Night of the (Linoleum) Lepus

Normally I stay up late to midnight or so, either futzing around on the computer or reading. So staying awake for the eclipse on Monday night should have been a no-brainer. Except that whenever I have to get up early or stay up late for a specific reason, my body goes into contradictory mode. 'You don't want to stay up late and see a silly once-every-400-years-eclipse,' it said Monday, 'you want to go to slee-ee-eeep.'

(Whereas the night before it wanted to stay up to 1:00 am re-reading The Lord of the Rings for the 30th time. Contradictory.)

So I distracted myself from the sleepies by making my first block print since high school. Since I've been thinking of attempting a linoleum-block cut for my 2011 New Year's card, I made this a test run. I did a quick sketch directly onto the block using a magazine photo clipping as reference and started cutting. The whole thing took about 15 minutes (before printing), so it's not exactly polished, but I'm pleased for a first-in-a-really-long-time effort.

And we did stay up for the eclipse; it was partly obscured by the high misty clouds, so we didn't get to bask in the red moon-glow of totality, but it was a lovely thing to see, all the same.