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After our flight was delayed 4 times, we finally made it to Albuquerque! Luckily we were only about an hour and a half late.
Going to Albuquerque also meant that I was going to inevitably make Breaking Bad references the entire. I thought about printing out a “Save Walter White” sign for my tip jar, but the locals would probably roll their eyes and think I’m just another noob tourist going through the motions of making Breaking Bad references whenever the opportunity presented itself. I dunno, I think it would have been awesome.
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At breakfast I knew I had to get some bacon. Good thing they had a breakfast buffet!
There was no one in the dining room so when I went up to the buffet, the cook was just standing there staring at me the entire time. I didn’t want him to think I was crazy by grabbing a bunch of bacon, so I only took 3 pieces and hoped it would be enough. It wasn’t my birthday, but when in Rome…
With seven artists on the list and a GP in the middle of the desert (a desert which was going to receive snow during the weekend) I didn’t have very high expectations. I think for the most part this was one of the smallest GPs I’ve been to, at least in terms of traffic to my table. It actually felt more like a prerelease. The large number of artists thinned out the numbers even further, so much of my time was spent sitting and admiring the drink suspended 20 feet in the air on a window ledge.
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Don’t get me wrong, it was still a great show. Unfortunately I had to leave a bit early on Saturday due to a medical emergency. Of course it was the weekend and we couldn’t find any dentists. Even the ones who were supposed to be open on the weekends 24/7 weren’t around or refused. Uh, if your site says you are open during the weekend aren’t you kind of required to accept a patient, especially when it is an emergency? Apparently not. We had to wait until Monday before my wife could have surgery.
It was probably better that this GP was slower considering I had to leave early on Saturday, plus it always helps my wrists when I don’t have as many people in my line.
We ended up missing dinner with the other artists because of my wife’s medical problem. Sorry we couldn’t be there!
Hotel of Awesome…and Science
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The best thing about the hotel was that it had free wifi. Not just free wifi, but free wifi of lightning fast awesomeness. Actually, their upload speed was only .9Mbps, but they had a consistent signal. My upload speed at home is around .3Mbps and my signal is intermittent like crazy.
It was weird clicking on a link and having the page actually load. This is what the real internet must feel like! Usually when I’m at home I have to click on a link and hit refresh 4-5 times and sit for 2 minutes before I can get a single page to load.
Good news for my mentorship program, I was actually able to upload the rest of my Intro to Digital Painting videos to my Vimeo account using the hotel wifi. It was glorious.
“Yeah, science!”
Maybe next time I should go to the hotel that is 2 blocks away and sit in their lobby and upload my videos. They won’t notice right? Right??
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Snow!
It snowed over the weekend! I was walking by the hotel window and I glanced outside and saw a blanket of white. I screamed to my wife “it snowed!” Ok, maybe I didn’t scream, but I definitely exclaimed.
I love snow. I like the crunching sound it makes when you walk on it. I wanted to take more pictures while I was walking around outside, but I forgot my camera in the room.
The one bad thing about the cold is that it seems to drain my phone battery even faster than normal. My battery already sucks after I upgraded to iOS7, so the cold weather didn’t help. In the time it took me to walk from the bed to the bathroom, my battery had drained from 20% to 7%. It lost 13% in literally 5 seconds. I wasn’t even playing games on it or watching a movie. To be fair I have heard that the battery indicator isn’t very accurate and that you can only truly trust the reading when it is at 100% or at 0%.
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On Friday I was walking around outside trying to find Starbucks when I saw Rob Alexander walking around wearing a T-shirt.
Let me set the scene; it was about 33 degrees and extremely windy. Wolves howled in the distance and the clouds blotted out the sun. Ok, there were no wolves but it was very cold and windy. It was so windy that every time I tried to put on my hood the wind blew it off my head. I was wearing a shirt, a hoody, and a jacket and I was still cold. Those crazy Canadians.
Future GPs?
Several people asked me about future GPs, but right now I don’t have any plans. I was interested in GP Sacramento, but I never heard back about it. GP ABQ may have been my last GP for the foreseeable future, but I’m not really sure.
We had fun and I would like to thank everyone for braving the weather to come out to the show. I would like to especially thank Bo King. He was a real trooper when it came to helping out the artists with whatever they needed. I’m sure I can speak for everyone and say that we greatly appreciated it.
Thanks!