March Madness

Yep, this is the time of March madness. But in my case it has nothing to do with basketball. It has to do with all the whackos out there in cyberland!!!

Here's a short list from this week only:

• someone wants me to end an auction early so they can buy the piece for half the auction price


• I join a printmaking group and then am thrown out of another group because the latter group says you can't be in the former even though the group leader of the latter is in the former so she can monitor who's in both and throw people out


• in one eBay group I'm accused of being abusive because I quoted what one person said and then asked a question based on her own words


• a person offers me $15 for a $250 painting I have in my eBay store


• I emailed a website asking for the shipping on an item (it's overweight, so there's extra postage) and get no reply until Friday when I get a notice from them that my account is past due. Huh? I never, ever ordered anything from this company and it doesn't look like I will.

Maybe last week was National Whacko Week and no one ever told me! I don't know. But it really makes me suspicious when I do get emails with offers from legitimate people. I then to treat them like they are a whacko too, which really made me feel bad when the one this week turned out to be a serious, realistic offer.

Anyway, I did finish one commission yesterday.

Yep, it's a tree. This is an award-winning bonsai tree named "Sweet Thang". It was done in acrylics, although I would have prefered to do it in oils, but time was an issue. I think it came out fine although the photo above doesn't quite capture all the details and colors. It is 16x20 inches on canvas, so there are a lot of details.

Now, that leaves only 4 older commissions and the one new one from this week! One of these days I'll get caught up -- I hope!