The Color of Clouds

The lease has been signed. By December 7th, we'll be permanently in new offices. Now comes the trial of finding just the right color of gray for my walls. That can be a huge undertaking. I'm painting this room.

Granted, there is a door in the west wall and the east wall is all windows and there will be a pass-through window in the south wall, but that's still a daunting decision. Once I paint it, we aren't repainting our office walls again until I change offices or leave the company. I have to pick a gray that will not overpower me, a gray that will compliment the black Iowa Hawkeyes tiger hawk that will go on the north wall. I can't tell you how excited I am to do that once we've moved in.

Paint chips are such a bad way to get an idea of a color. The wall is 14 feet long and I'm basing my color choice on a piece of paper that is 1 by 2 inches. You can get bigger ones but that's only 2 by 3 inches. Still not a lot of color when you have to make a permanent choice. The black is the easy part. Color inspiration, however, came from an unlikely source.

As you know, I've been on the road a lot since, gosh, since forever, it seems like. On Monday, I headed to Wisconsin. It was heavy overcast in Chicagoland in the morning when I left.

Boo. It was supposed to be nice, not overcast with a threat of rain. But then I started looking at the clouds. Gray. Look at the variations in the color of the grays.

Coming home, the overcast had cleared and the brooding clouds had turned to puffy clouds.

There's more white in these but there is still a great amount of gray. I was perplexed by the vast amount of color choices and here it is around me.

In both photos, something else jumped out at me. I could paint the short wall with the door a darker gray. I'm going to use that wall for the display of my art and some certificates I've received over the years. I'm going to paint a poster frame red, unless I can find one that's red, and my Disney Fantasia poster is going in that. I have a horizontal poster of downtown Chicago. I'm going to put that in a blue frame. Color will come from the frames and any shelves I mount on the wall for my personal photos.

I've not been real happy to be driving in excess of 2 hours to do work. It wears on me and wears me down. Even the knowledge that these trips have paid for my November vacation doesn't always make me happy when it's yet another lengthy drive somewhere. Monday reminded me to look for beauty everywhere. This time, not only was it beauty but it's helping me paint my new office.

Beverage:  Water

Deb