M.I.A.

Sorry I've been MIA this week, just not a whole lot going on.  The weather was beautiful last week, so I was out and about trying to enjoy that.  The weather this morning..not so great.  It's overcast and was sprinkling earlier, hopefully it doesn't last too long.

Dan has been really busy with work, Operation Odyssey Dawn has kept this whole base hopping.  We have about 1200 soldiers deployed here for the mission.  I think it's neat seeing all the uniforms and different jets and planes here on base. It's more exciting. However, the work schedules....not so much.  It's like our husbands are deployed, but get to come home at night. They are working mostly 14 hour shifts, sometimes longer, also having to split night shifts as well. I just hope all this is over soon because we have trips planned for when family comes in April and end of May beginning of June.  If it's not over, hopefully things will be running smoothly and Dan can get the time off.

I went to Venice on Saturday, all by my lonesome.  Dan can't go that far away, he has to be within about 25 minutes away from base on his days off, but he decided to go in that day and work to try and get caught up on stuff.  I have a friend here who has a painting that I absolutely LOVE. When I went with her and her Mom last weekend to Venice we found the guy!  I was super excited because she bought her painting 2 years ago and he doesn't have a studio or anything, he is picks a spot by San Marco Square and sets up and paints.  I liked what he had when we saw him last weekend, but I didn't have enough Euro on me to buy anything and they were all smaller paintings. So, I went back and bought one :)

Here is a picture of my friends photo that I loved the first time I saw it.

It’s kind of hard to see with the flash, but since it was night time it was the best I could do with my point and shoot.  I love the blue colors, blue has always been my favorite color. This picture is of San Marco Square.

When I went to Venice he did have a small blue painting, it was a little smaller than half of this painting and it only had the left side of the painting on it.  I really liked it, but I wanted a bigger one. It was pretty small. He didn’t have any large blue ones, but said he could paint it for me and I could come back another time to get it. He did have a big painting, like this one, only different colors.  After lots of thinking and 2 phone calls to Dan, I decided to get it.  I figured that it would go with our apartment better. They are such beautiful paintings, you can’t lose, no matter what you get!  So, here is the painting I got, just have to get it framed.

It looks weird because I have it sitting up on a shelf, then there is another photo above it. Pictures of the painting just don’t do it justice, it’s so beautiful. The light hits it and the colors in it just come out so much more than in this photo.  I would LOVE more artwork from this artist, but only only does paintings of the one I bought above, a smaller painting of the square (the left side of picture above) and then across the water from the square there is a church, he also does that.  That’s about it.  He does these paintings in black and white, the color I have above and the blue color my friend has.  Maybe someday soon he will start painting other scenes so I can get some more!

Hope everyone has a good week!