice day.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

-Paul Dirac

We tried another farmer's market yesterday, and this one was a winner (at least for our needs). Wayne was so funny...he was like a kid in a candy store [in a candy store that has everything for a cheaper price than the normal stores! - wayne]! They had tons of selections of fruits and veggies; we were a bit surprised they didn't have passionfruit. They had three different kinds of feta cheese (greek and domestic are the two I remember). They had all sorts of pasta. I think even the chocolate they had was cheaper than the normal grocery store. And, they take credit cards. What more could we want? :)

The real kids this week I met today. There are 7 kids in our class, and 7 in the other CTR-5 class. They have a lot of kindergarteners in this ward, apparently. Fortunately there are two teachers for both classes, and sometimes even an extra adult to just help out. And I'm teaching next week. Any suggestions and advice on what makes a good CTR-5 teacher? How to keep their attention, how long to keep it, what level to aim the lessons at? I haven't taught in primary before, other than singing songs....

We had lots of early mornings this week, since this was our quarterly meetings for work. One morning was the company-wide shindig, and the next day the R&D group had lots of meetings and then raced go-carts. I have to say, most of the speakers at these meetings were not very good. They failed to define terms and acronyms so I spent most of the time trying to guess what they meant. They also had serious issues keeping on schedule. At least they gave us a whole afternoon to play. Even if I missed the sign-up part and didn't get to participate. Oh well. Next time, right? I did get to watch them. :)

Monday night we went over to Kate and Robi's new apartment for dinner and games. We also learned secrets about home depot in the area, so we abandoned our plots to go to Home Depot to pick up wood for making shelves and canvasses. Apparently they don't cut wood for you at Home Depot after 4 in the afternoon here, so we will have to do it during the day, or find someone in the ward with a truck we could use to get the wood back to our apartment. In the meantime we'll fine tune our plans for our painting shelving unit.

Wayne sold a painting this week, so we went out to celebrate Wednesday. I also finished a couple of mending jobs one evening. And I got new glasses, yay.

We've had slightly "colder" weather lately...and us with no firewood to our name! Of course, "cold" weather here is nothing like what they have in Michigan. Obviously no snow for us! In fact, I'm sure we haven't even dipped below 50 degrees yet! Enjoy it while we can, right?

We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.

-Robert Wilensky, speech at a 1996 conference

The last time I remember being deeply impacted by an artist was my freshman year in high school when I haphazardly came across a book on Basquiat in the Border's art book section. I bought it on the spot. I have been impressed by some other artists along the way (Goldsworthy, Friedman, Turrell, Haring, etc) but none with the same influence of Cory Arcangel. I first read about his Simon and Garfunkel works in Art in America a couple months ago (and the dj ipod project), but I wasn't as overcome by his work until we actually met him Monday night.

UC Berkeley has artist lecture series and aparently they sometimes get some really good people to come out. This past Monday night, Cory Arcangel came out from NYC to lecture. I am using the term 'lecture' very loosely. Rebecca wasn't planning on going but I talked her into coming with us; she was worried it was going to be a repeat of a couple weeks ago and she wouldn't understand a word anyone was saying. Cory, however, is very down to earth and basically put on a nice comedy show for us all. Of course, that's hardly what it was, but it's a good definition to put on something that deals nicely with [Wittgenstein] definitions.

In my new media seminar we've been discussing collaboration as authorship as well as evaluating 'making' as a process for art. Personally, I've been really sick of working in the safe medium of oil paintings and looking for some way to express all my side projects which cleary I haven't found any way to explain. Cory's work deals with many of these issues in a comical way; Rebecca really liked it. I just haven't stopped thinking about it.

However, I asked him why he works with nostalgic objects as medium and he didn't give me a very good answer. I think he might have a better answer, but I was incensed he used a very trite answer.

The long drive up to Berkeley was good because it gave me a chance to talk more with two other grad students, Thomas and Ethan. And we had some great mexican food up in Oakland. But, it was one of our many late nights this past week.

Which leads me to the documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry. Rebecca enjoyed the film, but I had a bad taste in my mouth the whole 2 hours. I am so sick of modernists and their self-absorption. It culminated when Julian Schnabel? was talking while lounging about in his white bathrobe and holding a glass of wine in his hand: as if this is how the world should expect to see an artist at work. I wanted to reach into the tv screen and smack the daylights outta that guy.

That aside, I think I only appreciate a couple of Frank Gehry's buildings. I'm not a fan of architecture. Why did we rent this movie? Oh yeah, it was free...

Atmosfear! Dave Tedesco got this game in middle school (or early high school?) and we played it all the time. Turn the lights down low and laugh at the campy effects and the horrible insults from the Gatekeeper. Well, this Halloween, we got the updated version of the game. And we played it with the Rocks. And it was just as wonderful as I remembered. Rebecca kept telling me to not "build up it's reputation so much" in my mind, to avoid being let down: but this game truly stands up as being one of the best I've ever played. What wonderful fun!

And of course, we spent all Saturday on the beach. One of Rebecca's co-workers is Hungarian and she and her husband invited some people down to Santa Cruz to have 5-hour-slow-cooked-authentic-Hungarian-goulash while enjoying the beautiful weather. It was a nice day and we always enjoy heading out to the beach, but I have to say that those Santa Cruz people move a little too slow for my tastes. I don't know how people are able to sit around doing nothing all day long...

So, yeah, we had a great week. A couple more like that and we'll have the scare record in the bag...

I believe that throughout most of history... artists work together quite naturally in family groups. I would just like to state that the idea that art can only be produced by obsessed individuals is a neurotic aberration of our times.

-Mark Boyle

Society teaches us that, having feelings and crying is bad and wrong. Well, that's baloney, because grief isn't wrong. There's such a thing as good grief. Just ask Charlie Brown.

-Michael, from the TV show The Office