Gem-like Flame

Getting it Together

2012-02-10T04:42:00.000-08:00

I have always been quiet, a bit shy, and reserved. I have never thought of myself as a confident person, and have always envied those that were in school and in the workplace. I always secretly hated myself for not speaking up in circumstances where I didn’t agree with what was being said or done.

Then one day at my former work a coworker absolutely floored me by telling me she envied me for my confidence and strength. She actually said that she thought I “had it together.” Me! Having it together? I was shocked. I still am. Isn’t it amazing what other people see in us that we never see in ourselves?

I think I’m in the middle of a mid-life crisis of sorts, even though I certainly HOPE this isn’t my mid-life. I mean, in a way I guess it is. I’ll be 37 at the end of the month, and 37x2=74. That’s not a bad age to go, you know, in terms of quality of life. It isn’t OLD, in my opinion. But my dad’s dad and mom’s mom didn’t make it that far. But age is just a number, you’re only as old as you feel (and other clichés) and I don’t feel old at all. Really! It probably sounds like I’m trying to convince myself, not you, but I really don’t feel old! I do know people my age who feel their life is OVER at this point, and will be wrinkly with their hair falling out by year’s end. That’s not me.

My hair IS starting to turn white, though. And I LOVE IT!!!!!! It is gorgeous, I’m so happy about it.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. The past year or so has been trying, a lot of things have happened that I don’t fully understand/haven’t worked out yet. I’ve met a lot of new people that I haven’t quite all sorted out yet. I’ve been in this new job for about a year and a half, and it’s been (shock, shock) good and bad. More on that in a later post, though. In short, a lot of things have changed, are in the process of changing, or will be changing shortly.

Change can lead to uncertainty, uncertainty to fear, fear to……inaction? Lack of confidence? Call it what you will, same thing. So, when I read this post by the same woman who wrote the other one I discussed, it hit home, too. Go read it, I’ll wait.

(Insert generic waiting room music)

Back? Good. The part about confidence being an action and not a feeling is something I’ve always known, but never completely relied on or acted on. It was a good reminder to read this post, as I will have a LOT of opportunity this coming year to fall back on the ACTION of confidence.

At work, which I will discuss soon. I’m feeling a bit powerless right now at work. I know everything will be ok, but it is still difficult and stressful.

In art, which I may or may not discuss later as there really isn’t much to talk about. I’m still making jewelry, but it’s slow. 2010 was the first year I actually made a profit. Not sure about 2011 yet, but it was a good year. Slow, but I’m enjoying it.

In the house/garage and garden, which is also slow going.

In my relationships, which I may or may not discuss later. We’ll see. Things have been weird, and I’m not talking about Hooband (but we are in counseling. I’m trying not to feel ashamed at that, but there is stigma. We both like the counselor. I’m not sure how much it is helping, but at this point..). Some strange, interesting, and fun people have popped into my life this year.

I am NOT going to go taking fighting classes like the author of the blog post did. Ha! I am going to start taking some sort of classes, though. I found a yoga class that fits my schedule. I want to learn to spin yarn. I’m going to start WW again to lose weight, because working on it on my own again isn’t working.

I need to commit to cleaning a lot of accumulated junk out of the house, which will begin this weekend. I just looked around the house the other day and all I saw was….clutter. Nice clutter, to be sure! OUR clutter, accumulated separately and together. But still, clutter nonetheless. Need to figure out what to keep, what to pack up, and where to draw the line.

So, talk to me of confidence! Tell me what you think!

Meet the Flockers!! Part 1

2012-02-05T13:22:00.000-08:00

I thought it might be fun to introduce the chickens one at a time. We currently have an even dozen: 8 girls and 4 boys. We have gotten chickens in three batches:

The first 8, which consisted of 6 "Easter Eggers" and two Marans
A batch of 5 Jersey Giants we found on Craigslist, and
2 more we came home with from Virginia, a buff Cochin and a buff Orp

This is Larry, the EE rooster we named after my dad. He's a decent rooster, not too aggressive but he will bite and while you can pick him up, he doesn't like it. My father is enamored with him and asks about him constantly. He even has several pictures saved on his computer and he uses them as desktops.

Honey, above, is a wheaten Marans whose comb is so long if flops over. She was the Hen Of Choice (HOC) at first, and was extremely timid. Recently she's gotten a bit more assertive. With the comb-over (hahaha!), she also looks pretty stupid for some reason and we made fun of her horribly, as in "Mama asked 'Brains or comb?' and I said "COMB!!'"

Peaches, who is a small EE hen with peach colored feathers only on her "chin" or muff. She's a quiet thing and doesn't seem to have much personality.

This is Daisy, the buff Orpington. We got Daisy in Virginia at about 6 weeks old, along with Tubby (below) and attempted to bring them home in the same Rubbermaid tub. Tubby beat up on Daisy, and we were concerned about permanent damage, hence the picture above. 5 hours on my lap, the FedEx driver almost drove off the road when he looked down and saw a woman with a chicken on her lap! So, the obvious name to me was (Driving) Miss Daisy.

Flash forward 6 months only to find out Daisy is a dude. So, Duke? It won't matter soon enough....

Tubby, aka The Fat Chick is about 2ish, full grown, and by far my favorite (don't tell the rest). She is just SO impressive in size and, uh, proportion. When she hops down off the roost you can feel and hear the THUD. If you hold her long enough she will fall asleep in your arms. I LOVE to watch her run, she looks so silly!

I had read that Cochins were fairly docile, but she uses her size almost as a battering ram, charging a group of the others if they look like she has food and scattering them, then digging in herself.....over and over. She also has a deep voice and she seems to bitch constantly, it is really easy to stereotype her into "fat human"

There is no Magical Path

2012-01-30T14:34:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I discovered a blog by an artist in Canada, and I’ve been a sporadic reader ever since. I found that she could put into words things I felt but couldn’t describe, and her posts were very therapeutic for me.

But clearly, for awhile now, I’ve been unhappy. I’ve felt unsettled and awkward, almost like I was intentionally avoiding something.

Last fall, she decided to have another artist/writer also post on her blog, and I can say I’ve found her posts to be even MORE applicable to me. It’s as though *I* wrote them. Absolutely spot on. And timely, too, things that are happening to me NOW or explanations of things I should have realized but didn’t.

And for the first few days in Kauai, I wasn’t settled either. I was thrilled to be there, of course, but I felt a little like I was phoning it in. The truth was, I was starting to panic. What if I didn’t find answers here? WHAT IF THERE WERE NO ANSWERS?! Gack.

Here’s one of them. This may sound silly, and to some people what she writes here about her "discovery" may seem obvious, but this really hit home to me.

The next morning, we were having tea on our lanai, listening to the waves, about to head off for the day, when I heard this little voice inside my head say, "Help." I was praying. For a sign, an answer, something obvious. Please, I thought, let there be something obvious.

This is soooo me. This is EXACTLY what I do. Wait for a sign, assume one will come. Figure it either isn’t time yet or I missed it if one does NOT come.

She got a sign, (you’ll have to go read the blog post for the whole bit) and it was a kick in the head to me when I read it, because she’s (again) spot on.

What the hell? How did I go from clueless to confident in three seconds?

I wish I could say the outcome was the same for me. The key word here (to me) is "confident," which she writes on (and I will, too) in a later post. But reading about someone else’s AH-HAH!! moment isn’t the same as having one yourself. She renders it down to taking action vs. fear of choice. I HATE making choices, yet I get pissed when I DON’T have a choice in something. Yes, I realize that doesn’t make any sense.

And it isn’t lost on me that I am/was/have been waiting for a sign from the Universe to tell me what the answer is…..which is JUST LIKE someone else telling you what to do, making the choice for you. So. Hm.

Something to think about for me, and definitely a work in progress.

…….Or Not.

2012-01-27T13:44:00.000-08:00

OK, so that didn’t work. Sorry about that.

This past year has been…..enlightening….challenging….a bit scary at times. It’s been fun, funny, sad, full of love and joy, new people, ideas, and things. Chickens. New neighbors. Food. Gifts given and received. Flowery language. Too much CNN, dammit. Hope and frustrations and everything in between.

I’m going to try this again, but I can’t promise anything. I have some pictures to post, stories to tell, grief and pain to get out of my system, and growth to explore.

I’m going to attempt to post a few times a week, sometimes long stuff or pictures….sometimes just a quote that caught my attention and why it struck me. Sometimes it might be just stream of consciousness stuff. Sometimes it might be personal issues. Sometimes it might be work related, as that is a major upheaval right now.

I’m also planning on pointing towards a few blogs that have resonated with me lately.

I’m not going to be updating the garden blog, but I’m not going to take it down. Just an FYI. I’ll post a note there explaining all that, though. I may want to pick it up again in the future, and I know I will refer to it at times.

I’m hoping to also promote some discussion and thinking and questioning, too! It should be fun...

Six Month Hiatus - DONE!!!

2011-04-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

Lots going on will write more later....but as a teaser:

Chickens coming.
Made a profit for the first year last year with my business, and it looks as though this year I will also.
New job is going.....well. More stress, but going well.
Lost some friends, found some new ones.
Another Virginia trip upcoming.
A Bermuda trip upcoming.
Other things, good and bad, afoot.

In other words, life. Hope to hear from you, hope some of you noticed that I'm BAAAAACCKKK!

Sister, Sister

2010-10-04T17:29:00.000-07:00

Many, many moons ago, I wrote about my half sister. The post is here, I'll wait while you go and refresh your memory.

Back? OK. Good. Well, guess what? She contacted me on Friday.

It's all good, don't worry. This past week has been a soap opera. Not only did dad go in the hospital last week and get a pacemaker (went fine, he wanted one, everything's great), but I had to break the news to him on Sunday about B getting in touch with me, and I had no idea how it was going to go.

It turns out (contrary to the previous post) that he did NOT know where she was and has NOT been in contact with her. She is not in the state I thought she was in, but it is the same woman I found on Facebook months ago. And....this is the weird part....she lives in a town that is the SAME NAME AS THE TOWN I LIVE IN but in a different state. So, say I live in Middletown, PA...she lives in Middletown, CA. Weird, huh? What are the odds?

THEN I found out she likes to garden. Vegetable garden. Seriously, all we need is a jewelry business on the side and we're set.

Dad is THRILLED to find out he is a grandfather. Really. He has a 10yo granddaughter and a 20yo grandson. I think the grandson may have been named after him, too. He said "I got a pacemaker and two grandkids in one week!!"

So, now we're friends on Facebook, dad is tickled pink, mom is a bit freaked out.

No News, etc.

2010-09-21T17:52:00.000-07:00

I really don't have much to report, but I will break things down a bit and just gab:

House: the garden was a colossal failure this year between the drought, the heat, and me getting a new job. Matt spent most of his summer working on the garage, and that didn't help. See the garden blog for more info.

Garage: we have the windows and doors in, which is a huge load off the mind because now we can lock the tools up instead of carting them back and forth to the house. Right now, we're working on running electrical line in the hopes of getting the siding on before cold really sets in and getting the insulation in this winter.

Matt: see above. Also, (this is a secret), he is thinking of going back to school.

Max: losing his sight more and more. Getting a little arthritic but, hey, so will you when you turn 11. Uh, if you're a yorkie, that is. We see the vet tomorrow for our annual check-up, so stay tuned.

Me: I come home tired every day. I mean, fall into bed exhausted, tired. I don't have much more to report.

Stink Bugs: they have invaded.

Update - New Job

2010-07-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

I'm really sorry I haven't been writing lately. I've been busy. To make a long story short, after a week on/week off with the new job/old job, I'm now with the new job permanently as of the 19th. I love it! So happy I moved on.

I'm on the computer non stop at the NJ and quite frankly don't really want to leave 8+ hours of all-out computer work to come home and...get on the computer again. I'm sure you understand. So, probably the posts will be thin for a while.

We've also been having computer upgrades here at the house, so one computer was away and the other wasn't working properly, then vice-versa. All is well now, though. We hope.

Anyway, NJ. I've had two trainings via phone now and due to that can do most of what needs done with the job for now. Primarily, I manage the databases of users that are supposed to receive our materials. There are over 91oo users in one DB and over 34000 users in the other. I am supposed to be growing both of these databases at the same time I'm to be updating their information. It is quite a task.

The problem comes in that the person I'm replacing did a no-notice self termination. She just didn't come in. So, a LOT of things are left undone in the middle of projects, and we have no idea what she was doing. Most of them, though, are not pressing. So at least that's something.

I'm getting along swimmingly with my sole coworker/manager. I'm very glad about this. I'm also being treated like a human by the feds, which is a real switch from the OJ. I am also impressed with the new company. The previous company I worked for was run by incompetent single-cell life compared to the new one.

I will also be sent away for some more training within the year, possibly a few. One I am quite looking forward to. I was issued a govt laptop today, I hope to get the training on how to hook it up to my home network this week sometime. In this way, I will be able to put out the unclassified but sensitive information that we occasionally put out to the people who need it. With the laptop, I will also be able to work from home during the next blizzard we experience. Hallelujah.

Things I'll Miss About the Old Job

2010-07-19T16:30:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things I WON'T miss, but there are some things I will.

Of the many strange titles in the library's unique collection, this was my favorite

I'll miss working one-on-one with the students. Yes, the are mostly firefighters and no, I don't mean *THAT* kind of one-on-one....although some of my coworkers did. Ahem. I'll miss getting snowed in, and all the funny pictures that used to show up.

Maureen, the spider who lived outside my window

Oh, and let's not forget the strange dreams.

Paper-wrapped leg of lamb on my desk

I'll miss the beautiful interior with the columns and huge windows. I'll still have the gorgeous campus, though.

I'll get some pictures from my new building sometime soon.

Mysterious Ways

2010-07-12T03:54:00.001-07:00

I have 4 days of New Job under my belt. I think it is going to work out fine. It is VERY different than my old job. It is wonderful. And I enjoy my lone coworker a lot. The feds there treat us like humans, which is a weird feeling.

I wanted to talk a bit about how this happened, because it is strange.

About 2.5-3 weeks ago, I was angry, frustrated, sad, depressed, and while I was looking forward to our government-enforced week off from work (the library shuts down 4 weeks a year and we have the option to take unemployment, vacation, or leave without pay), I was still unhappy with the job and wanted a new one. Desperately.

I am not a religious person. Spiritual, maybe. Not religious. I tend to feel the universe works in its own way and you and I have no control over it. I also tend to think most of the time we get in our own way. I know I do.

I was watering the garden one evening, the sun had gone down, I was feeling down, and I was thinking about where I was in life and where I wanted to be (I have no clue) and I knew I wasn't making any headway on my own and whatever path I was looking for I just couldn't see. I could feel very strongly that thing had come to an impasse. There was nothing I could do at this point.

So, I gave up.

And I sighed and said (outloud, mind you): "OK. It's all yours. I don't know what I'm doing. If there is a path I'm supposed to be on, show it to me. If there is a teacher supposed to come into my life, bring them. Let's go."

Now, I have said these words before, but to be honest I didn't really mean them. This time, I meant every word.

And a week later, there it was. It is also not lost on me that this is the second time the same opportunity has fallen into my lap.

New Job!!!!

2010-07-08T05:09:00.000-07:00

I GOT A NEW JOB!!!!

It is the same position that I interviewed and talked about here. What a difference a year makes! The woman that did get hired went to Colorado a week or so ago....and decided not to come back. Her husband (who also works on campus as a fed) was left with breaking the news and turning in her key and badge. Additionally, she had the government laptop with her in Colorado. So. Not good. I cant' imagine leaving someone in the lurch like that.

Anyway, I was the next on the list last year so they called me on Tuesday, I had an interview on Wednesday, and they made an offer on Thursday. Very quick, I feel like I've been run over by a truck. I gave notice to my current job last Thursday.

This week, the library is closed and I'm taking vacation time, so I actually started my new job this week for 4 days. Next week (12th-16th) I'm working at the library again, then I start permanently with the new job on Monday the 19th.

I'll write more about the job later, but for now you can check out the website here. There is a brochure here.

I will be more MIA here until everything gets squared away. We are well, but stressed a bit.

Gettysburg, July 1 – My Family

2010-07-01T04:28:00.000-07:00

Matt and I recently started watching the movie Gettysburg again. Coincidentally, it happens to be right about the same time that almost 150 years ago, the troops would have been converging on the town. I haven’t watched the movie in a long time. We made it through almost 2 hours of it last night, and it made me incredibly sentimental. So, I thought I’d do a series of three or four posts about what it is like growing up in an Extremely Historical Town. I’m not going to talk much about the battle itself, so many hundreds of thousands of people have already talked ad nauseum about the battle, tactics, etc. You don’t need to hear it from me.

Today, I’ll talk about my family history in the town. Tomorrow, I’ll talk about growing up here. Saturday, I’ll talk about the filming of the movie. Sunday I probably won’t talk about anything, as I’ll be on my way to Lancaster for a family get-together.

So, my family history in Gettysburg. My mother is the Keeper of the Genealogy for the family but, to be honest, I don’t know a lot of it as perfectly as I could. I know stories, and I know names, but I can’t place them on a tree very well without a lot of thought and considering. And besides, you don’t need to know the specifics so I won’t bother.

Suffice it to say my mother’s family was living in Gettysburg at the time of the battle and had been since the 1700s. They were German, and we have a lot of Millers, Kitzmillers, Garlachs, Mumpers, etc, in the family. Which is great fun when you’re talking about Great Grandmother Kitzmiller Miller.

I had two GGGGrandfathers that were in the civil war. One of them was in (I believe) the Battle of Chancellorsville which was in May of that year. He was shot in the gut. He lay on the field for a couple days, holding himself together (I'll let you imagine that, I won't go into details). The wagons came by to collect the dead for burial and he moved. They took him to a hospital where he actually lived and recupirated until the middle of June when they decided to send him home. You know, to the nice, quiet, pastoral Northern town of Gettysburg. Nothing going on up there, after all! Geesh. Right before the battle.

Gettysburg was a small town even then, but if you look at a map it is a hub of crossroads. They liken it to a wagon wheel. Most of my family lived in town, but some lived south of town. Most people don’t realize that the Confederate troops came into town from the West and North, while the Union troops came from the South of town. When the Union filed past my family’s houses outside of town, my ancestors skipped out very fast. I can’t blame them. When one family came home, they found a soldier dead at their kitchen table, shot through the back. He’d been in the process of writing a letter to home. We don’t know any more if the soldier was a Yankee or a Rebel, and we don’t have the letter….but we still have the table with the bullet intact.

Like I said, most of my family lived in town, and the Garlachs lived on Baltimore Street. A lot of people don’t really realize that the battle took over the town and the surrounding farm fields. It is a local joke that tourists will ask (and it does happen!) “Where is the battlefield?” as if they are expecting you to point them to a football field-sized fenced in area. But generally the reply is “You’re standing on it.” Because you always are.

