Since it's been too cold to get outside, Janet and I came up with a winter bucket list of things to do inside. Our challenge is to complete as many of the activities as possible before Easter. The loser buys the other dinner. We purposefully didn't put many exercise options on the list. I'm struggling as it is to get through our January fitness challenge (though at least I'm back on track this week).
Since I've been doing so much remote refereeing, I decided to get out my robotics kit and try to solve some of the missions myself. I had to recharge the battery on my poor little robot, because I haven't used it in almost a year. My only problem is trying to keep Charlie from thinking the robot is one of his play toys. He likes to bark at and chase moving objects.
I've been doing a lot of painting this week. It's an easy activity to do indoors, though it's not nearly as much fun as painting outdoors. I found a new coffee shop, called Deja Brew. It's supposed to be women-owned, but all the baristas were men. They had this quirky table supported by an old bicycle. I had the place almost to myself until around 9am, when all the "working-from-home" crowd showed up to set up shop.
I signed up for a painting class at the Parker Senior Center. I didn't realize that the teacher would be using acrylics. You could actually use whatever medium you wanted, but she was painting a snowy landscape. It's a lot harder to paint snow with watercolor, because there's no white (you have to leave the paper unpainted). After the class, I went to Walmart and bought a set of acrylic paints for the next class.
Courtney and I are taking an online class in watercolor painting using only 3 colors. Each week, the teacher assigns a new set of 3. It's supposed to represent a mood, like winter or the desert.
The first week's theme is a tropical picture, so it has a lot of greens. However, we aren't using any green paint; we have to mix greens from yellow and blue. Courtney, of course, is very good. I spent half a day Sunday trying out every single shade of blue I own to find a good green. Then I peeked at the next lessons to see what other colors the teacher would be using for the winter and desert pictures.
And while I'm staying inside keeping warm, Bruce is braving the single-digit temps to keep the driveway and sidewalks shoveled. At least the snow blower works like a charm when the snow is so icy.
