English 104 online: Introduction

October 2006

Good whatever time of day it is! Maybe you're reading this at 2am. Maybe you travel through many time zones, as do I.

Welcome to my blog. You're probably here because you are one of my students at Western Oregon University, you have an assignment to write, and you want to see how to write it. If you're not one of my students, you'll be bored, so you might as well logoff now! So, on to the assignment...I'm an artist, or, more accurately, a wannabe artist, an artist in process. Posted on this blog are a couple of my watercolors of the Oregon coast. I also paint portraits. Someday I'll post a few. My story centers around one of my painting mornings, a very stupid painting morning. First, though, you have to know this: I'm a know-it-all, or so say my husband, two kids, and the rest of the extended family. But I wasn't a know-it-all on this particular morning. Specifically, I know beaches, I know oceans; all us old surf bums do, or so we say, but there's always that one time. My one time was an October day in 2003 on Lost Creek, a little known beach south of Newport, Oregon. I had just finished what I thought was a gorgeous colorful churning seascape, so I packed up my materials, slung my pack and easel on my back, and proceeded with Steve, the husband, and Tiki (black lab, very nudgie) and Shayna (chocolate lab of blessed memory), to fossil hunt. Steve had just made me a fossil scooper out of a slotted mixing spoon stuck on the end of a mop handle. I was intently using it to search for curlies and scallop fossils. Have you ever seen fossil hunters on the beach? Where are our eyes? NOT on the ocean! Rule #1: never turn your back to the ocean. Suddenly, Steve and I felt the water rapidly elevating to our shins, our knees, our waists! Next, we see the doggies swimming around us, having a great ol' time in the ocean. They're labs, remember. We're not. Luckily for us, the beach at Lost Creek is long and flat--it's shelf rock. The sneaker wave was gentle with a very mild, barely noticeable rip. For you none surf types, a rip is a strong, strong current. Rips can pull you out beyond the breakers before you even know it! But, as I said, we were lucky. We sloshed to dry land. Immediately, we both said out loud, "How stupid can we be?!" Soaked we were, but lucky, too. The worse thing that happened was the soaking; the 2nd worst was slogging into Fred Meyers in Newport to buy dry clothes and explaining how the know-it-alls got caught. NEVER, but NEVER turn your back to the ocean!