Also, the 1-2 day of the battle was rough for the Union and they were forced to retreat from the West side of town THROUGH TOWN to the south side, where they regrouped. So, the entire Union army fled past the Garlach house, and that area of town was a hotbed for sharp shooters and snipers throughout the rest of the battle.

Anna Garlach was my Great Great Grandmother, and was about 18 at the time of the battle. Her father was a cabinet maker and was born in Hesse Darmstadt, Germany. This website has a wonderful description of what happened at the Garlach house during the battle, and we have these same stories as well as a hand-written account that have been passed down through the generations, too. There is also a picture of my GGGGrandparents, Catharine and Henry.

The best story, I think, was when Anna went out to slop the pigs and found Union Brigadier-General Alexander Schimmelfennig hiding in the pig shed. He had been cut off from the rest of the Union Army during the retreat and if he’d been caught he’d been killed. So, he hid. I would have, too. Anna fed and watered him and kept it quiet, and he eventually snuck back to the Union lines a couple days later.

After the battle, the heat was said to be incredible and I can’t imagine what town must have smelled like. Everyone in town helped find and care for the wounded and collect and bury the bodies. I don’t think any of us can imagine this. I hope we never know it first-hand. No stories were passed down about this part of the battle.

Only one civilian was killed in town, her name was Jennie Wade. She was at her sister’s house caring for her and the newborn baby when she was struck by a stray minie ball. After the battle, her sister sold the house and part of my family bought it. They lived in one half of it for the next 50 or so years, and my grandmother and her twin brother were born there in 1899. Sometime thereafter, it was turned into a museum and my family ran that for another 50 years.

Max's Bath

2010-06-29T18:47:00.000-07:00

I'm ignoring you. If I ignore you there will be no bath.....

Oh, crap, that didn't work out like I'd planned....

Rolling, rolling, rubbing!!!

Get those ears dry! Curly fur! Dry the curly fur!

And it ends perfectly with a brushy!!!!

Business Ethics

2010-06-27T18:47:00.000-07:00

We had a problem recently that I wanted to write on, because it bothers me no-end and I need to get it out. Also, I think it would be interesting for discussion.

Last December or January, Matt and I went to Potomac Bead shop in Hagerstown to get a few things. Well, actually *I* went to get a few things and Matt came along for the ride. But, Matt wound up finding some things he liked and decided to get them to make a Man Necklace. He bought the following:

A strand of nice black onyx
A strand of nice green jade
One flat round lava bead

And he proceeded (with my help) to make a Man Necklace. He wore it constantly the rest of the winter and through the spring and then realized something.

The green was wearing off the jade.

I’m going to stop this part of the story here and talk for a few paragraphs about stone and gemstone and jewelry making. When I began making jewelry years ago, I learned that it is standard practice in the industry to treat stone to change its color. This can be done in many ways. For example, most of the citrine on the market is actually low-grade amethyst that has been heated to turn it yellow. Blue sapphire? Same thing. Do you remember those ‘power’ bracelets that were soooo popular about 10 years ago? You couldn’t walk into a store without seeing baskets full of them. I made it a point to look and every single turquoise bracelet I saw was either man-made or howlite that had been dyed turquoise. Every single one!!!

I really don’t like this practice. Once a long time ago, I purchased some gorgeous red garnet to make a necklace for my mother for Christmas. As I was stringing it, my fingers turned mulberry. I had to wash the strand 4-5 times in a mild soapy water until the water finally rinsed clear. If I hadn’t, my mother’s neck would have turned mulberry, too. Not cool, so I decided looong ago that I would not buy stone and gemstone that had been altered.

It has turned out to be very difficult to do, as most suppliers do not list details about their stone. I mean, if you are selling turquoise you can get a much higher price for it if you don’t list it as imitation or dyed, right? And besides, most of the finished jewelry is bought by people who can’t tell the difference.

But to me, that’s fraud and I will not do it. I have educated myself over the past 10 or so years to be able to tell the difference between stone and glass, to know what natural vs. fake looks like, and generally to know what the industry is doing to try to fool me. To me, heated or irradiated or dyed stone is fake. Period.

Fortunately some suppliers do mark everything. Fire Mountain Gems is the supplier I use the most because of their policy on this. They are also charter members of the American Gem Trade Association (AGTA).

So, back to the ‘Jade.’ If I had known that it was dyed I would have recommended to Matt not to get it. He wouldn’t have gotten it, anyway, because he was looking for something very specific for a specific reason. It was listed as ‘BC Jade’ and since I knew that most jade on the market right now is coming out of British Columbia, we got it. Also, I knew that this shop was selling some dyed stuff without labeling it as such, but as far as I knew jade was not something that was commonly being dyed.

Matt and I talked about it and decided to take it back and talk to them about it, see what happened. Before we did, I looked up the guide that the AGTA published online regarding stone altering. I found it very enlightening: the Federal Trade Commission REQUIRES the following:

With the exception of the normal fashioning (cutting and polishing) of a gemstone, it is the seller’s

responsibility at all levels of commerce to clearly disclose to the buyer at the time of sale:

1) Whether the gemstone is natural or not;

2) All information pertinent to any enhancement process done to a natural gemstone when:

a. the treatment is not permanent and its effects are lost over time; or

b. the treatment creates special care requirements for the gemstone to retain

the benefit of the treatment; or

c. the treatment has a significant effect on the value of the gemstone.

Minimal disclosure information would include whether the gemstone is natural or man-made; if

natural, whether the gemstone has been treated in any manner where 2 (a), (b) or (c) above apply;

in such cases, the nature of the treatment, its permanence and any special care requirements.

Now, isn’t that interesting? AT ALL LEVELS OF COMMERCE. When is the last time you bought jewelry and they told you whether or not it was real?

So, I printed it out. And I took it with us, and I told them about the problem, and they credited us the amount that the strand had cost.

And before I even asked she showed me where they had posted the ‘enhancement’ guide sheet and told me that they had an ‘*’ code on each label that corresponded with the guide sheet. And there was only one guide sheet in the store and if she hadn’t pointed it out I never would have noticed it or the ‘*’ code on the labels.

Which, of course, was exactly what they’d intended.

They were doing what they were supposed to do to the letter of the law, but no more. When I asked how long they’d had that posted, she told me it was new as of this summer. So when we purchased the ‘jade’ that policy was not yet enacted.

With the very questionable products coming into this country from the likes of China, it is more important than ever to know what you are selling and CYA. We have no idea what rubbed off that ‘jade’ and on to Matt’s neck. I also have no idea what stone it actually is. It may be jade, yes, but it also could very well be something else. If this had happened to a paying customer I’d have been mortified.

Liability comes in to this, too. I would have to have a case of Your Necklace Caused My Cancer. Keeping receipts that actually document the altered stones is very important to me now. Fortunately, I have in most of my listings made sure to mention that I do not use altered stone. I DO use dyed pearls. I just like them, I have no other reason why.

So, I'm curious:

What do you think of all this?
Would you buy altered gemstones knowing they were altered? Why or why not?
Should I do business with these people again?

Yorkie Pics of the Week

2010-06-22T06:42:00.000-07:00

Max in the lawn....

Gorgeous Weekend

2010-06-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

It was a lovely, glorious weekend complete with junk, banks, trash-to-treasure, planting, wine and new people, and no homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream. Maybe next weekend we'll have time.

Saturday morning, we got up early and took a load of metal scrap to our local bulk recycling center. I always enjoy going there, it is a working farm but the barn closest to the house is only for weighing and storing bulk aluminum, copper, brass, etc. I would love to go scavenger hunting through there! But, no. We left with over $200, which is fantastic. Prices are up right now. Lovely.

From there, we went to our new bank and opened up another checking account. We had the most wonderful conversation with the lady who handles that, we must have sat there talking for over 2 hours! She told us about her time in the Air Force, she was in Germany when Libya was getting boisterous and we retaliated. BOY did we retaliate!

From there, we went to close our accounts at our old bank. They were feeing us to death. Goodbye!

Then, lunch. We headed home from there with full intentions of going over to help Matt’s mom, who is cleaning out his recently deceased uncle’s rental house. I believe the rent is paid up for another month or so, but I know they want to clean it out and be done with it. Well, we decided to wait and go over on Sunday instead.

Mid-afternoon, I went to a local greenhouse to get some replacement plants for things that didn’t make it. It turns out they were having quite a sale! Peppers and tomatoes were all $.50, and a lot of flowers were on sale, too. I came home with three peppers, a dill, four tomatillos, and a Forget-Me-Not for Matt. I also eyed up the yuccas. They were blooming, and I noticed one pot had two plants in it. That’s a little trick I do, look for pots that have more than one plant.
I came home and found that Matt had delivered my squash mound dirt for me.

Around 5, we left for another Meetup event, this time with the Chambersburg Meetup Group. Hauser Estate Winery has an event every week this summer complete with a band and catered dinner. Admission is free, you have to pay for your food and drink, though. It turned out that only one other meetup person was coming. Ah, well.

I’ve been told that Hauser is very ‘young’ for a winery. They are new, yes, but they specialize in hard ciders and apple or peach wines. They are built in the middle of Apple Country here in PA, what else could they do? They put their building on a hill, it is a FANTASTIC view! Really incredible. They have outdoor tables with umbrellas and they sell sandwiches and things in a cooler. So, you could go up, get a bottle of your favorite wine or cider, a sandwich, and sit out on the patio or deck and take it all in.

Can you tell I’m really tickled with this place? I’m already trying to decide when Matt and I can get up there next for a nice, leisurely lunch.

Anyway, Matt and I had a mini-wine tasting. He really liked the Merlot, and I wound up really liking the Apple Wine, which is fantastic ice-cold. Their ciders were good, too, fairly light and beer-y. The band was a bit loud, but our meetup guy was nice, talkative, and above all – normal. I always worry about meeting people for the first time, especially if no one else you know is there, that they’re all going to be wackos. We wound up staying until almost 9.

Sunday, Matt went over to his uncle’s house with his parents to help work. I was planning on going, too, but I realized how much I had to do at home. So, I set off the dishwasher, raked out the squash mounds to get the weeds, rocks, and sticks out, then planted the squash. I also planted the 4 tomatillos I’d gotten, and I wound up going back over and getting a yucca, a Box Car Willie tomato to fill in a spot where one of my tomatoes died, and a watermelon. Not a vine, the melon itself. You know, to eat.

Matt called about mid-morning to tell me that the refrigerator, stove, and dishwasher at his uncles were ours if we wanted them for a combined price of about what we got for our scrap metal the previous day. I did the measurements and yeah, it seemed it would work out. So, looks like we’ll be storing some appliances in the garage for a bit. It’s a good deal, they’re fairly new. The stove is a glass (ceramic?) top and will go in the kitchen, while the current electric stove was destined for the garage, anyway, as that is where we’re planning on doing the canning. We also wound up with about a dozen and a half quart canning jars, with a pint and a half-gallon jar thrown in, and a mix of other things. Anything that doesn’t go to family will be going to a yard sale sometime this summer.

General clean-up commenced along with pea picking. We burned our paper trash, Max scared the bejezus out of a baby bird, and we watched the fireflies while having a drinky on the back porch.

Objects in Motion

2010-06-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

I got some more pictures of Foxy, Matt's parent's dog. She's weighing in at 5lb now, and it's all hair. Enjoy!

Long Weekend

2010-06-01T07:31:00.000-07:00

I had a 3-day weekend, but not because of the holiday. Yup, I have to work Memorial Day. Stinks, but I do get to take the holiday whenever I want. We call it a ‘floating’ holiday. They do come in handy sometimes.

I swear, I will update the garden blog later today, but I have to find time to edit the pictures. I keep thinking that by the time I get around to that the veggies in the pictures will be grown, harvested, and eaten! I hope to get to it tonight. But, we RAN this weekend. No extra time to do much of anything that didn’t absolutely NEED doing.

Friday, I had off. We had one of those wonderful early morning phonecalls that you know is bad news and, yup, Matt’s uncle died Thursday night of a massive heart attack. This is the same uncle that fell down the stairs a year and a half ago, and since he’d recovered from that he’d taken to treating himself like crap, ignoring the diabetes, gaining all the weight back, and drinking hard liquor practically by the case. So it wasn’t exactly unexpected, but still. He also leaves a mess with 5 ex wives, children by those wives, and no will. One of the sons has already pretty much cleaned the house out. Stay tuned.

I liked him. He was a bit raw, don’t get me wrong, but he was what you saw and was unapologetic about it. You have to admire that. He was well-traveled and appreciated the finer things in life, good food and wine, etc, and went out the way he wanted to: after a great meal and good drink.

I filled the car up with gas, drove by the dentist and paid the $1 that my insurance wouldn’t pay from my last checkup and cleaning. The office manager at the dentist and I had a good laugh over that: $1.

I took my dad to breakfast, where he talked motors, lawn mowers, and carburetors. Oh, and my new cousin. It seems that my uncle who died in 1981 had a daughter that has been trying to find his family for years, and finally she did. She’s 29, lives in the New Orleans area, and dad has been corresponding with her, sending her pictures of her dad, etc. She also sent pictures of herself and her family. It is very interesting to look at her pictures. It’s like looking at me, but it isn’t me. There is a TV show Matt and I like called Dead Like Me where these ‘ghosts’ go around helping people through passing into the next (whatever it is we go to when we die). The main character keeps going back to see her family, but when she’s within sight of her family they use a different actress to play the character (to represent that the family doesn’t recognize her as their dead daughter). She looks similar to the main actress, but not quite. That’s how it is to look at my ‘new’ cousin: very similar, but not quite. It is really strange.

Anyway, we did that. I hung out with mom and dad for a bit and talked, then went to get my hair cut. MUCH needed haircut, it’s been about 3 months. Turned out nice, too. The salon is in the outlet shops here in town, so I also went to Dress Barn to see if I could find a nice top to go with my black pants or skirt for the funeral/memorial. I did, but I didn’t want to pay $35 for it. I’ll manage with something else.

We went to our favorite Asian/sushi restaurant for dinner to check out how it is after its new management took over. Very nice! We were really pleased. Then, grocery shopping.

Saturday, we met Barbara from Virginia for breakfast, she was up to go to her son’s wedding (which was going to be big, fat, and Greek). It was a really nice visit. Then, we went to a winery to meet some total strangers to drink wine with.

Let me explain. Matt and I decided we needed more socialization. We were becoming like Max. He doesn’t know he’s a dog, he thinks he’s a person, and he doesn’t understand why he doesn’t quite act like we do. He hasn’t been socialized with other dogs to know how to act with dogs, either, so he’s sort of in his own in-between world. Well, Matt and I need to be a bit more socialized with people, because we don’t know we’re people and we don’t understand why we don’t quite act like other people. We don’t think we’re dogs, though, don’t worry! So, we joined up with a local fun-times group through Meetup.com. They go on hikes, they go on bike rides, they go to wineries, they go to brewfests, they have get-togethers at people’s houses, sporting events, etc. You go to what you want to and don’t go to the rest.

This was our first Meetup. We had a great time! It is a new winery called Serpent Ridge, south of Westminster, MD. They only have 5 wines right now, all dry. I don’t particularly like dry wines, but these were really good! We got one bottle and will probably keep an eye on them as they grow. Very nice. And the group was nice, too! I think there were maybe 14 people there (the group itself has over 300 people), most of them we liked. A few were much more interested in subtly explaining to us how much money they had. The rest were wonderful. Our next Meetup will be kayaking and picnicking sometime in July and we’re really looking forward to that. New Meetups are posted all the time, so we might go to some of those, too.

After that, we went home and cooked up the crab legs we’d gotten. I think that it has been almost a year since we’d had a crab leg feast. It was lovely. Later, margaritas enjoyed while we burned up some hemlock branches and watched the stars come out.

Sunday was a work day. Garden and garage. Both will be explained more fully in the other blog. Also, I made Rustic Rhubarb Tarts and they were wonderful. I really couldn’t taste the vanilla in the compote, but they were still good. Also, the pressure tank for the well died, so we had to run and get another one, which Matt will install sometime today.

Spam I Recently Received

2010-05-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

I usually don't read the spam I get, but the subject line of this one was too funny. And, boy do they lay it on thick!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Subject: Dear Beloved One.

I am Mrs.Catrina Hawks from England I am deaf and has cancer of the breast I lost my husband 12 years ago without a child of mine.

I have to sell all my properties left by my husband because the doctors say i have less than 2 months to live.I have deposited the funds of $5 million US D which i sold from my properties and deposit into a Bank.I want you to help me use the funds to help the charity deaf and the motherless babies home before i die.

If you are a good and honest Christian i shall give you the contact of the Bank and also the Deposit Certificate so as to claim my funds before my death.Expecting your urgent response and may God bless you as you carry out my
wish.

You can write me at xxxx

Your's Dyeing Sister

Mrs.Catrina Hawks

Picture From Work

2010-05-18T04:24:00.000-07:00

They really could have staged this photo better.

Matthew's Commentary

2010-05-11T17:20:00.000-07:00

"You know, I never realized that from this angle my hairline looks like I have horns. Or, if someone were feeling really artistic, they could make my face look like Hello Kitty with the ears and all."

(Me, I was giggling about the dog. Notice the teeth).

Commission #2 Done!

2010-05-09T15:26:00.000-07:00

One of my creative hobbies (aside from jewelry making) is a Japanese embroidery technique called Temari. I've been doing these for more than 10 years. It is a dying art in Japan, from what I'm told, but the detailed, geometric patterns are gaining popularity among American embroidery artists.
A few years ago, I made a Temari ball for my cousin's wedding. I did it in silk with primarily gold and various shades of neutral cream and white on a creamy base. I also did a 4-strand braid as a hanging loop, and I added a small tassel on the bottom.
A detail showing the gold threads between the intertwined layers.

My cousin's wife liked it so much that when they were up this winter, she asked me to do one each for their two sons. This is the first:

She picked out the more turquoise-y color and I matched around it. The thread in this one is all cotton.
Many Temari patterns are floral based. They use geometric patterns, but the effect is very floral. I wanted this to be more BOY, so I chose a different kind of pattern.
I really like how it turned out.
The dark color isn't black, it's navy blue. My cousin and his wife met while they were both in the Navy, so I figured I'd add that. The next one will also have navy in it.

Virginia Trip Pics

2010-05-06T17:40:00.001-07:00

Pictures from our most recent trip to visit our friend in the Lexington, VA, area. Captions below the pictures!

