painting a custom widget

[Trey Tabner <ttabner bynari net>]

the widget i've just created repaints itself on every GDK_EXPOSE event. 
this way i am sure that it will always appear correctly on the screen
instead of some areas not being painted, or worse, the whole thing.  but
this way i'm doing it seems a bit harsh on the cpu, when i scroll the
widget it repaints nonstop.  is this the way it should be?  i doesn't
seem bad on all the workstations i develop on, but i tried it on a
slower, low end machine and it was slow and noticeable.  am I going at
this the wrong way?  and if so, what's the correct way?

thanks,
        trey