Carol Larson - textile artist















I am back in the studio making art again. Currently working on a commission I am planning ahead to the next and the next and the next pieces, which is good.















My mind has been a clutter for most of the past year. With the debut TallGirl exhibit opening, travel, cataract surgeries and the myriad of  accompanying appointments, clearing out my father’s home, teaching, and open studios I was a whirling dervish for most of 2010.  It was a bit shocking to me how easily I retreated to the really old behaviors of human doing instead of being.



 Yesterday I ran over to Sebastopol to pick up Currents #9 from the Fiber Innovations show and drop off Currents #2 for the members show.





Later I made up a cup with a favorite nifty tea strainer . And it was probably the best tea I have ever consumed in my life. So good in fact that I made about 4 cups throughout the afternoon using the same leaves. Over and over and over again it was fabulous. 

Fast forward several hours and I was strung out on expensive green tea.  At 2:20 am I was still awake. That killer green tea stayed with me, kept me company and wide awake well into the dawning of my 63rd year.



 There is no adrenalin producing feeling the same as success with technology!  I have spent much of the past four days attempting to set up streaming devices to both TVs so we can watch movies direct to the TV from Netflix. While I enjoy the DVD in the mail one is always in transit when I want to watch a film, or we have a drama and I want a comedy. Unwilling to fork out more money to the nameless monopoly that provides our cable service I decided to give Roku a try.

The boxes arrived and the hookup was easy enough. That should have been my red flag. Halfway through the guided setup on the screen went dead.  In frustration I asked the techie next door for help. When he arrived he pushed one button and voila! the new screen appeared. Hate it when that happens…so he proceeded along until he got stuck in a loop. Then he had to leave and I was left to wonder if I would ever figure this out. 

I posted to the chat forum where a lot of people read of my woe but offered no advice.  I finally located a support call number in the bowels of the website but it was Sunday and they only answer M-Sa. So this morning I did other things I needed to do, including getting my neck unscrewed from a bad fall two weeks ago. This afternoon I sat down to call the support number armed with the password for my wireless router, the error message from the screen, my blood type, and the laptop all set up ready to digest information.

After a maze of options all which led back to suggesting the aforementioned online chat forum which was of no earthly good I was connected to “Mike” in Sri Lanka.  Mike asked me about the wireless router and then suggested I login to the url for same. Well the browser would have none of this. Finally I got in but had the wrong password, so I kept trying and trying and trying again. Mike and I were engaged in a friendly chat for 45 minutes. Mike’s end of the call began to break up which told me his time was up! So I asked him for the pertinent DNS numbers I should enter once I got into the router home-base, if ever I did. He wished me adieu and said he would call back in an hour to see if I had resolved the problem!

Did I give up? No! I have raised a teenager. I pressed on.  I rebooted my computer. I reset my internet options basically getting rid of anything helpful that I regularly use. I tried again to login to the router URL and success. I entered Mike’s suggested DNS numbers, hit save but left the site up because I feared I would never find it again if I needed to. 

Meanwhile back at the Roku, I hit reset, turned the TV on, TV off, HMDI on, reset, cuss, and finally it came back to life and I was able to link everything I had to link.  I began to get slightly excited but I had one more TV to do.

It took another input of the 45 character (lower and upper case) router password to get up and running. At last 4 days, so many brain cells, four cups of green tea (@ $158. lb which is another story) later everything is hooked up and running.

I’ve been to the chiropractor to have my neck unscrewed, the headache is subsiding, the Roku is good to go. I see a good comedy in my future…

I love those images of kids tossing leaves in the air…the same leaves they are supposed to be raking and bagging.  Well, I had that very same image today in the middle of an acupuncture session. My best epiphanies come on the table.