Fresh home-grown eggs! Done with Julia Child's recipe, along with bacon, strawberries, coffee, bread, and Pigwa jam....oh, I mean Quince. The cap says 'pigwa' because the woman that made it is Polish.We went to the yarn store again. We were worried about the dog on the porch. Last time we were there he was possessed by demons. Barbara and I actually stopped when we saw the massive beast. You could feel the tension. He stared at us. We stared at him, expecting him at any minute to charge, the vile creature. But no. It was a different dog.We went mushroom hunting (didn't find anything, WAY too dry). We asked permission at this house. The woman was telling us about her peach trees and the bushels and bushels of peaches she got from the trees, pictured above. They can't be more than 4-5' tall! I'd really love to know what variety it is...
Some of the plants I got at a nursery we visited (l-r) Rosy maiden hair fern, Strep. concord blue (I've been looking for this for a while), a caladium that I fell in love with, and a flower that I can't remember the name of right now (better picture below, can you blame me for getting it?)
A gorgeous honeysuckle Barb bought at WalMart. She said they were working hard at killing it until she came along.
Barb's Khaki Campbell ducklings.
Barb keeping Grace the doberman away from the Khaki Campbell ducklings.Safe Khaki Campbell duckling silhouettes.
Grace trying on my crocs.
Bo the corgi at the front door.
The oxalis that we found carpeting the woods. I dug some mini bulbs up and potted them, then promptly forgot them at Barbara's. She's keeping them for me until I get there next.
The Russian Orloff rooster. He is very aggressive, and may soon be coq au vin.
We helped Barb put up higher deer fencing to keep the chickens out of the fenced in garden, and Bo got tangled. If you click on the picture you can see it better.
I've always loved this candle.
No wonder I bought this, huh? Looks great with the caladium behind it, too.

1 Commission Done!!!

2010-05-06T04:32:00.000-07:00

3 to go....
A friend contacted me about a pair of earrings she saw on Peruvian Connection. She asked if I could do something similar. The ones in the catalog were too long and way too pricey. I said I'd give it a try.
Some people scoff at artists copying work. I don't have a problem with it, really. If we didn't copy other work we would be reinventing knitting or metal smithing with every generation. Copying a style is how you learn. This is a skill set I can now use for other work.
The leather really threw me in this, until a coworker told me about soaking leather and molding it. Some cultures do this to make masks. I tried it and....well, it worked!!
The center is abalone shell. The beads are all sterling silver, gold fill, or faceted glass.

General Things

2010-04-29T06:57:00.001-07:00

I never know what to name these 'update' posts. 'Update' just seem so boring. 'Exciting Happenings' just isn't true, usually.

So, we leave for Virginia this afternoon. I'll be non communicato until at least Sunday.

In regards to dad and mom and the hospital and the conversation over lunch, nothing new. Dad has an appointment with the EarNoseThroat(knees and toes, knees and toes) doctor today, here's hoping all's well. Also, I found a Yahoo Group for only children of aging parents. I joined. At least I can go there and vent even if I can't do anything about the situation.

Max is having more trouble with his vision. He's taken to walking around the bed at night after we turn off the light, even if he had been laying down and asleep when the light gets turned off. It is very strange. We're not sure why he's doing it. I think that his vision is bad enough that he is totally blind when he goes from light to dark that suddenly, and I think his eyes (well, eye) adjusts more slowly. But, if you can't see anything why wander around? He hasn't fallen, and I don't think he will, but we really can't figure it out. Also, his arthritis is starting to be more apparent. I'm making a vet appointment for him next week.

I have been soooo incredibly stressed lately, and I can't seem to find a way to dissapate it. It just keeps building, layer upon layer. Something explodes at work....then dad goes in the hospital....then someone else has a work explosion....then possible layoffs at Matt's job....then something else, something else, something else. Even good things, like jewelry commisions and gardening just add to the pressure. And it's a full moon so I'm not sleeping as well. I feel like someone shoved grapefruits in my shoulder muscles, everything is so tense.

Latest on Kiva

2010-04-25T09:12:00.001-07:00

My first jewelry business Loanee, Edith Elena, has completely repaid her loan. Congratulations, Edith!

This means I have my $25 back and I can reloan it. I did a bit of searching and finally decided on the Santisima Trinidad Group. They are from Peru. Edith was also from Peru. This was totally unintended on my part, I had actually wanted to loan to some other part of the world.

But, this group (in part, at least) makes and sells jewelry. So, it was a no brainer! Another reason I picked this group is that it should be paid back within 6 months, so I'll be able to make another loan by September.

Manvel in Armenia is paying his loan back, too, although it will be a LONG time before I see that $25 complete again. He is a beekeeper and has purchased the truck with the loan, you can see a picture on his profile.

Various Updates

2010-04-23T06:42:00.000-07:00

So, dad went to the EarNose'N'Throat doctor, who told him that yes, there is a hole in his eardrum (we knew this) and yes, it is infected. He's worried about dad developing meningitis, so he gave dad an ear drop, which I think is probably a direct/topical antibiotic. Dad goes back in a week.

I work this weekend. I'm hoping to get there rest of the potatoes in, the onions in, make the violet flower jelly, and catch up on sleep. Matt is planning another mushroom hunting trip. It's supposed to rain, so I don't know how much I'm actually going to get done.

This coming weekend, we're headed to Virginia to visit Barbara.

We're not sure what's going to happen with Max while we're gone. The plan had been to have him visit with my parents, work up to an overnight, and then they'd keep him while we were away (three nights). But between what's going on with my dad and my mom having a flame-up with her hip, that has fallen through. We can work towards that goal later, though, as we will be visiting Virginia again through the summer.

Also, Max has been having some evidence of incontinence. I don't want my parents to have to deal with that. It's not often, maybe once a month, but it is sudden, as in "Oh, we're playing with the ball! Oh, now look what Max is doing!" He doesn't even realize he's doing it, either. I'm going to take him to the vet after our trip.

So, our plans right now are to leave him home and have my inlaws come over, get him, let him out, visit, bring him next door, feed him, etc. We might try to have him stay there, but he HATES their new dog, Foxy, with a passion.

Not-So-Funny Ah-Ha

2010-04-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

I had been planning on writing today about some more ‘ah-ha’ moments I’ve had lately, and I probably will sometime in the near future. However, some new things came up recently with my dad’s health and I wanted to give an update.

First, the monitor that he wore for a month….showed nothing. He got the results back about that about a month ago. The diet he’s been working on….he quit. He says he doesn’t need it because he’d been losing weight before he had the heart trouble, anyway (he hadn’t).

Nothing new since then, though.

*sigh*

Had lunch with mom today. She took dad to the ER last night. They did not admit him, they got home around 3am. The story goes like this, according to mom (my thoughts in italics).

Dad thought he was having an anxiety attack. His fingers and legs/feet were tingly. That’s it. He called mom (who had gone to bed) down to sit with him. He had another ‘attack’ while she was there and he asked her to take him to the hospital.

But, I asked mom what his other symptoms were, and she said she didn’t notice *anything* different or strange. He had no visible symptoms before they left. She said he was cold on the 2 minute trip to the hospital (they live 4 blocks away). She said the doctors at the hospital said it didn’t sound like an anxiety attack. At one point she did say the doc thought he may have been hyperventilating. (based on what mom told me he’d had to eat, I think he was having a high blood sugar episode, not an anxiety attack. Since he usually has very LOW blood sugar episodes, it may be that he didn’t recognize the symptoms. Given that he’s been diagnosed with diabetes, it SHOCKS ME they didn’t do a blood test! Also, diabetic neuropathy comes to mind).

The ER was much more concerned with his ear. He’d been having a bit of an ear ache for a few days and, because he’s had some fairly serious ear infections in the past (the kind that killed kids before antibiotics, Mastoiditis), the ER docs were dealing with that. They wound up giving him antibiotics and sending him home on the promise that he would be calling the EarNoseNThroat specialist today.

Supposedly, he was doing that while mom and I were having lunch (Why didn’t he do this first thing in the morning???) Mom thinks that the specialist will get him right in because it is an ‘emergency.’ I told her I thought that if it was an emergency they wouldn’t have let him out of the hospital. Just my opinion. I also asked if they had called the cardiologist. No, of course not. (What? He has tingling in his hands and legs, a known heart problem, and no one thought to call the cardiologist?)

*is shaking her head*

So, past that we got into a very uncomfortable talk about Planning. You know. That talk. That kind of planning. For those things. Things like nursing homes and wills. Medical expenses and other uncomfortable things. Uncomfortable because they have made absolutely no plans, and have limited money set aside, and don’t have wills.

My father thinks he knows it all and is convinced that he’s got everything planned so everything will be fine. (Keep in mind that when mom had her heart attack 8 years ago, he freaked out because ‘he hadn’t planned on this.’ So, he hasn’t learned a thing). They have no wills because he doesn’t think they need them. He has no life insurance (my mother does), because he doesn’t see the need for it. He has money stashed aside and he thinks it will be enough. And my mother just goes along because she doesn’t want to rock the boat (as she said today)….and because she is scared to death of him when he’s mad (as she also said today).

So she nods and makes soothing sounds to me when I talk about this, but just goes and does whatever he tells her to do anyway, because he scares her and it’s easier to keep him happy than to deal with him when he’s mad. He is not physical, no. Never. But he is verbally and emotionally vicious when he’s angry and she just cowers.

(Right about now I need a valium, you know what I mean? Not seriously, no. I’ve never had a valium, but I think it might help temporarily right about now. Or several stiff drinks. Or maybe a valium AND several stiff drinks).

Mom cooed at me that they have enough money for living expenses (and I said no, you don’t. You have enough money for living expenses if nothing bad happens, maybe. If one of you comes down with cancer and decides to fight it, you can kiss that money and the house goodbye. And the money will be gone in months if you have to go into a nursing home).

She said they have the house to fall back on (and I said no, you don’t in this market. You would have if you’d sold at the height of the market, yes, but right now it would take months to sell the house for what it is worth and if you need the money NOW you won’t have it. Besides it won’t go far in a cancer/nursing home situation).

She said that she doesn’t feel old (and I said that isn’t the issue, the issue is making plans while you can. People die whether they’re old or not).

She said that he’s counting on getting a reverse mortgage (and I said that reverse mortgages are something that you get when you haven’t planned and have no other choice. It’s not something to hope for, it’s something to avoid. It’s something that is your last choice). (And in their case it may have to be an option because he screwed them sooo badly with his poor planning, dammit).

She said that our lawyer cousin told her regarding a will that as long as everything is in both names, she has right of survivorship when dad dies (and I told her that she’s assuming a lot. She’s counting on surviving my dad, after which point *she* would get a will and *I* would be covered. If she dies first and leaves dad, then survivorship means nothing).

And I feel like the bad guy. I went to have a nice lunch with my mom and now feel like I bullied her. I mean, we’ve talked about a lot of this before, yes. I didn’t mean to go into it again, and I wound up talking about these things a LOT more than I’d intended to, but when the situation presents itself I think it is good to take advantage of it. So I said a lot of things that had been mulling around for a while. And I feel like I bullied her and put her in a bad position. But…she was already in a bad position (relationship) partially of her own making.

Why do we keep going over this? It’s like a broken record, broken record, broken record. When she was talking about dad and how she ‘can’t’ do anything about what he decides, I told her that she created the situation by letting him bully her early on. She agreed, and said that she wished she’d put her foot down earlier. I told her that he probably wouldn’t have married her if she had. (Those words sound rougher in writing than it actually was at that point in our conversation, btw).

I told mom today, and this is truly how I feel, that I’ve pretty much given up on the whole will-thing. They are not going to get them, I have pretty much accepted this, and I’ve started preparing myself for the battle with the state that will, eventually, ensue. I told her I will try like hell to save the family heirlooms and furniture, etc, but everything else I’ve mentally written off. I’m not waiting for them to die so I can put my inheritance on our mortgage. I don’t think that way (I know some people who do, though). I have known people whose parents died without wills; I don’t want to go through what they went through. And I want family stuff to stay in the family. At least they don’t have gobs of debt that I’d have to worry about. (Yet?)

And I’m an only child and I have no one to be on my team in this situation. Not blood; Matt is there, of course. But it isn’t the same. I can’t help but think that if I had a sibling or two we could, with power of numbers, persuade my parents (father) that he needed to do something differently. I’ve been so estranged from any blood family by distance and intention that I 1) wouldn’t know who to ask for help and 2) wouldn’t know how to ask for help, oh, and 3) it wouldn’t matter if I did because they (dad) would discount the offers and suggestions because he hadn’t thought of them first.

Mostly I’ve liked being an only child, but in this situation it really sucks. Really.

And I’ll be very honest here: I’m so angry at both of them right now I can’t even communicate it. I’m angry at him for being so arrogant that he could in his mind control everything while in actuality run them into the proverbial ground, and so angry at her for just playing dead and letting him. He has left them with very few options if things get bad. Let's hope everything turns out like the fairytale they're hoping for.

Funny Ah-Ha

2010-04-16T04:29:00.000-07:00

I got home from work last night around 9:20 (Wednesdays are my late days at work). We were due to write out a few bills. Matt was filling out some paperwork at the kitchen table and I came up behind him to see what he was working on. It was the questionnaire from our new doctor’s office. This is what he had written:

Do you smoke? __Yes _x_No

Do you drink? _x_Yes ___No If yes, how often? Very occasionally.

Do you have pets? _x_Yes ___No If yes, type and #? Yorkie, 14

....What?

“Dear, what is ’14’?”

“Well, they want to know how much he weighs.”

(smacks self on forehead)

“No, dear, they want to know how many. “Do you have pets? If yes, type and number.”

“That’s a pound sign! They want to know how much he weighs!!”

(fighting back gales of laughter)

“Um, no, dear, that’s considered a number sign. You just told them we have 14 yorkies.”

He changed it. Can you see a house our size with a herd of 14 Yorkies? Why on earth would the doctor’s office want to know how much Max weighs??

But I did a stupid, too.

A little while later, I was writing out a check for a bill and I wanted to keep a tally of what we were sending out. Matt got up from the table to get something so I asked him:

“While you’re up, could you find the…..um…..” (makes motions like I’m hitting number buttons on a pad) “…you know…..the Add’em’up machine?”

He stops and looks at me.

“The ‘Add’em’up machine????”

“You know,” (I make motions like I’m hitting buttons again).

He’s still staring at me, now with a smile on his face.

“THE ADD’EM’UP MACHINE?!?!? Oh my god, you didn’t just say that!”

“Dammit! The calculator! That’s it! Calculator!”

I was tired, so sue me.

I was featured in a Treasury!!

2010-04-09T04:25:00.000-07:00

Getting featured in a Treasury on Etsy is a big deal. I think this is only the second I've been in that I know of.

Just Sold!!

2010-04-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

Spot the Yorkie

2010-04-05T14:13:00.000-07:00

Ambassador of Dogs UPDATE

2010-03-27T18:29:00.000-07:00

*UPDATE* So, the first thing my mom did when we dropped Max off is....almost drop him down the stairs. Not a good sign. Really, he tried to jump out of her arms, tumbled a bit on the floor, then ran down the stairs, but still. He did pull something in his hip.

Otherwise, the day was pretty uneventful. We dropped him off around 10am and picked him up around 7pm. They said he slept most of the day, took over my mom's chair, went outside and did his thing. Etc. Not much going on there. We're still deciding about trying an overnight.
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As I mentioned before, Max is going to be doing some trial stays with my parents to see how they get along before Matt and I decide for sure to leave him with them when we go out of town. The first trial will be a morning-to-night tomorrow.

Pray for us. :)

In preparation for the visit, I've made a list of things Max will need (food/water bowl, food, leash, blankie, baby gates, etc). I've also printed up a colorful sheet with table foods that Max can and (more importantly) cannot have.

One thing I'm most interested in is Max's roll as Doggie Ambassador, to which he was appointed as a puppy. Max has a really great ability to convert non-dog people and some very anti-dog people to pro-dog people or at the very least, to dog-friendly people. My parents are included in this. Max has had several sucessful Goodwill Tours at my parents house.

It is a big deal. My mother has gone from totally anti-small dog to very small dog-friendly. She has even talked about getting a Scottie....after my dad dies.

He's the real hold-out here. He's convinced they CANNOT have animals in the house because of the flea problem, despite me explaing about Frontline and how it actually works. He's not giving in. He adores Max, though, and I'm hoping that Max may be able to break through that last barrier.

If so, we may soon have to fine yet another keeper for Max when we go away.

The Other Woman

2010-03-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

There is a new woman in Max's life.
Matt's parents got a Pomeranian puppy.

Her name is.....(wait for it).....

Foxy Lady. Yes, seriously.

Max is not taking this well, unfortunately. He was harassed by a neighbor's Pom when he was a puppy, and he hasn't forgotten it:
Neither have I, really. I don't like Pomeranians.

Matt is playing both sides of the fence, though. In the picture below it almost looks like he's receiving sexual favors from her. Ahem.
So, now we're stuck with trying to find a place for Max to stay when Matt and I travel. We're going to do a few trial runs with....my parents. God help us all.

Almost Got Fired Friday!

2010-03-21T17:17:00.000-07:00

What an exciting end to a slow and boring week! I won't go into details, but suffice it to say the head honcho needs he ego stroked way WAY more than even I thought, and after he'd calmed down everything was cool.

Still looking for other jobs! You're darn tootin' I am!

Oh, in other news, my Kiva loanee, Edith, has made 3 of her 4 payments back! Go Edith!

Also, I made a 5th sale on Etsy this weekend. I'm advertising over at Bright, Bold & Beautiful for the next two months. I hope it helps, so far, so good!

“If we live like there is no tomorrow, there won't be.”

2010-03-12T11:24:00.000-08:00

I consider myself to be fairly anti-nuclear power. I understand that it is becoming a more popular option with our ever-growing population needing more and more energy, but the tradeoff just really isn’t worth it to me.

I wrote on my Yahoo blog about my experience as a child with Three Mile Island. I’ve moved those posts to Blogger. You can read them in order here.

Recently, a Fed that I’m friends with at work told me about a website about a woman who has gone through parts of the ‘Dead Zone’ surrounding Chernobyl. Her name is Elena, she is the daughter of a nuclear physicist. She travels on her motorcycle and takes all the food, water, and fuel she might need as well as a bike repair kit, etc, because you do not want to get stranded out there. She takes her Geiger counter. She takes her camera. Her photos are surreal. She has biked all over the area.

The only catch? You pretty much have to stay on the roads, preferably in the middle of the roads. She talks about why, it is very interesting stuff.

Her page can be found here. I would really recommend starting with the link below her Motorcycle page and then just working your way through all the sections. At the bottom of each page is a link to go to the next, like turning pages of a book. It is an incredible journey. Look through the ‘Serpent’s Wall’ bit, too. It is about the wall defending Kiev from everyone, Mongols up through the Nazis. She and her friends dig there to find history.

Be sure to read her description of the accident at Chernobyl. Keep in mind that the ONLY real thing that kept this from happening in Harrisburg was that the steam didn’t blow the reactor chamber apart. They vented it out instead. That’s it. We had the steam bubble, we had the melted control rods. It was so close. I was so close to be living what she’s describing. So. Close.

