Jib Jab

Playing around with www.JibJab.com

Collaborative Art

I've never really thought of myself as an "Artist" but just the other day I got an email from someone who was talking about needing an artist and said my name came to mind. I have thought for a while now that the Halloween hobby we enjoy is definatly some sort of art expression. It is probably born out of my interest in live theater and the desire to put on a "show". After thinking about it for a while I think the best way to put it is that what we do is collaborative art. It is a collaboration of several skill sets that create the artwork. I can't just do it on my own. When I want to create something it involves others. This is really no different than any theater production. A play can't be easily done by just one person. And an elaborate play with sets, actors, effects, and venue all takes the tallents of multiple people.

So, am I an artist? Sure I am. I can't create my work by myself and show it in a gallery and if you ask me to produce something I'm going to gather my team to do it but as part of that team I am an artist.

Triannual UK trip

When I was in College in 1982 I spent the month of January in London studying theater. I spent the following summer back home working and living off $100 a month to pay it off but the trip was worth it and I fell in love with the country.

Chris and I were married in 1983 and we have been traveling to the UK since 1993 every three years around November. Our first trip was 7 days in London in 93. We then did 14 days in London in 1996 but we took a weekend trip to Paris via the new tunnel and a weekend in Edinburgh Scotland. It was that trip that we fell in love with Scotland and it's people. We took a 3 week trip to the UK were we spent 1 week London and 2 weeks in Scotland in 99'. We took 2 trips in 2003 one week in February for my 40th birthday in London and 2 weeks in Scotland for our 20th anniversary where we stayed in a castle with our family and friends for a week and then a week in Edinburgh. We spent 2 weeks in the UK in 2006 staying 3 days in London and the rest in Edinburgh Scotland.

During most of our trips to London we have taken day tours all around the area to Dover, Canterbury, Salisbury, Bath, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Oxford, Warwick, and Windsor. But we also like to just stay in the city and go to museums and theater. We always rent an apartment if we are staying at least a week no mater where we are so we can feel at home.

We had planned on taking our next trip in 2009 but the exchange rate was so high we decided to skip the trip and wait a year. So in 2010 we planned a 3 week vacation to the UK. So many of our friends had heard about our stay in the castle in 2003 that they wanted to arrange another trip like it. So we rented a castle and had 5 other couples stay with us. We stayed 3 days in Edinburgh our favorite city before the castle stay in West Kilbride on the west coast of Scotland. After the castle stay we traveled to the southern tip of England and stayed in Penzance and traveled around Cornwall which is an area we have never seen before. We then spent our last 3 days in Bath which included a day tour of the area and a day train trip to Cardiff Bay to see the Dr. Who exhibit.

A photo

This photo is sort of a famous one in our family. It s the last photo taken of my mom before she died in a car accident on July 14, 1983. My sister reminded me of the date today. I was 20 and my sister was 18. She and my dad had been married 20 years and met in high school. The photo is of her seeing off Yuko our Japanese foreign exchange student as she traveled back home.

But for me this photo isn't the one I like the best. Actually there isn't just one photo. It's more the different phases in her life in my 20 years with her that I remember.

This is one of my favorite looks. The 70's straight long hair. A young boys memory of his mom before he got too old to hang around her.

The business professional look. The bank manager during my teen years.

I can't say that I remember this one but I love the late sixties outfit with the gloves. This was probably Easter Sunday.

Best Christmas present ever

My wife gave me the best Christmas present ever last year. It is a hand painted sign for my shop. She even cut the wood trim and puttied it and sanded it. The lettering is all free hand and the design is hers.

I have wanted a shop sign for a long time and was considering either a metal plaque that just said Jeff Davis Shop on it or a hanging metal sign that said the same thing. Either one would have been pretty simple. This sign is so cool since it has that old 18th century English pub feel to it.

She finally finished putting the last of several coats of lacquer on it and I hung it on the shop this weekend.

The basement - the bigger picture

The office project is just phase 1 of a 4 phase project to remodel the basement. The office was the cheapest and easiest part to do first. It also helped us get more organized and forced us to clean out the basement of all our junk.

The grand scheme is to put a 1/2 bath in the basement and divide it into an extra living space and storage/laundry area.

Now that the office is done our next project is build the dividing wall between the living space and the storage and laundry area with a 36" pocket door in it. This is a little tricky because we are also going to replace our water heater with a tankless water heater that will hang on the inside of the wall. This has to be done all at the same time. Shut off the water, remove the water heater, build the wall, install an outlet for the tankless, install the tankless. It will take the framing guys and a plumber working at the same time almost. Once this is done we'll build some more storage shelves on the inside of this wall and move all our storage to that side.

The 3rd phase will be to install the 1/2 bath. We want to use a standard toilet which means cutting into the concrete and connecting to the exisiting cast iron sewer stack (our quote for this is pretty expensive so we'll do it next year) . Then we have to frame the bathroom and plumb the water for the toilet and sink. Then do the drywall and finish work. The bathroom will have a standard door.

The 4th phase will be to finish the main living space by framing the outside, doing the electrical including lighting, insulating and then drywall the entire room including the ceiling. Then we paint and trim the room and decide on flooring options.

I used this software to do an initial drawing of the what we wanted to do.

My new office

We've been working on my new office for over a month now. We started planning it at the beginning of the year. You can see some of the construction progress on our house blog.

For over 20 years we have shared an office together. Now that I work from home these past few years it has got a little too crowded for the 2 of us so we converted our junk/hobby room in the basement into a nice new office and I moved my stuff into it this weekend.











I have all sorts of plans and just got the basics up and running for work but it is going to be a nice setup and it is the most modern room in the house right now.




Now Chris has all this extra room to work with. We even set her up with a cool old office desk from my parents and a little hutch to hide all the routers etc.