Christmas, the State of Things, and a Poker Game

It's been one hell of a month.
A quick run down for those who came in late....
My fiancee Amber was laid off from her job. Later that day she came into my studio where I was working with my laptop. In the middle of her rant about why Michigan's economy sucks, she raised her hands up above her head and knocked my laptop to the floor. Broken. $200 later, I send my laptop to HP to be fixed. Next day, I go into Art Attack and explain how bad of a day it had been, and my boss tells me that Art Attack is going out of business....on the 23rd of December. One or two minor panic attacks later, I come up with a plan to pay the bills during lulls of commission work (Substitute Teaching.) Meanwhile, I begin my 3 week artist residency at Erickson School in Ypsilanti. This goes well, despite the fact that all of my teaching notes/powerpoint presentations for the classes were on my laptop. One week later, Amber and I are going to the grocery store, and my car overheats...now this has been happening for a while, they fixed this problem in July when we broke down in Chicago, but it hasn't really worked quite right since. So, the car overheats, but now it's winter, and we had only driven 6 or 7 blocks. So we drop it off at the garage, and a few days later I get the bad news that my car is terminally ill. Broke, distraught, and utterly clueless as to what to do, I go and plead with my parents to help. Long story short: Dad has a new car, and I now am in posession of his old car (the one I borrowed to drive to Tennessee)
Artistically, the magic book's artwork is done! Currently I am preparing them digitally for approval/print (hours and hours of boring work) So to keep me sane, I am beginning a painting. This idea came to me a few days ago when I was drawing playing cards on one of the magic book pages. It was an Idea that needed to get down on paper, just to get it out of my head...There is another painting that I was planning on doing first, but it requires my full attention, not this which is just keeping me sane (and letting me experiment with some of my new art supplies)
So the Image for this post is the painting as it currently sits on my desk behind me as I twittle away at the boring part of a magic book. Enjoy!