What really got me wasn’t the pictures. I've seen pictures of ghost towns before. Her descriptions, though, are thought provoking, frightening, and touching. Sometimes she makes funny comments, too. It is obvious that her life has been changed by what happened here…

All the following pictures and words are from Elena’s sites, as well as the title of the post, above:

The roads are blocked for cars, but not for motorcycles. Good girls go to heaven. Bad ones go to hell. And girls on fast bikes go anywhere they want.

In Ukrainian language ( where we don't like to say "the") Chernobyl is the name of a grass, wormwood (absinth). This word scares the holy bejesus out of people here. Maybe part of the reason for that among religious people is because the Bible mentions Wormwood in the book of the revelatons - which fortells the end of the world....

The sarcophagus will remain radioactive for at least 100.000 years. The age for the pyramids of Egypt is 5,000 to 6,000 years. Each cultural epoch left something to humanity, something immortal, like Judaic epoch left us Bible, Greek culture- philosophy, Romans contributed law and we are leaving Sarcophagus, the construction that going to outlive all other signs of our epoch and may last longer then pyramids.

There are many places that not structurally safe, or have collected pockets of intense radiation. There are places where no one dares to go. One such place is the Red Wood forest and another is the Ghost Town Cemetary. The relatives of the people who are buried there can not visit, because in addition to people, much of the radioctive graphite nuclear core is buried there. It is one of the most toxic places on earth.

All of this happy horseshit was for the May 1st Labor Day parade.

Ghost Town is a modern Pompeii. The Soviet era is preserved here - in the radiation for all this years.

…Or we can stand looking at the Chernobyl equivalent of Niagara Falls. Radiation level here is same as in Kiev. Standing on this bridge is as safe as standing on bridges in Venice. But never forget this is Chernie, where you can walk a few hundred meters away and be in a dangerously radioactive place. There are several hundred unmarked burial sites of radioactive waste materials in the Chernobyl area and no one knows where all of them are. The people who buried them are now buried themselves- may they rest in peace, for we the living can not. For safety, Geiger counter must always be turned on.

The only buildings in area that is not ruined are churches. Traveling through the whole of Chernobyl region I have yet to see any ruined church.

Reading of geiger counters tell us more than reading official reports, but it tells us less than reading from the book of nature. In Chernobyl reading from the book of nature is easy, here facts themselves speak eloquently of the truth... wherever I turn, I stumble upon a fact that humans are outlawed and banned from life. I strain to hear, in hope to receive an answer, but all I can hear is the voice of Nature strongly saying to the human race, -I DON'T NEED YOU!

Whistling

2010-03-09T08:57:00.000-08:00

You know how sometimes you are doing something and your mind wanders? Happens to me all the time, and I wake up to find that I’m thinking about something kind of odd, or something in an odd way. Today, it was whistling.

I’ve been listening to my Sly & the Family Stone CD lately, and I found myself whistling along with the horn part on Take You Higher. And I started to think about whistling.

Where do we learn to whistle? I mean, have you ever really paid attention to what you do, physically, when you whistle? Try it, find some music that is fairly complicated: fast paced and also containing high and low notes pretty close together, and whistle it. Hallelujah Chorus. Try to whistle that.

It is a pretty exact science, isn’t it? You don’t just move your lips to pucker, and you don’t just move your tongue to form the notes, and you don’t just move your jaw to get the right amount of air movement. You do it all at the same time so quickly and in such a specific way that I can’t imagine how we could have learned to do it.

Seriously, how did you learn to move all those things at the same time to form one note and then not even a full second later do it all again to form another totally different note? How did we learn this??

Is it learned? Did you seriously do enough whistling as a kid to learn how to do this? Or is it innate? Physics? Like when you catch a ball in mid-air when you only saw it a split second before, but your brain could do those wind-speed, travel-arc, incredibly detailed calculations that put your hand JUST SO to catch that ball.

Is that what whistling is?

Genealogy (or What the Hell is Lettish??)

2010-03-08T17:43:00.000-08:00

Matt’s family came from Russia. Or the Ukraine. Or maybe Poland. Possibly Kiev. They were Jewish. But maybe they weren’t. And they aren’t now. And no one knows when except for “the late 1800s,” except for what his grandfather said, and his grandfather lied like you and I breath (pretty regularly).

Recently, we watched a movie called “Everything is Illuminated.” If you only watch 5 movies this year, make this movie one of them. It is a story about a young American Jew who goes to Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. He is guided by a Ukranian man about his age (“who’s English isn’t so primo”), that man’s grandfather, and the grandfather’s ‘officious seeing-eye bitch’ Sammy Davis Jr., Jr. It is not a holocaust movie. It is a drama, but it is also very funny in places as well as sad and poignant. It is very good, and of course the story in the end turns out to not be what the main character (played by Frodo Baggins) expected to find, but….everything becomes illuminated.

So, of course this got Matt talking about his family. I asked him if he wanted me to look into it, and he said sure.

I’m very lucky, my parents have traced a lot of my own family back into the 1500s and on my mom’s side even as far back as the 1300s. In Germany, no less!

I’ve truly never had much interest in genealogy per se and while I know it is all very interesting, a good hunt is really what I enjoy. I’m a researcher. It is what I do. I’m very good at it. I joined up temporarily with Ancestry.com and 3 hours, 4 censuses, 5 passenger lists later and I had some answers for Matt about his origins.

But I had a lot more questions. Not the least of which is why the native language on two of the censuses was listed as ‘Lettish.’ Remember, this was all hand-written and at first I thought it said ‘Yittish’ as in a incorrectly spelled Yiddish, with two Ts instead of Ds. But, no, it was definitely ‘Lettish.’ So I go looking for Lettish.

It is the language spoken by the Letts. Stupid! Of COURSE it is! Who the hell were the Letts?

Lithuanians. Isn’t that interesting? Lettish was spoken around the area of the Baltic including Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Latvia, among others. So. There is Clue #1: Lettish. Thank you, Wikipedia.

I also found a passenger list (among several possible contenders) that had a hometown for GGGrandfather Leopold as ‘Suwalken, Russland.’ It was a German ship, and Suwalken translates to Suwalki, which is currently part of Poland (remember, a lot of these borders were fought over and changed often). It is smack dab on the Lithuanian border. Clue #2: Suwalki.

I go looking for Suwalki on a map. Interestingly, not 20 miles south of Suwalki is a town called Augustow. Matt’s GGrandfather’s name was August, and possibly the GGGGrandfather, too. Clue #3: Augustow.

Coincidence? Very possibly. It could mean nothing. All of these clues could be red herrings and mean absolutely nothing. But it is what I have to go on right now, so I’m using this as my current working theory.

Next was the fun part. A friend of mine just happened to call last night. She’s Polish. She and her husband and two boys applied to leave Poland after the wall came down in the late 80s or early 90s and they’ve been here ever since, more than 20 years. I mentioned all this to her and when I got to Suwalki she said that was the area where her mother was from. She spent all her summers there as a kid, it is the ‘lake district’ for Poland, big on tourism. Very beautiful, she said. She still has family there and offered to help out with translations and tracking information down, if we need help. I told her the last name variation, too, and she said it translates to ‘frost.’ She said that variation is absolutely not Lithuanian, it is Polish. So, that’s something, too.

We’re frosty!

There are a lot of loose ends, though. There is another August showing up with his family in a different town (Hoboken) from the one that Matt’s family was in (Piscataway). I thought it was an unconnected coincidence…until I found a connection in the GGGrandfather’s funeral book signatures, complete with ‘Hoboken’ beside it. Really bizarre. Could it be Leopold’s younger brother? The age difference is only 10 years, it couldn’t be another son. Maybe a cousin?

There is also a floral arrangement listed as being given by “The official family of Piscataway.” What the hell does that mean?? There have always been rumors of Russian Mafia in the family, could that be the ‘official family?’

We have no information on parents or siblings of GGGrandfather Leopold. Unless we can find something, that may be the end of the line. This is why I’m pursuing Suwalki.

So, I’ve decided I’m going to keep my Ancestry.com membership for at least a couple months. It isn’t cheap, I know a lot of people don’t join because of that but it is an incredibly good resource. If anyone wants me to look anything up, please email me and let me know detailed names and dates. I’d be happy to use my membership to help out.

Work Photos, Part 2

2010-03-07T08:29:00.000-08:00

Another round of photos from my work computer. I noticed when uploading this batch that I seem to have a lot of fire and disaster pictures. I wonder why?

This is from one of the several wildfires that hit El Cajon in the past few years:
Loved this one, my Navy cousin sent it to me. It is referring to the Seal team that took out the Somali pirates that were holding the US crew of the cargo ship:

I can't remember where this bridge is, but isn't the picture gorgeous?

Obviously photoshopped, but still fun:

One of my favorite artists is Daniel Merriam. I had no idea he was so cute. Always colorful, you could look at his work forever and always see something new:

Another fun artist is James C. Christensen. This work is entitled: Sometimes the Spirit Touches Us:

Another wildfire in California picture. If I'm ever in a wildfire, I want this to be my house:

Not a huge fan of snakes, but loved this picture. Notice the eyes aren't where you first think they are:

Still another wildfire picture, this time of the smoke layer:

So! I may do this with the items on my home computer this month sometime....I hope you enjoyed.

Work Photos, Part 1

2010-03-03T11:25:00.000-08:00

I was going through the 'My Pictures' file on my work computer the other day and decided to share some of the pictures I've saved over the years. These are (mostly) pictures from news stories that struck my fancy for whatever reason. I sometimes peruse through them and get a laugh because they are so random.

This photo is from the Lebanon/Israel conflict that happened a few years ago. This shows the Lebanese(?) troops and their...pack llama. Assault llama? Whatever, I thought it was funny:

This shows South Korean soldiers playing in what I'm pretty sure is some aqueous firefighting foam:

Sometimes I'll caption photos. This is the woman who was the Secretary of Education under Bush II at the news conference after her appointment. I caption this photo: ...you do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around...." But I love her glasses:
This is a photo of a terrorist and the bombing that he was supposedly responsible for. A very serious subject. I don't get why people don't really look a the pictures they publish for serious topics. This one looks to me like: ....do-do-do-do do-do! Gotta sing!!!

I saved this pic to use as my desktop in October:

Sunset in Afghanistan:

A crab-looking spider:

One of my coworker's daughters spent some time working in Yemen. She took this picture. I think it was in Yemen, but she did travel a bit so it could have been somewhere else:

I saw this ad in a local paper online, and I just giggle every time I read the job title:

Stay tuned for part 2!

March NaBloPoMo: Strange(r)

2010-03-02T05:59:00.000-08:00

The National Blog Posting Month website has named March the month to post Strange(r) stories, so I think I'll do that. It just so happens I have a great story to tell. This recently happened to a friend.

Duane stopped by on Sunday to drop something off. Duane is 30-something and still lives with his parents. He asked us if he told us about their cat. No, he hadn't.

Duane was working the night shift and when he pulled into their driveway he noticed their cat laying under their mailbox, dead. Duane stopped and checked. He told us he hunts enough and he knows dead, but apparently it had just happened.

He loaded the cat into a box he had in his car, drove the remaining 50 yards to the house, put the cat and box into the garage, and he went up to bed.

The next day he got the cat, box, some hay, and a shovel. He went up the hill, dug a three foot hole, layered it with hay, and buried the cat.

2 days pass.

Duane's dad runs into the house: "Duane! You've got to come out here and see this!"

Duane does. The cat is walking calmly out of the garage.

"It had hay on its back," he told us. "That's the part that really got me."

Duane's dad was freaked out. "You told me you buried that thing!" he said.

"I buried it three feet down!" Duane told him.

2 days after that, they finally found out that the neighbors apparently had a cat with almost identical markings. They didn't know that for two very strange and interesting days, though.

Duane said he even walked up to the grave to see for himself. He said if an animal had been digging there then he would have seriously been spooked, as it would have looked like the cat had dug itself out.

So, that's my most recent strange story. Since then I've been singing the Muppet Show version of The Cat Came Back.

It's a Birthday!

2010-02-27T04:45:00.000-08:00

I took Thursday and Friday off work so I would have a 4-day weekend. Friday was my birthday!! Yay, happy birthday me! It was a semi-big one, too (35), but it's just a number.

So, Thursday they were calling for snow and wind. Yes, again. Not much snow, but winds up to 45mph. Sound familiar? However, they screwed up again and we didn't get any snow, just blue skies.

Friday, however, we got snow and the heavy winds. The house was creaking, and I kind of wished for the non-creaky heavy brick buildings that I went through the last wind storm in at work.

I did some laundry yesterday, and then I made orange marmalade since there are some fantastic oranges in the stores right now. I got 4 1-cup jars, 3 half-cup jars, and almost a full pint. The pint is in the fridge, everything else is waiting to be dated and moved to the basement.

Matt was on call yesterday, so we didn't have any plans. Today, though, we are headed to Harrisburg for a green living faire and then to a restaurant. I'm not sure yet where we're going, but I'll let you know.

I've been lax on posting to my blogs. I'm on the computer all day, the last thing I want to do when I come home from work is get on the computer again. I will try to be better about this. Look for some seed ordering posts on my garden blog, and I have a Max post coming up here sometime this week. He has a new lady in his life. He hates her. Stay tuned.

Applying For Fed Jobs (is) For Dummies

2010-02-19T04:38:00.000-08:00

I think a few of you are privy to the information that I have been applying for fed jobs. It is a screwed-up system, seriously very screwed up, and I wanted to vent a bit while educating the mass population on exactly how screwed up it is.

Fed Job Basics: Federal jobs are ranked with a GS level, or grade. I think they run from GS-1 through GS-15(?). I’ve never seen a GS-1, and I have no idea what kind of position that would be. A GS-5 is considered an after-college grade. You are qualified with a 4-year college degree and no other work history. A Ph.D. qualifies you for a GS-11.

You can also gain experience to rank as these levels, too, so you don’t HAVE to have the degrees to get them. Education really isn’t counted for much. And it depends on the job. For example, a normal librarian job requires an MLS, but if the Library of Congress needed someone in a librarian position that was fluent in Farsi, and I happened to have the necessary experience, I would be qualified for the job regardless of the degree.

Jobs are usually listed as multi-grades, for example GS-5/6/7. So, you can apply for the 5 OR the 6 OR the 7. OR, and this is the kicker…..YOU CAN APPLY FOR ALL THREE. Seriously, so you have three shots for the same job.

Even better, if you are already a federal employee, you can apply for all three as a federal employee AND you can apply for all three as a ‘civilian,’ so you would have SIX shots for one position.

How messed up is that??

Resumes: For a regular job, you send in a cover letter, a 1-page resume, and possibly a list of references. Then you hold your breath and wait. Usually they call only if they are interested.

Federal jobs are almost entirely online fill-in-forms application now, so no cover letters (thank god, I hate them so much). Also, a ‘federal resume’ is a different animal than a regular resume. You have to put the last 10 years (at least) of your work history so the resume is several pages long.

KSAs: The absolute worst part of applying for federal jobs is writing out the KSAs. KSAs stand for Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (examples here). The job posting will have a list of KSAs that are required for the job, and you have to write an essay about how your experience fits the KSA in question. It is such a pain in the ass, but it is SO important. They grade the KSAs out of 100pts, and you must score at least a 70pts to move on to the next level. Each KSA is weighted differently, so if you have 4 KSAs to write you can’t assume they are each worth 25pts. One might be worth 50pts and if you screw it up then you’re done. And if for some reason you just decide not to do the KSA section you might as well throw the rest of your application in the trash because that is where it will wind up when they receive it unfinished.

So, for example, in the job I just applied for they wanted the following:

Ability to use Microsoft Office software systems.
Knowledge of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and standard office formats.
Ability to independently gather and maintain information for briefings, presentations, and reports.
Ability to apply judgment in coordinating competing and short deadline requirements.

(Sometimes they don’t make sense. One I came across said: "Ability to manage workload in order to provide completed staff work." What the hell does that mean?)

So, I had to write a cheerleader-like 1-page description of how my experience fits each of those. That is one page EACH.

KSAs make or break an application. They are incredibly important. There are firms you can hire to write your KSAs for you. They charge a LOT of money.

Application Process: All fed jobs are advertised on www.usajobs.gov. That’s great and everything, but each agency apparently has a different application management site that only they use, and they’re not all user-friendly to USAJobs.gov, so that nice, tight resume you slaved over will not transfer to the individual agency's system and for some reason you cannot copy and paste it to the new site.

So. That’s it in a nutshell. Fortunately, I have a friend on campus that used to work in Personnel, so he’s been coaching me a bit on the ins and outs of the system. Hopefully it pays off.

There was a really interesting article in Federal Times recently about the new DHS hiring system. One of the things they say in the article is that with the way the system is now you’re not getting people who are the best choice for the job. You’re instead getting people who REALLY want a fed job and are willing to go through the crap to get it. The people who were the best choice bailed on the process a loooong time ago. I can see that, it is an incredibly stupid system. But I’d like to think I’m a bit of both: a good choice and someone who really wants a fed job. In reality, I’d like to think I’m a good choice, and I’m also someone who really wants out of her present situation. Time to move on…way WAY past time to move on.

The benefits: These speak for themselves. We’d have something like 20 choices for health insurance, some better than others. Matt and I could start an inexpensive long-term care insurance plan in case one of us might need it in the future, and it is also available for my parents if they want it. Life insurance, too.

My minimum retirement age under the federal system is 57 (based on the year I was born). If I got a fed job by the time I’m 37, I’d get 20 years of service by the time I’m 57, which would give me some sort of monthly benefit for the rest of my life.

PS: one of the funniest things I’ve seen on a local fed job is the ‘Work Environment’ section for a job at an underground bunker: “Work is completed in an underground facility that may or may not be a target for enemies of the United States.”

Snowmageddon

2010-02-09T11:16:00.001-08:00

It is a running joke around here that Washington, DC, shuts down at the first snowflake. Well, that isn't exactly true.

Now, Atlanta does. First snowflake, they cave.

DC really got hit this past weekend and they're getting hit again, which has lead to the following humorous terms being thrown around:

Snowmageddon.

Snowmygod.

Snowmongous.

And, my personal favorite, Snowpocalypse. As in, Snowpocalypse DC.

NOT Stuck On You

2010-02-06T06:09:00.000-08:00

Didn't stay on campus. The roads weren't too bad when I left, the snow wasn't sticking on anything for the first 2 hours that it fell. Snow was fairly light last night.

However, we woke up this morning to this:

That's our bedroom window. The roof for our front porch is out the window, so we're looking at about 2-3 feet there. That picture was taken an hour ago, and now the snow is up to the center of the window. It is snowing heavily now.

More pictures to come, after we eat and plow a bit. I'm not anticipating anything to be actually cleared until tomorrow. I also haven't measured yet, but I don't think we got the mere 16-24" that they called for yesterday.

