Winter Sort of/Kind of/Maybe

We finally got some snow- not that I was all antsy on the edge of my seat about the lack there of. (But Jules the Dog seems really happy today!) Some confluence of Climate Change coupled with a strong El Nino has manifested in our oddly benign weather to date. People keep posting all the plants that are growing (and even blooming) and the insects that are drawing winter blood. It is remarkable.
So the picture above illustrates the dusting of crusty white stuff that appeared this morning in the Blue Garden. I guess the end of year and the arrival of a small storm make me consider this year passing and the New Year approaching.
What are we remarking on this year? (Besides the weather).

1. The perfidy of creeps that poached my domain name and messed up my website... leave us poor artists alone for god's sake. Do something good for us: Buy our work. Or advertise us but don't fuck with us. There are plenty of other opportunities for that! So let's hope the New Year returns www.ritavalley.com to me! (It seems to be "down".)
2. Both Bob and I had really dynamite shows this year... and neither one of us sold a bloody thing. I guess we can claim to have had "positive experiences" and we "learned a lot" (but wouldn't it have been nice if the universe smiled that one bit more and caused filthy lucre to have been delivered to our bank accounts? I think so...) Let's hope the New Year brings art sales and splendid offers of shows and good reviews!
3. Bob and I had truly lousy motor vehicle experiences this year. The truck died (and it took a while to replace it) and then the Honda and my mother's elderly Subaru died. We're still dealing with the fallout of all this. Let's hope the New Year brings automotive joy!
4. I can't complain in the "health and happiness" department. We were (overall) healthy and happy. That's a good thing. Let's hope for a continuation of that, come the New Year.

I hope in the New Year that Bob and I accomplish even one of the household projects that we were laughing about with a friend yesterday. We all have long lists, I know, but even one thing (like the hallway shelves/sliding doors or the back terrace area or even my closet!) I'd be really happy with any of those!

It's Cyber Warfare!

I was attempting to complete an artist's statement for some work I wanted to submit and I thought I'd go on my website to check the wording of a particular description of a piece that I had up online. I googled in my web address: ritavalley.com and I was horrified that instead of my art work, some (what I thought at the time) Chinese gibberish appeared.

 (Yup. That's my address in the upper left hand corner). Turns out that it's Japanese...
I tried three times more to reach my website and finally went to my pages through the hosting site where I can add pictures and edit it and stuff. It came up just fine through the host site. I then called Ipage to see what was up...
Turns out that my domain name was supposed to be on "automatic renewal" but was on manual, meaning I was somehow supposed to be on top of when it came due (to the tune of a princely $12 a year). Ipage doesn't handle the domain and the domain registry company either never contacted me or it somehow went to spam or out with the garbage. The upshot is some crazy Japanese computer geek registered my name, I guess in the hopes that they could sell it back to me.
I said to the Ipage representative, "But I'm an artist! What do they want MY name for? We never get any traffic anyway!" And while there was an email address I can't say I see the wisdom in emailing these cyber thugs and saying, "Give me my domain name back!" They'd probably just want to extort lots of money from me, or take my credit card information and use it or send the Yakuza after me.
But it's sucky that my name is associated with what looked like a Japanese dating service:

 The guy at Ipage assured me that it was some sort of Japanese horoscopes. But really? I feel like my online identity has been violated! Who am I?
The only thing I could do was register ritavalley.net as my new address but it just isn't as easy as dot.com. And someone who doesn't know me well will probably google www.ritavalley.com, come up with that stupid poser website and forget all about me!
My next best hope is waiting for these creeps to get sick of paying for my name and then I'll have to jump on it and re-register it for me. I know that people make a business out of registering domain names, but seriously? My name? It's not like I have the name recognition of a Kardashian or a Bush or something! (I heard that the republicans were not really swift about Internet use and people made money selling their names back to them.)
But this is the third time I haven't had my own name available. Initially, it was this real estate agent in Illinois or Indiana. Then it was (just as strange as Japanese) a British chemical company. Then I scored my name serendipitously late one night when their ownership lapsed. Let this be a lesson to the wise: register- permanently if you can- your own name!