Thankfulishness

I am so used to getting maybe six hours of sleep, I went to bed at 10:00 p.m. Wednesday night and woke up at 4:30. Got up and wandered around the house (don't you love that time of the morning?), then went back to bed and flipped channels until I settled on the first episode of a Jon and Kate plus Eight Thanksgiving marathon.

I am grateful I'm not Kate. This was an early episode and she looked absolutely sleep deprived. I'm still sleep deprived, 13 years later, but at least I don't have to change diapers. 8-)

I'm also thankful my SIL didn't get upset that I didn't call her until 9:00 a.m. Thanksgiving morning to see what I should bring. And that she didn't get mad when we showed up at 4:00 p.m. because I'd fallen asleep and couldn't wake up, LOL. I'm thankful my husband's uncle is the funniest ornery man on Earth. He had us laughing yesterday until we were slinging snot and holding our hurting sides.

What was I saying?

Oh yeah, thankfulness. I hate to say I'm grateful to have a decent job and a roof over my head when so many people don't. But I am, more and more each day.

Obamax font!

Oh! Oh! I've got so many posts and whatnot lined up for this blog but I keep getting distracted.

Check out this new Truetype freeware font from over at dafont.com -- it's by Adam Chilota and it's called Obamax!

Hee hee. I love it! These images are made for this blog background -- but you can download the font to your computer, and then just type with it, any size, any color.

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Life photos at Google

If you love to find sources for old photographs, you will really enjoy this. Google is hosting a huge image archive of photographs from Life Magazine.

Here's a link to my search for images of New Mexico, where I found the photo above.

And here's the URL to the mail portal: http://images.google.com/hosted/life

Bead Show Albuquerque

pent a good part of yesterday shopping at the bead show (Fairgrounds, Flower Building, or maybe it's called Children's Art? still going on today until 5:00), and then counting my new goodies when I got home.

Then we went to dinner with Betcey, Mark, Nikia and John at Zea's (for the second time this week!) and Junior got home and decided, once again, that our friends are "crazy" and "fun." That is high praise from a young teen, huh? :-)

The show was small but intense, with more than one Chinese vendor selling dubious stones and cheap lampwork. I recommend that you buy your stones from local shops -- there are plenty of deals to be had with better quality stones. Mama's Minerals and Thomason Stone Supply are two shops that come to mind. There were lampwork artists at the show who seemed to be doing very well, but (no offense) the really well known artists were not there. Better deals anyway, from the up and coming folks. 8-)

Betcey and Mark's Beyond Beadery was a wall full of glitter, as usual. I love Mark's unique bead mixes and stocked up on plenty of colors for my beaded cord bracelets.

I also found some good deals from a Nepalese couple out of San Francisco. I think they are called Dorjee (at least that's what my receipt says). I bought little pairs of faceted glass and stone teardrops, capped in fake silver with Tibetan-style swirly designs in them, to make earrings for Christmas presents. (Actually I'm thinking of going back today for more to make earrings for my jewelry shop).

And of course I stocked up on silver findings from Ands Silver. And I found some really cute vintage heart lockets that I'll use in a charm bracelet. (Like I need more heart lockets... [sigh] well these have a little indentation on the front, perfect for collage. 8-)

Today I have a million things to do, photography, laundry, prep for OFFCenter's holiday show, oh and maybe actually STUDY for my final project. Tonight it's the Elephant Bar after the show, yum!

Goddess for a Day?

Just not the particular goddess I would have chosen to be. Multitasking -- always makes me think of Lakshmi tho I know that's not what she's about. Y'all. Today while Betcey and Nikia were being pampered at La Bella, :-P~~~ I converted a big PDF into little PDF's (in between phone calls and emails) so I could save them as Word documents in order to convert them to HTML files I could then open in Dreamweaver and apply a stylesheet to. With a minimun of tweaking or actual thought. If anybody can think of a quicker, easier, hopefully mindless way to do this, feel free to let me know...