Stuck On You

2010-02-05T04:14:00.000-08:00

Looks like we're going to get whumped on again. Last I heard yesterday was anywhere from a foot to two feet or more of snow, plus gusts of 30mph which would lead to blizzard-like conditions.

Now, we are expected to work out our shift today and we are open until 5pm. Snow is supposed to start anywhere from 10am through 2pm. Which means there is a good chance I'm not going home tonight.

Fortunately they have dorm space for us. I'm packing a 2-day bag.

Hooband isn't happy about this. I warned him Wednesday night that I might stay over.

(unhappy look from Hooband).

"Dear, if it comes down to me not getting home safe, I'm going to stay. I *want* to come home, you know!"

(less unhappy look from Hooband).

"Of course, there are worse things than getting snowed in with 300 firefighter on Super Bowl weekend."

(VERY unhappy look from Hooband).

"Oh, dear, I'm just kidding. I'll take my crocheting, and a good book, and probably go to sleep early."

(Hooband looks a little happier about the whole thing).

"Unless I grab the three bottles of wine I have stashed in the trunk. Then, who knows??"

He knows I'm kidding on this one. I actually have a sled stashed in the trunk. THAT would be a blast, sledding on campus with firefighter?

I'll let you know. I'll bring the camera.

I Re-did My Website!!!

2010-02-04T05:10:00.000-08:00

Last week I finally (FINALLY) got finished completely redoing my business website, and I'm really happy with the results.

www.stonescapesjewelry.com

Take a look please and tell me what you think.

I used a Flash web editor called Wix.com. The editing program...ran...really....slowly....on....my....computer. It was a PITA. But the results are lovely.

It is interesting to note that they have a free option and several very VERY inexpensive options/month for web hosting. The plan I chose costs a mere $5/month. That is much better than the $38/quarter I was paying with Yahoo.

3 More Etsy Sales!!!

2010-02-03T05:05:00.000-08:00

I made three more Etsy sales. The first was something I had only listed a few days before:
It is fairly simple. Lightweight and cute with two colors of Swarovski crystal. Would be perfect with a prom gown, actually. It is living in Ventura, CA, now.

The other is one of my favorites:
Yup, one of the ice pictures. I love love love this stone. It is Red Rainbow Jasper. The person who bought this asked me if I had earrings to match, so I made a pair and she bought those, too:
These are living in Prince Edward Island now.

Omigod, I Have Fans!

2010-01-20T10:50:00.001-08:00

I created a fan page for my jewelry business last night on Facebook. I tried vainly to navigate adding some bells and whistles to it. I gave up because I was tired and getting frustrated, but I did add a 'fans' button onto my blog (see right) and I did update my Facebook status with a note that my business had a page, come see it. (Yes, this is the same Facebook I was going to quit. I decided to give it one more go but this time as a marketing tool).

I then completely forgot about it.

And OMIGOD, I have fans! I was so surprised to see FANS this afternoon when I logged on here. Fans. Me! FANS!!!??? Hee hee hee hee hee......

Strange Dreams

2010-01-18T12:56:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who often asks about dreams. Have I had any interesting dreams lately? Well, have I ever! I usually don’t remember my dreams, but this one was….strange. There are elements that you will probably recognize, but I’ll mention a few things at the end. *names changed to protect the innocent*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I was at work, but in our breakroom finishing up lunch. One of my coworkers, K, was there. 8 bags of dead leaves were also stacked in there for me. I was debating with K whether I should go ahead and move them to where my desk was or not because E (the fed in charge of our contract) didn’t want me to but, hey, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right?

So, I hoisted 4 bags over my shoulders (superhuman strength in dreams, apparently), and started to carry them back to my desk with K tagging along behind me, worried. But it turns out I had trouble getting through the hall to my desk because of all the women doing inventory on the books on shelves lining the hallways.

But they weren’t the only problem! For some reason, they’d also routed the lines of refugees through the hall, too. I don’t know where the refugees were coming from or going to, but there were a lot of them and they were going in one door, through the hall, past my desk, through another door and out.

It was overcast outside, the lights were out in the building, women doing inventory, refugees in various states of disrepair walking through the building, 4 bags of leaves, K fussing behind me, and now E appears and I’m struggling to move the bags of leaves from room to room so he doesn’t know I have them up there.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About then I woke up. It was a very strange dream. The leaves are obvious. We’re doing an inventory in the basement of the building right now, and it is dark and dingy down there. I’m guessing the refugees are in response to Haiti, but to tell the truth I haven’t seen much footage about it so it may be something else and these people tromping through the library weren't Hatian. Really, really strange. Sometimes I wish I remembered my dreams more.

2010-01-09T15:09:00.000-08:00

In order to lighten things up here a bit, I want to share a video with you.

On an island off the coast of New Zealand lives a colony of Kakapo. The kakapo is an extremely rare and endangered species of flightless parrot. They have a problem mating. In Douglass Adams' book 'Last Chance to See' he describes it thusly:

The ways in which it goes about mating are wonderfully bizarre, extraordinarily long drawn out and almost totally ineffective.
Here's what they do:
The male kakapo builds himself a track and bowl system, which is simply a roughly dug shallow depression in the earth, with one or two pathways leading through the undergrowth towards it. The only thing that distinguishes the tracks from those that would be made by any other animal blundering its way about is that the vegetation on either side of them is rather precisely clipped.
The kakapo is looking for good acoustics when he does this, so the track and bowl system will often be sited against a rock facing out across a valley, and when the mating season arrives he sits in his bowl and booms.
This is an extraordinary performance. He puffs out two enormous air sacs on either side of his chest, sinks his head down into them and starts to make what he feels are sexy grunting noises. These noises gradually descend in pitch, resonate in his two air sacs and reverberate through the night air, filling the valleys for miles around with the eerie sound of an immense heart beating in the night.
The booming noise is deep, very deep, just on. the threshold of what you can actually hear and what you can feel. This means that it carries for a very great distances, but that you can't tell where it's coming from. If you're familiar with certain types of stereo set-up, you'll know that you can get an additional speaker called a sub-woofer which carries only the bass frequencies and which you can, in theory, stick anywhere in the room, even behind the sofa. The principle is the same - you can't tell where the bass sound is coming from.
The female kakapo can't tell where the booming is coming from either, which is something of a shortcoming in a mating call. `Come and get me!' `Where are you?? 'Come and get me!' 'Where the hell are you?' `Come and get me!' `Look, do you want me to come or not?' `Come and get me!' 'Oh, for heaven's sake.' `Come and get me!' 'Go and stuff yourself,' is roughly how it would go in human terms. [...]

It's not that they're not willing. When they are in breeding condition, their sex drive is extremely strong. One female kakapo is known to have walked twenty miles in one night to visit a mate, and then walked back again in the morning. Unfortunately, however, the period during which the female is prepared to behave like this is rather short. As if things aren't difficult enough already, the female can only come into breeding condition when a particular plant, the podocarp for instance, is bearing fruit. This only happens every two years. Until it does, the male can boom all he likes, it won't do him any good. The kakapo's pernickety dietary requirements are a whole other area of exasperating difficulty. It makes me tired just to think of them, so I think we'll pass quickly over all that. Imagine being an airline steward trying to serve meals to a plane full of Moslems, Jews, vegetarians, vegans and diabetics when all you've got is turkey because it's Christmas time, and that will give you the idea.
The males therefore get extremely overwrought sitting in their bowls making noises for months on end, waiting for their mates who are waiting for a particular type of tree to fruit. When one of the rangers who was working in an area where kakapos were booming happened to leave his hat on the ground, he came back later to find a kakapo attempting to ravish it. On another occasion the discovery of some ruffled possum fur in the mating area suggested that a kakapo had made another alarming mistake, an experience which is unlikely to have been satisfying to either party.

So, anyway, the BBC is filming another installment of Last Chance to See, 20 years after Adams did his book. Stephen Fry and the original photographer went to visit the Kakapo (which is doing much better, by the way). Here's what happened:

Someone commented that they thought it was nice that the parrot returned for a post-coital cuddle. After I sent it to Matt, he called me. He said he'd gotten the video, he liked it a lot....did I want him to get out the turkey wings tonight??

In other news…

2010-01-07T09:15:00.001-08:00

…I’m working harder at getting another job. I have several in mind and I hope to get the e-paperwork together this weekend to submit. The one I’m seriously hoping for is with Fish & Wildlife Service (Dept. of the Interior) in Shepherdstown, West-by-God-Virginia. It is about an hour commute, but it is more money and most importantly IT ISN”T WHERE I’M AT NOW. There are a couple others with Custom & Border Protection that are about the same distance, but I really want the FWS job.

All good thoughts, wishes, prayers, etc, that you can send my way with this would be much appreciated. I’m going crackerdog where I am now. It’s well past time to move on.

Please also be sure to read and comment on the post below, I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on the situation...

Overload

2010-01-06T10:40:00.000-08:00

I’ve had a lot going on lately that I’m still trying to process. A LOT. Some of it is funny. Some of it isn’t. Some of it I will need some input on. I think I’ll start on one of those topics here.

I think I may have found my sister (part 1)

Those of you who know me well know I’m an only child. Those of you who know me REALLY well and have been paying attention know that I do have a half-sister from my father’s first marriage. She’s 11 years older than I am, and she’s deaf. I’ve never met her, and we have no idea where she is. Every few years I go looking for her online.

I think I may have found her on Facebook and also on Classmates.com, with pictures. Everything matches up. Everything. Age, middle name, red hair, she’s deaf, she’s even in the right state. It’s got to be her, but I still have that shadow of doubt sitting there. I need to confirm a birthdate and then I’ll know for sure.

I haven’t contacted her. I’m not going to, at least not for now. I know that she knows where my/our father is and she hasn’t contacted him. That tells me she doesn’t want to. I can respect that, I have no idea what she knows or was told about dad. That’s a can of worms I’m not sure I want to open just yet.

She’s got two kids. Do you know how strange it is to think that I might have nieces and/or nephews? That’s always been something other people have had, never me. Because I don’t have siblings. But I do have a sibling. But not really. It’s so complicated.

It is a very very strange feeling. All evening the day I found the pictures I would be working on something and the thought would flutter through my mind

I may have found my sister.

And I’d stop for a second and blink. And then continue with whatever it was I was doing. And then I’d be walking down the stairs and there it would be again

I think I’ve found my sister.

And I’d shake my head a bit and move on.

And the pictures. I look at the two pictures and originally I thought: “Nah. She doesn’t look anything like me, or my dad.” And then I’d look again, at the tilt of the head and the smile and remember the pictures that I have of me that look just like that. But still really different. I likened it to looking at two faces and then seeing a candlestick.

Part 2: the not so great part

So, when I was growing up, the topic of the half-sister was taboo. We didn’t talk about it. Questions weren’t acceptable. It was a non-topic. My mother did tell me a few things. Dad? Never.

So, imagine my surprise when, last week when we had an influx of (dad’s) family coming north for a funeral that my closest-in-age cousin told me that dad had talked TO THEM about it while they were visiting. Not only does dad know where she is, he talks to her.

So he tells my cousin all about it….but not me. WTF??? I’m. Really. Not. Happy. I really don’t know what to think. I was shocked.

Matt and I have talked about it and, knowing what we know of my control-freak dad, we decided that there were two reasons we can see him doing this:

1) by him being the only one in contact with her, he controls what she knows about him/us. If I were in contact with her, who knows what I might tell her?

2) this forces me to ask him, which puts him in a position of power/control. I’m betting he guessed my cousin would bring it up to me. He also has a habit of underestimating me on a regular basis, so I’ll bet he thought I wouldn’t be able to find her myself.

I’m pretty angry. The fact that my mother hasn’t told me about this also upsets me.

I’ll open the floor to discussion now. Thoughts? Opinions?

I Feel Like This!!!

2010-01-04T08:34:00.000-08:00

One of the funniest things I've read for a while, and it does strike a
cord:

Brent: Before going full-time with art, I used to take portions of cheese from larger bags and put them into smaller bags for ten hours a day. As much satisfaction as one can derive from such an occupation, bigger-to-smaller-bag-cheese-portioner just wasn’t the career for me.

From this week's Quit Your Day Job.

When You Think You've Heard it All

2009-12-26T15:42:00.000-08:00

I got a Bargain Books catalog in the mail. I found these two gems while I was parusing the 'Mysteries & Detectives' section:

Three Bags Full: a sheep detective story, by Leonie Swann. (novel).

One a hillside near the cozy Irish village of Glennkill, the members of the flock gather around their shepherd, George, whose body lies pinned to the ground with a spade. George had always cared for the sheep, and now they set out to find his killer.

I actually thought this sounded cute, and I bought it when I was out today. The beginning few pages were fun to read. I'll let you know.

The second one is one I will not be looking to buy, but I wanted to share with you anyway:

The Nymphos of Rocky Flats, by Mario Acevedo (novel)

Felix Gomez went to Iraq a soldier. He came back a vampire. Now he finds himself pulled into a web of intrigue when an old friend prompts him to investigate an outbreak of nymphomania at the secret government facilities in Rocky Flats.

Boy, I need to be careful! We have several secret government facilities around here!

People write this stuff? And get published???

First Kiva Loan

2009-12-15T06:56:00.001-08:00

When I started my business, I decided that as of January 1, 2009, I would start giving something to charity. I'd decided on 5%, which isn't a lot really, but I wanted to start small and then if/when I could I would increase the amount.

Since then I stumbled across Kiva.org. Kiva is a microfinance aggregate. They take information from microfinance organizations all over the world, list the information on the loans/individuals, and then you and I can donate as little as $25 to an individual or group.

When I found out that Kiva's lowest cutoff amount was $25, I decided that if I didn't have enough to donate I would just, you know, do it anyway. So I did.

Meet Edith. She is from Peru, where the average income is in the $6000 ballpark. She is asking for a loan of $300, which she will use to purchase used clothing to resell. She also is the coordinator for a program that supplies milk to low income families. That's why I chose Edith, I thought it was kind of a double-whammy in the doing good thing. I also chose her because she looked happy, if a little bashful.

Currently (as of this morning) 58% of her $300 has been raised from people in the US as well as Luxembourg, Canada, Spain, and Belgium. Watch for updates on Edith as money is raised and as she repays her loan, which should be paid off by May 2010.

This is the coolest part about Kiva: after the loan is paid off I will be able to re-loan it to another person. It truly is the gift that keeps on giving. In fact, I'm giving out a few Kiva gift certificates this year for Christmas.

Also, in the section that lists donors on Edith's page, check out William from Washington. If you click on his picture, it will take you to his portfolio. He has....1853 loans either raising funds, paying off, or paid off. Go William!

I just stumbled across Manvel in Armenia, too. He's a beekeeper. Doesn't he look proud of his field? I think I'll donate to him, too, as a personal thing (not business). That way I'll have two. It is addictive....

Etsy Sale!!

2009-12-13T14:28:00.000-08:00

I made my first sale on ETSY!!!!!
Finally!!!!

PMC Class

2009-12-11T04:30:00.000-08:00

Over the week of Thanksgiving, when I was laid off (furloughed) from my job, I signed up for a jewelry class. This is the first jewelry class I have ever taken. Seriously. Everything else I’ve taught myself. I’m one of the lucky people who can look at something and figure out how it was made. I credit my dad with giving me an overly-analytical mind, almost photographic memory, and a 3D perspective…which didn’t help him at all recently with the truck incident, but still.

Any-who.

About a year ago I purchased some silver Art Clay through Fire Mountain Gems. I’d been seeing a lot about precious metal clay (PMC) for the past couple years. PMC is a cool newish product to come out of Mitsubishi. In the process of making something, Mitsubishi had a lot of silver and gold dust as a byproduct. Why they couldn’t melt it down and reuse it is beyond me, but they didn’t and instead they hired a bunch of people to find a marketable use for the dust.

PMC is the outcome. Basically, you have a grayish very dense and heavy playdoh-like clay that can be molded, rolled out, cut, dried and carved, and then fired either in a kiln or with a torch (depending on the type of clay). The outcome is 99.9% silver, which is higher than Sterling (92.5%). So you can call this ‘fine silver’ jewelry when you sell it because it is. Gold PMC is 22K. They are also making PMC copper and bronze now.

Like I said, I’d purchased some and thought I could just ‘pick it up’ by reading some tutorials, watching some video, etc. Didn’t happen. The clay I bought was crumbly right out of the package and I got frustrated and put it away.

Time passed.

This class popped up on my radar and the time was right so I signed up. Turns out I’m the only one who did. Apparently, word had gotten out (she said, ominously).

First, the negative:

--If you are going to be teaching a class that is scheduled for 2 hours and you KNOW it runs over, change the time to 3 hours.
--If you know the class is going to run over, don’t schedule the class to run over into the time you have to pick your kids up from school.
--If you know the class runs over, don’t hold a 30 minute conversation with another woman about another class that may or may not be scheduled on Sunday, February 1.
--If you are looking to see what day of the week February 1 falls on in 2010, don’t look at the 2009 calendar. Ahem.

Also, I must say that I have taught crafts classes and, while I know there were problems with my classes, I have always found it better to actually have a project for a beginner class that will teach the basics and produce a finished product for the students to take home. She did neither, and basically said “Here’s the stuff, there you go! Now, what am *I* going to make? Hmmm….” I learned what to do by watching her, not by any instruction. Wouldn’t take a class with her again. If there had been others in the class it would have been a disaster.

In a more positive light, though, I did learn what I needed to know, and had the chance to make two items that I’m fairly happy with as beginner projects. She was big on plastic texture sheets for clay (any kind of clay) and rolling the clay between two sheets so there would be a different texture on each side! Imagine that!

So, that’s what I did for both of mine. Basically getting a feel for the clay and what I can do with it. As it dries out a bit you can mix in a bit more water to make it more pliable again. After you get the design where you want it, you must let it dry before you can fire it. She accomplished this with a hot plate, and it worked well. Then, you can file and sand it down to get the rough edges off (this helps a lot because after you fire it it is SILVER and needs to be filed with metal files forever to get edges off).

For the firing, this type of clay was PMC3 so you can use a torch to fire it. She used a crème brule torch. I fired the pendant at home (because we ran out of time!) and I used Matt’s propane torch. I thought the propane worked better, got hotter faster, etc. In semi-darkness, you place the item on a fire brick and start torching it. It will smoke, then it will actually flame quite a bit. This is the organic clay binder burning off. Then, you need to bring the piece to glow. It turns a pretty whitish-cantaloupe color. You need to keep it there for at least 5 minutes. Then, let it cool about 30 seconds and push it into a mug of water. It hisses.

When you take it out it is coated in a dull white gunk that you need to scrub off with a brass brush. Then, you can file it where it needs filed, drill it, and polish/burnish it. Done!
Earrings shown here, this was my first project. I’d had the wire-wrapped stone beads done on my beading table for a while (another technique that I’d wanted to learn and taught myself from pictures). I thought they went together well. The holes are drilled before firing, she made sure to remind me to make them bigger than I think they should be because the clay will shrink about 10% during firing.
The pendant is similar to a few pendants she had done. I drilled some holes before I fired it and added the copper wire because I wanted to play around a little with some embellishment. I think what she taught is (quite frankly) kindergarten stuff compared to what I know people are doing with PMC right now. I know she was really impressed with what she was doing, but I really wasn’t. Sorry. Rolling clay between textured sheets is not much compared to this and this and this.
It turns out the most likely reason the clay I bought last year was crumbly was that it was Art Clay brand and not PMC. Also, it may have just been old when they sent it. I’ve since rehydrated it and am hoping to try a few new projects when I get some extra time (ha).
This technique and skill set has opened up several new creative doors for me, I’m so tickled with it. I have so many ideas floating around in my head to try. I can’t wait.

Silent Monks Sing the Hallelujah Chorus

2009-12-09T12:32:00.000-08:00

When I was in the high school concert choir, we used to sing this. We. Were. Good. Really good. This is better.

Another One Bites the Dust....

2009-11-23T14:55:00.000-08:00

A second bra has broken right in the middle of the underwire. These were cheapy Lane Bryant bras I've been using as 'work' bras, so more for gardening and building work than go-to-work work. Unbelievable.

Just Between Us Girls...

2009-11-19T17:28:00.000-08:00

Something happened to me recently that I feel the need to share because I think it is funny.

I've been needing some new bras for a while and I've been putting off ordering them because it is just such an ordeal. You see, I'm what is commonly referred to as a well-endowed lady. I think the politically correct term is 'bodacious ta-tas.'

It is a pain in the anatomy for me to buy new bras because I cannot walk into any store and just buy them off the rack, so to speak. I have found few styles in my size in the US and most of them look like they were designed by Nazi engineers: they're ugly.

I have found, however, that beautiful bras in my size are available by the truckload in England. So, I get my bras on Ebay UK AND have them shipped 'Royal Mail' for less than the Nazi bras in the US would be. And they're pretty and they do the work that is needed. But I usually don't order very often because it is still a chunk of money and I tend to have very specific style and color needs, and I like to order two from the same seller to save on shipping, so it sometimes takes a bit of work to find them.

So, this is what I've been putting off. I've been saying for months that I needed to do it, I've been then repeatedly NOT doing it. Repeat. Repeat.

So, I then got a kick in the pants to get moving on this when my husband did some laundry a couple weeks ago. One of the hooks got caught in the washing machine and pulled into a pointy metal death stick that would put someone's eye out at 20 paces. So, there's one bra down for the count.

I still put off ordering....until....

The day we poured concrete for the new garage, I sat down to eat some lunch....and the underwire in the left side snapped in half right in the middle. I'm lucky I didn't cut myself, but fortunately it didn't cut through the fabric.

So, now I'm down two bras....and I finally got online and ordered two replacements. There's something about getting lingerie in a package marked 'Royal Mail.'

Mysterious ways, indeed....

Introspectrus, Part 5

2009-11-18T21:02:00.000-08:00

Fall is winding down and although we have a construction project winding up, Fall leading into Winter still is my time to slow down, take stock, decide on changes, refresh and recharge, all that stuff. I think many people feel this way about Winter, it is the time of rest.

One of the things I’m thinking about quite a bit is how the things and people that surround me affect my life and the way I live it and view it. Negativity has been rearing its ugly head again recently, and I’m taking another series of steps to remove it and rethink things.

For example, at work we’re having a ‘situation’ where one of my coworkers is not getting work done as quickly as the contract states it needs to be done. A meeting was scheduled today for The Powers That Be to 'discuss' it. I just got a very acidic phone call from a different coworker asking if the meeting had happened and if the ‘problem’ coworker had been fired yet. She said that she is a strong believer in revenge, and she just wants to see him get what he deserves. End quote.

Wow.

And now I have a headache. Coincidence? Negativity breeds negativity, no? Need to find a way to pull the fangs here, or at least direct them elsewhere.

Negative, bitter people drain me and make me feel negative and bitter. I think we're all like sponges: happy people make me feel good. Negative people make me feel bad. This is not rocket science. To take a phrase from Seinfeld, I’ve decided the negative people are no longer sponge-worthy.

A few people in my life have just stopped where they are and refuse to move forward, and their ‘extra’ time and energy are turning destructive. I’ve decided to not let it destroy me as well. I need to find a way to get rid of it where possible and block it where not possible (like work). That’s going to be the hard part.

Another energy-drain had been television. We camped out in front of the TV and watched shows all evening like Family Guy, 2 1/2 Men, which are funny but usually at the expense of other people….so, more negativity.….until the TV went out (don’t ask). We decided not to sign up for another service. We did sign up for the cheapest Netflix option, and that has been working out beautifully for us. We’ve seen the first two seasons of Night Court and the first 4 of Are You Being Served? and a few great movies.

Then, recently dad told us he wanted to get us a DVD player that runs .avi files, so we could just download entire movies and seasons from the computer and watch them….and he was shocked when I said we weren’t interested. I mean, he was speechless. My father is either in front of the computer or in front of the TV, there is nothing else. OTOH, Matt and I have been doing other things, and talking! My god, talking! Eating dinner at the table! Wow.

One other ‘entertainment’ item to go is probably going to be Facebook. I don’t like it. I don’t really use it. I don’t talk to these people. I haven’t seen most of my HS classmates in 15 years, I don't want to get together with them anytime soon. Where do these people come from? Do any of them remember how mean they were to me then? I don’t share pictures there and I don’t want to. So, mostly negative feelings. I’ve gotten somewhat into a game there recently, but that interest will wane. Why keep it up? Seriously, why? So, probably the end of December will be my last with Facebook. And I actually am looking forward to that.

Finding pastimes that I enjoy is also a goal. Obviously I know several. I garden, but that’s kind of hard in winter. I can start planning next year’s gardens, though. Seed catalogs have already started arriving! I enjoy reading, jewelry making, some crafting. I’m thinking of setting up the sewing machine and getting a few projects to work on.

I’m also going to be working on getting some piles of stuff cleaned up, filed, sorted, put away. Some jewelry projects started and maybe finished, and the jewelry workspace cleaned up. I’ve realized that while I feel comfortable with clutter and piles, the fact that it makes my entire life more cluttered is not a good tradeoff. And it isn’t fair to Matt, either. So, this is another form of negativity that I’m working on.

I also plan on doing some cooking. I love to cook, and when I have time and no one underfoot I like to cook well. I’m thinking dreamily about a cranberry-orange tart, coffee crème brulees, and maybe a few batches of cookies and bourbon balls. I have a huge stack of recipes that I want to try, I’ll probably pull a few and do them, now that I have some time.

I’m also going to take Max a few places to run around, which is grand fun. One Thanksgiving week we took a walk through the trails on the Battlefield and saw a red fox. Another time, we went to campus and I let him run around a field for as long as he wanted. He’s good off-leash, and we can trust him to come back when we call him. This is almost miraculous for a terrier. He will stop chasing a bunny and come back when we call him. Amazing little guy.

So, replacing negative time with positive, negative people with positive, negative thoughts with positive.

Amazon Subscribe & Save

2009-11-17T17:08:00.000-08:00

I’ve recently discovered the joys and wonders of Amazon Grocery’s Subscribe and Save program. Basically, you pick a product from their Grocery department, decide how often you’d like it delivered (1-, 2-, 3-, or 6-month options), and they ship it to you. When you sign up you get a 15% discount and free shipping.

How cool is that? Not all products are available with the Subscribe and Save option, though, be sure to look carefully. Most everything is a bulk item, so 3 bags of coffee or a 4-pack of Tums. A 10-pack of dog treats. You get the idea.

So, I started going through some of the things we buy on a semi-regular basis and found that quite a few of them are eligible and are good deal. Some are horrible deals, though. Here are some examples:

Tums – I use a lot of Tums. I priced some at the local grocery store against Amazon’s prices and found that the 4-pack of 150count bottles was a decent deal. For 4 bottles I got a savings of a whole $1.84 per order.

Degree women’s deodorant – Degree has some ‘fancy’ deodorants at the grocery store for $4.99. On Amazon they are sold as a 4-pack and it works out to $4.12/each, which is a savings of $3.48 per order. For the non fancy deodorants the savings is much the same, but those are in the $2 and change ballpark each.

Coffee – I’ve been trying some different varieties of coffee because they don’t offer the things I know we like (Starbucks Caffe Verona, Millstone Foglifter, 8 O’Clock Columbian) through the subscribe and save. So far, I’ve been getting things for $6.77 to as low as $5.93 per 12oz bag. Great, since some of the things we usually get are usually around $7.99. So, a savings of as much as $8.24/order.

Puppydog treats – I found my best deals here. Max likes the molasses and peanut butter Blue Dog Bakery treats and GoodBites by Pedigree. At the local store, both these are over $4.00. At Amazon, they are $3.74 and $3.19, respectively. So, using $4 as the compare-to price if I order both of these through Amazon I’m saving a grand total of $9.66.

Paper towels – Amazon should be ashamed of themselves for offering these at around $2.31/roll for Bounty select-a-size!

Tissues – Not quite as bad as paper towels at $1.03/box, but I can get them locally for $.79.

Toilet paper – because of our septic system we use Scott. On Amazon it works out to $.84/roll. Locally it runs $.68/roll to $.82/roll.

Hellman’s Mayo – This one was all over the place. Some sizes they offer at Amazon they don’t offer in the grocery stores. Go figure. Anyway, I found that the only size that was cheaper on Amazon was a whopping penny difference. So, may as well get them locally.

Dawn Foam dish soap - I really like the lime scent Dawn foam, which winds up to be about $.10-$.40 cheaper on Amazon in bulk than at WalMart, which is the only grocery around here that carries the lime.

Bounce dryer sheets –One box of 120ct at the store was $6.29. Amazon has them for $5.85, a difference of $1.32/order.

Good Seasons salad dressing packets – are $3.99 for a 4-pack. Amazon has them for $3.01/four-pack. So a savings of $.98/order.

Yorkie Bacon – we have a pill we have to give Max every night, and in order to make him take it we break it up and put it in a couple tsps of Hormel real bacon bits. We refer to it as his ‘bacon treatment.’ At the grocery store, it works out to $3.91/bag. Amazon has 6-packs that come out to $3.25/bag. This is NOT a subscribe and save product, either. This is a regular savings for ordering in bulk, a difference of $3.96/order.

So, say I ordered these every 6 months (except the coffee which would be more often). When I add it all up, it comes to approximately $54.26 saved every 6 months. So, $110/year. For shopping from the computer.

And you can bet I’m looking for more deals as I go.

Books I Love

2009-11-12T22:59:00.000-08:00

I was on my way to Gettysburg to pick up my mum to walk around town, and I was thinking about my list of favorite novels. You know, the ones I would want with me if I were on a deserted island? That list. And I was trying to think about what attracted me to them, what was the common factor….

And I think, in part at least, I may have found the answer. Or answers, because there seems to be more than one common denominator. First, the list (in no particular order) with a synopsis (as seen by me) of the main stories:

Dune by Frank Herbert – I think this is one of maybe 3 books by which all other SciFi books are judged. Herbert created his Dune universe with such detail that other writers struggle to even come close and just cannot, can never compare.

Basically, Paul-Maud’ib Attreides must find his way within a new culture to become what he was born to be: their savior. It sounds so simple.

Dune is a series as well, but I just don’t like the rest of the books…

Ender’s Game (series of ?) by Orson Scott Card – First, I want to say that while I love the writing of Card, I do not hold by most of his very vocal opinions or politics. OK, now that that’s out of the way…One of my coworkers introduced me to Ender’s Game, and a few years later I introduced a new coworker to Ender’s Game. She told me that not only couldn’t she put it down, she said “I’m glad I met you if only for the fact that you introduced me to this book.” Yeah, it is that kind of book.

Card writes both children and conversation VERY well. Scary well. And just because it is a book ABOUT children does not mean it is a book FOR children, which a lot of public libraries fail to comprehend.

Ender’s Game is set in the future. Even though the law states only two children per family the government has allowed the Wiggin family to have Ender, the third child, because the two elder kids had such potential for Battle School. Ender was born to be the commander of our forces against the Buggers, an alien race bent on having our planet. We’ve fought them off twice, and the Battle School is the preparation for the third wave.

But you never really see the Buggers. The story focuses on 5yo Ender’s years in Battle School. This book is about him finding his way alone: through the school’s army groups, learning how to lead, manage people, beat the system, OWN the system and make it his, all the while not knowing that he is the one they’ve set their hopes on to save us all. The secondary story is how his older brother (the psychopath) and sister (compassion itself) are manipulating politics on earth.

This book is used to teach management psychology at Quantico. Seriously. Another book in the series, Ender’s Shadow, looks at the same events as Ender’s Game from the POV of another of the main characters at Battle School, and amazingly is just as good as the original.

The first chapter

First chapter of Ender’s Shadow

Jani Killian (series of 5) by Kristine Smith – Another SciFi series, the main character here is female, a woman who 18 years ago almost died in the Idomeni civil war. Jani was illegally pieced back together from human and idomeni DNA and has been alone and on the run from the military/authority ever since. Now she finds herself in the middle of human/alien politics and religion. Again. Oh, and she’s actively started to hybridize.

The characters here are incredibly well fleshed-out and believable. Very human, even the aliens. I love love the idomeni ambassador, who will occasionally escape his well-guarded embassy in Chicago and take joyrides through the countryside or go to the local playground to learn how to see-saw from some kids. Eventually they find him and drag him back.

I also adore one of the love interests/main characters who is a sociopath (cannot feel human emotions) and uses it soooo well. Jani accepts this and (this is the most interesting thing here) does not try to change him. Theirs is a most interesting relationship because of this, how many novels have you ever read where a male has a flaw and the woman does not try to ‘fix’ him or bring him around?

One of the things I enjoy about this series is that Jani forces a lot of the antagonistic characters to do what she wants them to do, and it is fun to watch them swallow the bitter medicine.

Alvin Maker (series of 6) by Orson Scott Card – Yes, another series by Card. I’m currently finishing rereading this series. This one is set in the early 1800s of the United States. It is a mix of fantasy and alternate history. This series is based on what could have been….if people really did have special abilities that would have marked them as ‘witches’ in Europe, and Europe had sent them to North America instead of hanging or burning them. Hm.

The story starts out with Alvin’s birth. He was born a Maker. There hasn’t been a Maker born in about 2000 years. You can do the math and figure out what that means.

Through the 6 books, you follow Alvin as he learns about himself and his gifts and tries to figure out what they are good for. He knows he’s supposed to build the Crystal City (aka, City of God), but he doesn’t know how or why. And there are forces at work to stop him at all costs.

There are also a lot of friends. Peggy, the torch, can see within everyone all their possible futures. Arthur Stuart, the child of a runaway slave, can mimic everyone in their own voice and can talk to birds. Card always does names so well in his writing, too. Alvin’s brothers are named Vigor, Measure, and the twins Wastenot and Wantnot. His brother-in-law is Armor-of-God Weaver.

He also meets a lot of people from our own history, but they are rewritten into different characters: Abe Lincoln, Daniel Webster, William Harrison, Tecumseh, and John Adams all make appearances. The story of how General George Washington was tried and put to death for treason is told in the first book. My favorite is William Blake, who is called ‘Taleswapper’ in this series.

This all sounds incredibly silly, and I’ve never really liked ‘fantasy’ because it always sounds so silly and childish and unbelievable. This is believable. Again, these aren’t kids books. There is a lot of humor in these books. A lot of humanity, an awful lot that makes you think about you and your place in the world, with other people, with religion, humanity as a whole. I cannot recommend this series enough.

First chapter of Seventh Son

First chapter of Heartfire.

Kate Shugak (series of ?) by Dana Stabenow – This is the only series here that isn’t SciFi or Fantasy. This is a mystery series based in Alaska with a female Alaskan-native protagonist. Over the course of the 15 or so books of this series, Kate goes from fingers-in-ears no-don’t-wanna-be-involved to tribal elder of her local Aleut tribal conference. She is tough, she is funny, she has a wolf. Ok, only half, but still.

One of my favorites (and a good place to start for a good ride, novel-wise) is Breakup. Breakup is the time in Alaska when everything starts to thaw out….snow….ice on the rivers….and people. By which I mean people coming out of a long winter and going a little stir-crazy….as well as murdered people actually thawing out. In this novel, a jet engine lands on her homestead, a shoot-out takes place (twice) at the roadhouse, a bear attacks a woman, the Snobs from Nob Hill visit their daughter, a bunch of hikers have a shot of Middle Finger, and several moose and elk run around, scared to death. Some people do, too.

Kate Abridged video on YouTube. I don’t think I’ve read the last 3-5 of these. Yet!

Author’s website

What do all these have in common? I’ve identified several things:

All the protagonists are alone, singular, solitary people.
All these novels have something to do with an exploration of religion and/or culture, and
All the protagonists are trying to find their way (job, mission, purpose) in life.
In a less serious vein, all the books have a wonderful witty and sharp humor to them. The kind I really enjoy. No puns. Just dry wit.
I’m sure there is another that I haven’t noticed yet.

And because I want to share them so much I’m going to do a giveaway. Rules are:

-Comment on THIS blog entry,

-I’ll pull a random number on Thanksgiving, or the next day if I forget, and

-If you win, you tell me which book from any of these series’ you are interested in and I’ll send the paperback to you.

Please pass it around, a random number between, say, 3 comments is no fun.

A 4-Day Weekend!!!

2009-11-10T16:35:00.000-08:00

I had a wonderful 4-day weekend, much needed relaxation, rest, and getting some chores done that had been on hold while preparing for the big concrete pour Saturday morning.

Thursday, I started a new pendant commissioned by a coworker. I’ll post a picture of it when it’s done.

I also met Matt for lunch, got my hair cut, and picked up a $3 pair of sneakers to wear while doing concrete. They didn’t get too messed up, either, so I can save them for when we pour the two patios, too.

Thursday afternoon I spent planting some Dutch iris bulbs and some tulips with Max, and got finished just before the skies opened up.

Friday, I met mom and we walked around downtown Gettysburg, visiting the shops and scouting out some Christmas presents. I got my mom a Williamsburg Pottery vase, which she collects, and Matt a book on Masons. I also saw some things I want to price out and may go back and buy. I got Max a doggy jacket, with a detachable hood. He loves the jacket, but I’m not going to use the hood. Here's why:

Friday evening, we finished the final prep for concrete.

Concrete happened Saturday morning. It went well, I hope to post more on my garden blog Wednesday or Thursday. I also worked in the garden a bit.

We also took a nap. It was one of those much needed naps, but disconcerting. You know, when you fall asleep the sun is blazing through the window, when you wake up it is pitch dark. It just feels so strange when that happens, is it just me?

Sunday we went and stared at the concrete slab for a bit while we drank our coffee, smiling like fools. I also finished what I’d started on Saturday afternoon – the shallots and garlic are finally in the ground!!! Yay!!!

We also did a little laundry on Sunday evening, and I started playing the Roller Coaster game on Facebook, which I am now addicted to. Ahem. Just when I was thinking of quitting Facebook, too….

Happy German Reunification!!!

2009-11-09T18:04:00.000-08:00

When the wall came down, I was in 9th grade and I was taking German 1 in school. We stopped all regular lessons so we could talk about history and everything that was going on.

One day a few weeks after the wall came down, our teacher told us about a project (pre-internet, by the way) that a German Language teachers group had decided to start. We, the American German Language students, could write letters to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl requesting German penpals. I think everyone in the class did this.

Weeks and months later, we found out that the Chancellor's office had been swamped with BAGS of letters from American students requesting penpals. The Chancellor had to hire staff just to handle the mail.

As a thank you, we all received posters of the people standing on and around the wall. I found the poster again recently, in the garage when we were cleaning it out. He also sent a letter in both English and German, saying that because of our initiative we were now part of the history that surrounded the events.

Months after that I got my penpal. Her name was Kirstin and she was from East Berlin. We corresponded for years. I still have her picture somewhere.

What is your German Reunification story?

Campus

2009-11-05T06:38:00.000-08:00

I went for a walk around campus yesterday and took my camera.

The maples on the main avenue, with sycamores behind. They all turn the most beautiful orange every year:
Three of the old sycamores:
The building I work in, with a blue arrow pointing to my window:
Some of the interesting, old stained glass windows in the chapel:
On the right side around the corner is a door to the tunnels that wander below campus. Seriously. The campus is a very old nunnery for the Daughters of Charity. When the sisters would come back for their retreats every year, they weren't allowed to be seen (this was a loooong time ago). They would go from building to building via the tunnels. I think the small door at the bottom was for some purpose dealing with those on retreat, but I'm not sure. Many of the tunnels are still in use today for steam lines and other utilities, but some have caved in:
I'd love to know the story behind these, aren't they beautiful:
The two ginkos on campus are in their full beauty right now:
And a bird nest:
Love the gnarly tree:
I think we have more emergency vehicles on campus sometimes than they do in some major cities:
I wandered over to the fallen firefigter memorial for the first time in years, I think. This is from the 9/11 list of names. Whenever I see the list, my eyes are always drawn to this pair, the Sr. and Jr.
The hazards of parking on campus (that is my car on the right):

Lure Course Trials

2009-11-03T05:14:00.000-08:00

Matt and I and our friend Angie met up for breakfast recently and then went to a nearby soggy field to watch the local Saluki club host its Sighthound Lure Trials. It is a very interesting thing to see, especially when the field is somewhat under water.

They hook up a rope to a motor, string it along the field, and attach 3 plastic bags to it. Those are the lures. Then they set lose, turn the dogs loose in heats of 1, 2, or 3, and the judges figure out scores. I have little idea on score, I don't believe it is a timed thing.

Above are some (I think) Ibizan hounds. Below are the two Afghans they had.And another view of the Afghans, waiting to be turned loose. Did I mention it was in the high 30s?

You can see how wet the field was here:I think this is a Borzoi or possibly a Saluki. I can't keep them straight. He/she is watching the races, intently:

This is a Rhodesian Ridgeback, also watching...very intently.
I think this is another Ibizan:
And some greyhounds:
I have another set of pictures, I'll post them later.

NaBloPoMo

2009-11-02T17:06:00.000-08:00

I often read the blog of one of my favorite writers, Kristine Smith. Recently she brought up NaNoWriMo, which is slang for the National Novel Writing Month. Basically, you commit to writing 5000 words/day for the whole month and tada! At the end of November you have a novel. She is considering signing up.

I am fascinated by this but I’m not going to sign up because I’m not a writer.

Then, another blog I read brought up NaBloPoMo, which is slang for National Blog Posting Month. The idea here is that you commit to posting on your blog every day of November.

This is one I’m going to sign up for. I’ve already missed a couple days, but hey. No one is perfect.

This is especially challenging because I have two blogs. Do I commit to post to both of them every day, or should I switch off? I’m going to choose to switch off. I don't consider this cheating.....yeah. This will also force me to be more creative in my posting, less I bore people.

Anyway, the challenge is here: sign up and I won’t call you a wimp. Hah.

General Update

2009-10-28T05:34:00.000-07:00

….

I almost started out by saying ‘Not much is going on’ but that is so not true. The garage is down, we are prepping to pour concrete but the weather is not cooperating. You can follow our demolition and building project on the garden blog, there is a list of links at the top right corner, which will be added to as posts about the garage are added.

We’re both giddy about the garage. Matt really really wants to get the concrete down, because as soon as that is done he will really be able to WORK on it. The concrete is really the only barrier for him to get started building. I’m giddy about it because I want it done. I’ll have some workspace in there and I want to start working in my new space ASAP. I’m looking forward to planning the new space, decorating, etc, too. I can’t wait. Plus, we will be able to move a lot of stuff out of the house, which will make it feel less crowded, which will be glorious.

In other news, I’m sending a basket of jewelry along with a friend to work tomorrow to hopefully get some sales, which will pay for my website rental for another 3 months or so and another parts order, because I need to get some beads for a project, some wire for a project, and I really need a new batch of clasps, preferably gold. Wish me luck on my sales! It is very strange, as I’m picking out things (send this, don’t send that) I find that I look at this stuff and think: “But, I like that! I don’t want to see it go!” I need to try to get over that. I understand it is a common issue for crafts and arts people, but still. It’s not like I wear a lot of jewelry! Why would I want to keep everything?? Fortunately I do have pictures of everything, and that will be enough.

Both sets of ‘rents are doing well. I’m meeting mom tomorrow for brunch at the French bistro (good coffee and crepes, here I come). Matt’s parents took us out to dinner on Saturday, during which time we had an adventure. We found a purebred Vizsla running up the middle of the road on the S-bend. He would have been killed for sure. He hopped in the car with us and after we called the numbers on his tag (both DC area codes) we wandered around looking for his people. After dropping him of at Ray & JoAnne’s, we found the owners and while they seemed nice enough, we kind of wish the dog were still with us. Between his breed and training, he was a multi-thousand dollar dog with a great temperament, and we got the distinct feeling from his owner that if he hadn’t found the dog, well, he just would have bought another. If we find him loose again, we’re keeping him.

By the time we got to the restaurant we were like Give Me Food and Hot Tea. Now. I had ribs, everyone else had prime rib. We were hungry.

We went to the Gettysburg Outlets on Sunday and I found the knee boots I’ve been looking for (dressy boots, not winter boots) for half what I was expecting to spend. I also found that they opened up a Pendleton outlet, by god, and I’m thrilled with a capital ILL over that. I got a red red coat. It was more than I’d wanted to spend, it was red red, which is a color I’ve never really lusted after. It is a little big but I now have the name of a very good tailor in town so I will be paying her a visit to fix that jacket and another I have. It is really nice.

Max's Trip to the Beach, part 3

2009-10-24T06:07:00.000-07:00

We walked down the beach a whole bunch. My people wanted to look for pretty rocks and sea glass. I got bored with that and started sniffing around this thing when we got close to it:
There was something really interesting in here!

I got really excited and spent almost half an hour worrying about the thing, trying to find it and get at it:
And then I ran this way trying to figure out a way to get at the thing:
And then I had an idea! Opposable thumbs! I needed someone with opposable thumbs! I know people with opposable thumbs!!
So I went and yapped at them, and got one of them to follow me:
Here's dad with his butt sticking out, trying to find what I'm looking for:
And here's BOTH of us with our butts sticking out trying to find what I'm sniffing for! Oh Boy! I LOVE SNIFFING THINGS!!
And you know what it was? It was one of those plastic things you can fling into the water for your dog to chase! It was orange, you can see a bit of it here! Unfortunately it was really stuck and opposable thumbs wouldn't help.
I had a long day, but it was great! I met a girl dog who was visiting the beach for the first time, too! She was a rotty, and she could walk right over me! Oh Boy!

I slept almost the whole way home....

Max's Trip to the Beach, part 2

2009-10-14T05:41:00.000-07:00

Then, mom wanted me to come with her. Away from the water! Why do we have to go away from the water!?! I like the water!I followed dad a bit helping look for rocks, shells, and beach glass.There were a LOT of dead horseshoe crabs all over! I didn't like how they smelled, so I stayed away from them. My people were really surprised at this!

Can you see the side-crawling crab? I couldn't! It is really well camouflaged.
We found a crab shell that looked like a cheetah!
And I walked out on some wave breaks. Mom kept my leash on this whole time, can you believe it!

I've still got my leash on! Why won't she take the leash off? Was she scared I was going to jump in? I wouldn't think of jumping in! Hmm....I wonder what would happen if I jumped in?AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Look what we found!!! Mum called it serendipity, but I thought it was just a pail.
Wait until part 3, where I find something stuck in a wave break!!!! OH BOY!!!!

New Link

2009-10-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

Under 'Freunde,' please visit me-crane, ukraine. It is by a coworker's daughter, who recently moved to Ukraine with the Peace Corps, to teach teaching.

The New Administration

2009-10-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

Finally.
President Obama, VP Biden, then DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and USFA Administrator Kelvin Cochran, who was in a class with my mother here once. Very nice guy.

Max's Trip to the Beach, part 1

2009-10-09T05:31:00.000-07:00

(as dictated by Max, with notes * from his mum)

For the past couple weeks, my people have been talking about a beach. This is a word I’ve never heard before, so I didn’t know what a beach was, but they kept saying I was going there, and it would be in the car with my collar. Oh Boy! A Ride! In the CAR! With my Collar!! I LOVE MY COLLAR! It means I’m going on a Ride!! IN THE CAR!!!

So, early Sunday morning we got up and it was cold! So I got to wear my sweater, too! I LOVE MY SWEATER!!! When we got in the car I got to ride on mom’s lap almost the whole way there!! Mom took a picture of me from her point of view.

This was the longest car ride I’ve ever been on! I usually only go for rides in the car when we go on hunting trips as a Pack to kill a pizza and bring it back to the den.

I think she got tired of me on her lap, though, and she made me go lay down in the back seat after we crossed a big, long bridge.

(*this is the Bay Bridge at Annapolis. It is very high and very long, and it is really the only way over to the shore, unless you want to drive about 4hrs out of the way. I know some people who WILL NOT drive over the Bay Bridge)

I got my first sniff of salt water. It smelled weird!

After mum pushed me into the back seat, I tried to take a nap but I couldn’t, so I just stared at her for the next hour trying to will her to let me back on her lap. She eventually did.

After we stopped for some food (I LOVE FOOD!), we drove through a place with a lot of water and water plants and birds, but no buildings. And we parked right on a sand dune!

They put my leash on me. I don’t like my leash, but I learned to tolerate it and I walk on a leash really well. I wanted to sniff and wee on everything!! I LOVE WEEING ON EVERYTHING!! But they kept pulling me along towards something over the small hill.

It was a really big bath tub without soap!! It moved! And it smelled weird! And the ground was all sand!!!!

It came at me!!!And it got me!!! And my paws got wet. And then it went away….and came back again!!!
And the foam moved and twirled and ran away, so I chased it. I LOVE CHASING THINGS!! And then it got me again!!!!!

And there were other things, but I’m going to take a nap now. Blogging is hard!

Introspectrus, part 4

2009-10-07T05:08:00.000-07:00

I never did do the last Introspectrus that I’d originally planned, and I can’t even remember now where I was going with it. So, I think I’ll just keep this going with whatever musings/thinkings/worries/deep thoughts/etc that occur to me at the time.

I have recently been thinking about indulgence, needs, wants, compromise, dreams, and sacrifices. Choices. I think some of this is coming with the change in season, some is coming with the changes at the house. Some is coming from my back-to-the-grindstone weight loss plan as of October 1. Some is of course due to the change in my job and all the paperwork I need to fill out for that. That part has been a PITA. Some things are something else altogether. So, I’ll cover them here one by one.

Seasonal: Our garden was huge this year, and now it is starting to draw to a close. We still have some crops in, yes, but most of them are done, need to be cleaned up, and I haven’t had time to get around to it yet. Some of it can wait until spring. It is a natural life/death change that comes with winter. I didn’t have much help with the planting and harvesting, and it looks like I’m not going to have much help with the clean up, etc, either, but I know he’s busy with the garage teardown, too, and that is a trade-off: help getting some garden stuff done, or nothing getting done on the garage teardown/rebuild. It is an acceptable trade-off to me. So I’d best get a move on if I’m going to get the garden put to sleep. This kind of trade-off is something I have a hard time remembering and realizing. Learning compromise, all over again.

House: I’ve been waiting for 8 years for this damn garage to come down and finally…FINALLY… it is happening. I cannot TELL you how happy that makes me. Sure, it is going to be an imposition, as any teardown/rebuild can be. Sure, it won’t happen like we want it and we’ll have to readjust our plans. I’m prepared for that. Sure, we probably won’t have it under roof before the cold weather really hits. Well, we might. I’ll be really surprised if we do.

Once it’s done, though, we will have much more space to move things from the house. Storage. A canning kitchen, so I’ll have a cooler space to work since the garage is built into a hill. Matt will have a workshop out there. Etc, etc. I’ll have some space out there, too. This is a need for both of us, some ME space. A retreat, somewhere to be alone. Right now in our house I cannot be anywhere inside that I cannot hear him doing whatever it is he’s doing (TV, music, computer, etc) or he cannot hear me (say he’s napping and I’m cooking). It’s been an issue. We also will have space to store building supplies out of the weather once we start working on the house, which has also been an issue.

I know Matt has been wanting to get this rolling faster and earlier than October. For some reason, though, none of it got started over the summer. I’m really not sure why. Part of it was Avoidance Of The Building Inspector. But it turns out that wasn’t going to be a problem (see a future post on my garden blog).

Weightloss: Not much to say here. Jody lost weight. Jody plans on losing more weight. Enough said. Sacrifice, need, want.

Change in Job: OMFG, how can someone or a group of people put so much damn work into something just to have it turn out to be….more of the same? No change, nothing new, same idiot manager doing absolutely nothing. Just hurry up and…eh. Nothing new, sorry! What a waste of energy! It is a horrible feeling. It is like sacrifice, but without any benefit.

Deciding how much more money to put towards my retirement funds is another story. I’m actually going to talk numbers sometime soon in another post, which will probably surprise some people. I think this is a topic that is sort of waltzed over by my particular age group, and a lot of people don’t bring up actual numbers and percentages and don’t necessarily know where they stand when compared to other people in my age group (I am NOT asking anyone to tell me their dirty little secrets). 34 is not too young to be planning for this, and as I don’t have kids and don’t plan to, if I play my cards right hopefully we will be able to retire earlier rather than later.

I will talk more about this later, but the long and short of it is that I will be bringing home some more $ per month than I did before, though I’m not entirely sure how much…not good at math, add in taxes and other withholdings and I just can’t figure it out. But I will have some more money coming.

Which is why I’m going to buy a dulcimer. That goes under the heading of ‘indulgence,’ because unless it has been purchased out from under me, I’m probably going to be purchasing this sweet-looking cherry hourglass Folkcraft dulcimer.

Why the hell am I buying a dulcimer? I’ve been asking myself this question, and I’ve talked myself out of it a dozen times in the past 2 months. I used to pseudo-play the guitar, and I did sing in the chorus and concert choir for years. No other instrument experience, though I’ve been told learning the dulcimer is fairly easy. But you know what? I’m going to buy one because I want one. I’m going to buy one because I haven’t had any vacation this summer because I was hoarding my vacation time because I wanted to get paid for it because I wasn’t sure I was going to have a job come 10/1, and because I’ve had a long, hard, stressful summer and dammit I want one. So, yeah, want and indulgence.

And the guy in the video, Bing Futch, has some wonderful instructional videos on Youtube, so he will be my unwitting copilot in the dulcimer journey.

Dreams: I haven’t talked about dreams yet. I have dreams, things I want to do before I die. Matt does, too. Everyone does, some more achievable than others. I don’t know what *it* is for me yet, though, like Jenna does. And I’m coming to terms with that. Slowly, but still. I hate not knowing something, and not knowing something like this really really drives me nuts.

My mother, 67, and my father, 71 (I know, strange names, but they’re easy to spell), have been married for about 36 or so years. I wouldn’t personally use the term ‘wedded bliss’ to describe their relationship, but it seems to work for them.

My mother often talks about a list she has of things she wants to do or buy after my dad dies (assuming that he dies first, of course). She’s had this list for years. It was a running joke at her workplace that someone would look around my father’s funeral and say “Where’s Pat?” and someone else would answer “Oh, she’s at the shelter, adopting cats.” Dad won’t let cats in the house now, and getting cats is top on her list of things to do after he goes.

I always thought that was so sad. I mean, who’s to say you will have money to do what you want to do after he dies? Who’s to say you’ll be healthy enough? But no, she’s not the type to actually tell my father “Suck it, I’m going to do what I want to do!” so she spends her life with a list of things to do after he dies. It makes me so ill to think about….

….then I had lunch with my dad this past week, where he dropped the bombshell (to me) that he’d given up good jobs and the hope for a nice business all his own….because mom would not leave Gettysburg. Bam. I was shocked. I never knew that. Puts another spin on things, doesn’t it? Not everything is so one-sided. I'm not saying either of them is justified in holding the other back, they chose this life. But...it just seems so sad to me to spend your life with someone you love, but at the same time not be able to do something you really want to do.

Compromise? Sacrifice? I’m not sure which I would call these situations. Maybe both? But it really has me thinking about what we give up for those we love, and should we really give up things we want for people we want? Or things we need for people we need? Or things we need for people we want? OR (this is the last variation, don't worry), things we want for people we need? Hmmmm…..

General Work Update

2009-09-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Good News: I have a job! Not much else has changed. The company is the daughter company of the one I work for now. Same HR people, same address, same offices, etc. $2/hr raise.

Also, 2 of the slacker librarians had their hours cut, but are keeping their health insurance and getting a $5/hr raise....and they're still complaining! Can you believe it?

Indifferent News: 401(k) is different, so I have to rollover my current nothing-to-sneeze-at 401(k) into a new Edward Jones IRA soon. I meet with our Edward Jones manager tomorrow morning. Should be fun. We'll also discuss where I should put my future 401(k) withholdings with the new company, Principal. Principal sucks as a 401(k) option, at least compared to my previous option, Great-West.

The biggest deal so far has been deciding which health insurance company I want to go with, the new company's or Matthew's company.

New Company: offers one of the billions of Blue Cross/Blue Shield variations, but it is a Maryland plan and almost none of my doctors are in it, and the local hospital isn't, either. However, they do not have any problem with pre-existing conditions, and that is a huge benefit.

Matt's Company: also one of the billions of Blue Cross/Blue Shield variations, but is a NJ plan. However, ALL of my doctors are in it as well as the local hospital. Deductibles are reasonable, breakpoints are reasonable, vision & dental are reasonable. I don't know yet about pre-existing conditions, though. If I picked this plan we would save $73/month on our paycheck withholdings for medical insurance.

Most of my paperwork is filled out and handed in. Tomorrow is my last day of work with my old company, I've already received the termination letter.

Thursday is day one with a new company!

Adventures in Pain Management

2009-09-09T16:04:00.001-07:00

Some of you closer to me know I had my last wisdom tooth out last Friday, Labor Day weekend. It’s been a bit of an adventure, I’ll try to keep it brief.

Extraction went normally….I guess. I never did see the doctor. Except for the fact that I had a hole in my jaw where a tooth used to be, I’d never guess anything happened. Very little pain over the weekend. NO visible swelling. I’m shocked, it was impacted and I was expecting the worst.

They prescribed Vicodin for me. I’ve never taken it, I’ve heard gloriously wonderful stories about it, though. My neighbor has back problems and when she takes hers, she gets hyper and has to clean the house. The pharmacist said it can cause euphoria. Sounds good to me. I took it at noon, along with the 3 ibuprofen they said I should also take every 6 hours.

Nausea. It gave me the worst nausea I’ve ever had. It was a friendly nausea, the kind that cuddles up on your tummy and just stays there forever and does nothing but get worse. And it hit almost at the 6-hour mark when I should have taken another dose. I decided I wasn’t going to take another, pain be damned. I’d rely on the ibuprofen.

Good idea, the ibuprofen worked wonders for me. Saturday and Sunday went by with little pain. Sunday we actually went to Ikea and Wegman’s in Baltimore for a little jaunt.

Then on Monday, the pain started getting worse in the afternoon. I was getting a goodly amount of ‘breakthrough’ pain at the 5-hour mark of my ibuprofen regimen.

Tuesday, a lot more. I called the dentist because I knew I shouldn’t be having more pain at that point. They said yeah, come on in.

Dry socket. Joy. So I went in and they inserted a special medicated gauze into the socket. Not painful at all, it actually has a numbing agent. That was Tuesday.
This morning, I went back and had the dressing replaced.

This evening, I apparently swallowed the dressing with dinner because it just ain’t there anymore.

I’ll call tomorrow morning. I’m hoping I don’t have any more pain, maybe they won’t need to see me again. Either way, I go back on Friday for a standard follow-up.

Disney Bought Marvel

2009-09-03T05:59:00.000-07:00

Click here for some links to some really great pictures. Really, it is worth it to take a look at them all....

General Update

2009-09-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

Still no news about the contract. It is officially 1 month and counting. We are all really crackerdog about it, too, just really stressed and acting weird. It’s been that way all summer, but it has taken a turn in the past couple days from a manic barking stress to a quiet simmering stress. I don’t know which is worse.

This month is exceptionally busy for us, this week we have canning and planting to do. Matt is off this week, too, he’s going to get the land use permit so we can pour some concrete, and he’s going to be pouring a concrete floor in our root cellar (it is existing, off the garage). He is also going to be tearing the roof off the garage. Demolition and food prep will be the order of the day for this month, as well as ripping out summer veggies and getting about half the beds put to sleep for winter.

This Friday I get my last wisdom tooth removed, oh the joy. I’ll be out of commission for a few days.

Next weekend we have our annual Clam Bake up near Ashland, PA. It is the 75th anniversary and is going to be a big to-do. The Gettysburg Wine & Music festival is also that weekend, and we’re hoping to go to that as well. I may be going to the clam bake alone, Matt may be on call this weekend, dammit. If so, anyone want to go with? It would involve camping and woods and clams and a pond and some of my strange and interesting family and a pond and a stream and Fire! Fire! Fire!

The weekend after is a probable trip to Hawk Mountain with Angie, (speaker for mother life). This will depend again on Matt’s call schedule

The weekend after that I work.

After that it is October!!!! Holy cow! Why does the late summer always seem to just fly by? Why are we always SOOO busy this time of year as opposed to winter, when we’re just sitting around waiting for it to be over?

In other news, Matt and I have been talking about whether or not we really want to stay in this area forever (I don’t want to be in this area now, quite frankly). We have been trying to think about where we’d like to relocate to with permanence in mind. We’re young enough that we could purchase now while the prices are low, and come on folks: if nothing else it is an investment option because they are not making any more land, but they’re sure making more people. We’re thinking around 5 acres.

Some places are just out from the word Go: places like Florida, Arizona and New Mexico are out for heat. California is out just on general principle (sorry). Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Montana the like are out for snowload. I think New England and New York are options, but Matt feels they get too much snow/cold. Jersey is out. Much of the south is out for, um, heat and cultural reasons. I mean THE deep south. Midwest is out for tornado reasons. I think we should investigate Oregon, but it may be too close to brother David for comfort for both of us. Most of the costal eastern seaboard is out for hurricane reasons.

That doesn’t leave a whole lot of options, really. Sooooo….. We’re thinking northern North Carolina. Possibly parts of Virginia. Mountains. Cooler. Still some snow, definitely a winter and obvious seasonal changes. I’ve already started looking.

It kills me, a property just sold that would have been perfect: 4 acres, northern NC, basement prices and it would have cost us (collective gasp) only $130/month in mortgage. It was a blank slate and had everything we wanted. I know there are more out there, but we want to get some of our current debt paid before we seriously look and that is about 2 years out. But still, 2 years ain’t that long.

Bofred

2009-08-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

Max is doing well, he doesn't seem to be too much the worse for wear on the tooth front. They did remove the root and all, they put him under and did a full-out 'dental' on him and he was still a bit out of sorts today (not eating much, groaning a bit).

We're calling him Bofred the Hillbilly Yorkie.

Another Max Update

2009-08-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

Max is at the vet today, this morning we noticed he had broken a tooth. I'm guessing (though I don't know) that when he fell he cracked it, and more recently it broke. We looked really well several times and didn't see any problems with his teeth the night he fell, so....

It is not a canine, it is one of the four little upper teeth between the canines. The ones that are about the size of grains of sand. Each.

They are doing a 'dental' on him, they may/may not pull the tooth. I don't know. Poor baby. He didn't seem to be in any pain, though. I'm not sure how well he's been eating.
~~~~~~~~~
In other dog dental news, when we were at the vet two weeks ago *and I mentioned he fell, and the vet looked and didn't see any problems, either* the vet did tell us that we might want to start brushing his teeth, the back ones are starting to get a lot of tartar. This is how the conversation went:

Vet: "You might think about starting to brush his teeth."

Me: "How, exactly, do you recommend I do that?"

Vet: "Oh, it's easy. Get a baby toothbrush, really soft. Open up a can of tuna, drain off the juice, and stick the toothbrush in the juice and start brushing his front teeth."

Me: "Oh, he'll LOVE that!" (he will, he adores tuna. He almost climbs us when we have tuna).

Vet: "Exactly! He'll be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Start at the front, and every day do a little bit further back."

Me: "Sounds easy enough."

Vet: "And then, when he gets used to that, come on in and get a tube of the meat-flavored toothpaste we have at the desk."

I knew it was too good to last. I think I'll stick with the tuna juice, but don't you wonder if they've ever tasted it?

A Few Max Stories and Photos

2009-08-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

First, to get us started, a nice action shot of Max shaking after his most recent bath.

Next, a story of Sir Max vs. The Dragon. Yes we have a dragon in the house.

Matthew was on-call a couple weeks ago and, wouldn'tcha know, he got called out on Sunday night. Max and I went on up to go night-night, and I was pretty much asleep when Matthew got home. Max ran downstairs to greet him, though. Matthew let Max outside, then Max went and got a drink of water. Matthew plugged in his phone, turned out the downstairs lights, and then came upstairs.

Max was still downstairs, though. For some reason, Max decided to access the stairs by way of the back of the sofa, which he has done hundreds of time before. I don't know what made this time different, but he fell. It sounded like *scrabble*whump*clackity clackity clackity clackity*crash*boom*

Max fell directly on Dragon.

Dragon is the Kirby vacuum cleaner. Max HATES Dragon. We don't chase him with it, but he just doesn't like it.

What makes it worse is Max hit his lip on the way down and skinned it. It was bloody and he kept licking it....for an hour and a half. It's not loud, more like a constant lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick lick. Try getting to sleep during THAT.

But it was so cute, after we heard the scrabble*whump, Matthew (who was in a state of undress) ran down the stairs in his underwear yelling "MAX!! MAX!!! ARE YOU OK MAX?!?! I'M COMING, MAX!!" and then came back up holding our shaken dog and cooing to him.

We were next door recently feeding beet greens to the neighbor's pheasants, and Max wanted to keep an eye on us so he climbed up on the outside plant stands that Matt built.

Awww...
Double aww....

No Contract Contact (yet)

2009-08-06T11:11:00.000-07:00

The latest on the contract is that there is no latest.

Well, that's not entirely true. The RFP went out the middle of May. If you are interested in seeing that, click here. It was, to our collective shock, all online. Some of it is in government-ese, but mostly it talks about what work is to be done, etc. There is also a tab that lists interested companies, of which there were apparently 30.

The proposals from interested companies were due on June 11th. We have no idea how many companies bid, but we did learn that because it was a 'small business' contract our current company couldn't bid. So, they did what every Beltway Bandit would do in a similar situation and bid on the contract through the small business sister company they created just for that purpose. Ahem. I don't think they will get it. I have a hunch that the RFP was written up in this manner in order to exclude them.

Two weeks ago, our fed told us that the 'award was being written up,' which means a decision has been made. I don't know if the company has been informed yet, but I do know the award has to be posted somewhere for a period of time before it can become public. I don't know how long. I'm guessing we'll find out the 3rd or 4th week of August, because that will leave the new company (if there is one) a month to interview, rehire, and/or restructure the workings of the contract, if necessary. We could find out the very end of September, though.

He also told us that the branch chief was grumbling about the price, which I take as good news. It means it was more than they really wanted to spend.

It is really weighing on all of us, though we're really not talking about it much. We all have our plans on hold after October 1st, just in case we don't have jobs then. No one is taking any vacation time, just in case we need the money (we will get paid for unspent holiday and vacation time by the old company).

I do a web search every other day or so to see if it has made the business news anywhere, which often happens. I don't trust my manager to actually tell us what is going on, so I try to find out through other means.

Not Buying It

2009-08-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

This is one of those weeks that just seemed like it didn't matter what I did or didn't do with money, it went out the door like crazy...

Clothing: Got a pair of navy pants. I’ve been looking for a nice pair for months, so there.
Food: Shredded some zucchini and put it in the freezer. Trying to get enough tomatoes to do a round of sauce or salsa. Hoping to can some beets and/or beet greens and some potatoes this week. I made some Mint Juelip liquor, some blackberry brandy, and decanted some Ratafia (mixed fruit cordial).
Canned: green beans, raspberry chipotle sauce, mustard, cherry tomato cinnamon jam.
Household: Uh…
Utilities: The A/C units are now in. It’s been really humid. BUT it probably won’t matter on the electric bill, dammit. I thought we were doing really well just using fans, but with the same amount of electrical use our electric bill was up $20 between May and June. The price per kilowatt hour went up.
Gifts: Took my dad out to breakfast for his birthday.
Home and Garden: See garden blog for garden info, it is doing well. We almost have the garage cleaned out, which means we can start demolition soon.
Weaknesses: We got some solar lights at Kmart. Then, we went and picked up two more packages of solar lights at Kmart.
Purging: I went through the canned goods and cupboards and gave two big bags of good food to a food drive, plus earmarked a bunch of other stuff to be thrown out.

Irish Eyes

2009-07-21T04:11:00.000-07:00

Matt and I went to the Gettysburg Irish Festival on Saturday, and we had a nice time. The highlight for me was the Irish Wolfhounds. There were 7 hounds there, and believe me that is a lot of hound. This woman had four!!!!

Check out those eyes!

And who is that looking at me under the chair?

Look where the man's knee comes to on that dog!

This is the one that was 37" at the shoulder and weighed in at 170lb. He is looking over the little girl's head:

He's got four on leashes here. Notice his kilt. Also, the one on the far left is Agnes. She's a 10-year-old, which is really old for an Irish Wolfhound:

This is the 170-pounder again:
This was one of the smaller ones:
A whole lot of belly to rub.....and I'm not going to tell you who I'm referring to:

Not Buying It

2009-07-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

Clothing: Got a top and a skirt (gasp!) at Eddie Bauer for 70% off.

Food: Foraged 2 gallons of raspberries/blackberries, so that’s free-to-us food. I made a cream cheese dip out of the Blackberry Chipotle sauce I canned last year, it was *fantastic* so I’m going to can another batch or two of that this year as well, probably mixed berries.

The refrigerator is getting full with small amounts of a large variety of veggies; not enough to really do anything with, but enough to make it hard to get anything else in there. Cooking steak this evening with sides of leeks and….not sure. Maybe grilled squash.
Household: I took the advice of a friend and started putting a pinch of corn meal in my face wash to use as a scrub, and you know it works just as well as the $40/bottle stuff I usually use, which I’m almost out of. Great tip.

Utilities: The A/C units are STILL not in, it has still been soooo cool. I don’t think I have ever seen, in my 34 years, a summer without air conditioning; it would be wonderful. Also, we installed a programmable thermostat for use during the heating season. We can set the temp for low during the day when we’re not home, and set it to come up shortly before we get home.

Gifts: Nada. I did have a younger cousin and his wife come visit my parents, and the 6 of us all went out to dinner but my parents paid.

Home and Garden: See garden blog for garden info, it is doing well. Matt maid 3 very nice benches and a table for the fire pit area, all out of the logs we had from the pines we cut down.

Weaknesses: Went to the beer mart, got beer. *7 six-packs* of beer. We were almost out, you see, and….well….

Purging: I purged about 4-5 inches of hair. Yup, got my hair cut. I also need to go through my clothes again, fall clothes too, because I’m apparently dropping a bit more weight.

Max, One Year Out

2009-07-15T14:08:00.000-07:00

It doesn’t seem quite possible, but it was a year ago yesterday that Max had the surgery on his eye. And, in a strange twist of coincidence, he also had a 6-month check up with the Doggy Ophthalmologist yesterday.

I HATE the drive down there. It works out to an hour and fifteen minutes, usually, and if I don’t hit it just right I can get stuck in morning, evening, or lunch rush hour traffic because it is sooooo close to DC. This time I hit very little traffic, but there was some road construction. And Max, as usual, would lay down only to pop back up every time I changed lanes, sped up, slowed down, or passed or was passed by someone.

Once we got there we only had a 10min wait. One thing I like about Dr. Caruso is that she always seems to be training someone, which I find to be a worthwhile disturbance. The VCA hospitals are nationwide and there are a LOT of them, so usually it is a VCA vet, but this time in addition there was a 4th year vet student from Virginia Tech.

The exam went well, no change in his left (bad) eye and everything looks healthy in there. The right (good) eye was also ok, no sign of lens loosening which was very good news. She did say the cataract in that eye had grown a bit, but he is getting older so that’s not unexpected. In short, no major changes or real changes to the medication list we’re currently doing.

Due to the various drops and tests she wanted to do we spent two more half-hour stints in the waiting room which can be very entertaining and sometimes sad.

a lesbian couple came in with their cat shortly after I arrived. Not sure what was going on but their cat was in for some sort of treatment; they were still there when I left almost 2 hours later. We had some nice conversation.
not one but two Newfies were there with different owners. One was especially hairy, and one of the cat ladies said the Newf’s paw was the same size as Max’s head (it was). The second Newf sat behind us (the benches are back-to-back) and at one point I felt A Presence behind me and turned around to have a slobbery black hairy face right in mine, then looking intently at a slightly concerned Max. One of the cat ladies said “Oh Boy! A snack!!”
a (flamboyantly gay) gentleman was there with his (flamboyantly pampered) Cavalier King Charles spaniel. A tech came out and told him that his other CKC wouldn’t wake up, and the man just lost it. Such grief. From what the tech was saying, the other dog was pretty much brain dead, but the tech humored the man and took he and the other dog back to see the female and try to wake her up. I’m not sure what happened. I really felt for him, I got the feeling that those two dogs were the only companions he had. All of us around him had tears in our eyes.

Max slept the whole way home. The next visit will be in about six months. They will have a new facility by then. It will be closer, they tell me, and easier to get to, but I had just gotten down how to get to the old one so I’m a bit concerned about finding the new one. No matter, it will get done.

I can’t imagine the logistics of a move like that. A 24/7 emergency vet hospital with very sick animals in residence, high-tech equipment that several vets must share, not to mention contacting all the incoming patients to inform them of the move….and from what I was told they aren’t sure when. It could be this week, it could be next. What a mess.

Gem-like Flame

Getting it Together

Meet the Flockers!! Part 1

There is no Magical Path

…….Or Not.

Six Month Hiatus - DONE!!!

Sister, Sister

No News, etc.

Update - New Job

Things I'll Miss About the Old Job

Mysterious Ways

New Job!!!!

Gettysburg, July 1 – My Family

Max's Bath

Business Ethics

Yorkie Pics of the Week

Gorgeous Weekend

Objects in Motion

Long Weekend

Spam I Recently Received

Picture From Work

Matthew's Commentary

Commission #2 Done!

Virginia Trip Pics

1 Commission Done!!!

General Things

Latest on Kiva

Various Updates

Not-So-Funny Ah-Ha

Funny Ah-Ha

I was featured in a Treasury!!

Just Sold!!

Spot the Yorkie

Ambassador of Dogs *UPDATE*

The Other Woman

Almost Got Fired Friday!

“If we live like there is no tomorrow, there won't be.”

Whistling

Genealogy (or What the Hell is Lettish??)

Work Photos, Part 2

Work Photos, Part 1

March NaBloPoMo: Strange(r)

It's a Birthday!

Applying For Fed Jobs (is) For Dummies

Snowmageddon

NOT Stuck On You

Stuck On You

I Re-did My Website!!!

3 More Etsy Sales!!!

Omigod, I Have Fans!

Strange Dreams

In other news…

Overload

I Feel Like This!!!

When You Think You've Heard it All

First Kiva Loan

Etsy Sale!!

PMC Class

Silent Monks Sing the Hallelujah Chorus

Another One Bites the Dust....

Just Between Us Girls...

Introspectrus, Part 5

Amazon Subscribe & Save

Books I Love

A 4-Day Weekend!!!

Happy German Reunification!!!

Campus

Lure Course Trials

NaBloPoMo

General Update

Max's Trip to the Beach, part 3

Max's Trip to the Beach, part 2

New Link

The New Administration

Max's Trip to the Beach, part 1

Introspectrus, part 4

General Work Update

Adventures in Pain Management

Disney Bought Marvel

General Update

Ambassador of Dogs UPDATE