And then I drove (or rather rode) to Santa Fe CC for a presentation, and on the way realized I was coming down with the same odd little bug that Junior stayed home with today. It consists of a stinkin headache and a woozy tummy, and that's about it. Just sayin', in case someone out there gets it -- don't worry, you prolly won't hurl. During the presentation I sketched out an online course interface and some new sequin stitches, LOL.

Me and my coworker grabbed a quick and delicious lunch at Blue Corn Cafe, despite my tummy, then I raced into the kitchen store at the outlet mall to buy Junior an omelet pan for Christmas. (Shhhh!) They grow up so fast. ;-)

Then I came back to work just in time to leave again to pick up Junior's homework. I was going to speed back to work when the woozies hit me again and then I realized I'd get back 15 minutes before it was time to go home. So I popped into OFFCenter real quick to pick up -- Yay! -- a check and find out when to bring in what jewelry for their holiday fundraiser. Oh! It's Dec. 8, 2008 and there will be live music by Bonnie Bluhm!

At home I sat on a chair and vegetated for, oh, 10 minutes and then started picking things up (the force of gravity in this house is AMAZING, things seems to land on the floor more often and stay there longer than anyplace else on this astounding planet). The MOTH (man of the house) brought home groceries -- including ginger ale, thank goodness -- so after it got dark I sat on the couch, ate ginger cookies, and made up a few pairs of those twisted wire earrings they seem to love so well at OFFCenter.

Then I helped Junior review for a test and checked into my online course. I got sidetracked and converted some more PDFs... and now the turtle is sitting there staring at me forlornly as if to say "My Turn." [sigh].

Tomorrow we finally get to meet up with Betcey, Mark, Nikia and Big John at Zea's. Woohoo! (I hope I don't fall alseep in my big greek appetizer platter).

GOODNIGHT! 8-) from the some-kind-of-goddess-with-many-arms

Update: Remembering Cindy

The folks running the Remembering Cindy shop at Etsy have recently restocked the shop with bead doll goodies galore. There are lots of beautiful and affordable tiny art dolls, jewelry, paintings and other creations. As I mentioned in an earlier post about this charity effort, all the proceeds go to the American Lung Association in memory of bead artist Cindy McCornack.

I bought the postcards -- and oh my! I don't know why but I didn't realize I'd receive each style as a large size postcard. For some reason I thought they'd be either the smaller standard size or that there would be a picture of all four mystery panels on one card. So I was very pleasantly surprised when I received four suitable for framing sized art images. They are very affordable, and of course it's for a good cause and in memory of a very generous member of the online beading world.

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Have you met TED?

I may be gone for awhile -- gone as in lost in this wonderful site full of videos on many topics:

TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

A colleague turned me on to the site during a conference we're hosting this weekend. You've got to see, for example, this video of amazing camouflaging and bioluminescent sea creatures:

David Gallo: Underwater Astonishments

Oy, I am totally sidetracked... can hardly finished posting... searching across the themes at TED... gotta run. 8-)

The Bookshelf

Here's the built-in bookshelf that Ibrahim made for us. He built it in three sections, installed it in the house and then put molding along the ceiling and in front of the sections to cover the seams. Beautiful! It's maple.

I took this picture when it was first installed. At this point we have it more arranged, with all the DVD's and CDs up, and some of the books. Notice that Ibrahim built us a sturdy shelf for Squirt the Reluctant Turtle (she surved pneumonia at a very young age, but now I'm pretty sure she'd make a hearty meal for four...oh! I didn't say that!)

He also left a space for a small antique desk my mother gave my husband. Please ignore the retro turquoise chair. The MOTH (man oh the house) had found the brown multidrawered thing at Goodwill and brought it home for a mere 20 bucks or so. However, I had no idea what to do with it -- it is big and heavy, not at all petite (and neither is the turtle tank honeys). So I was going to give it away or something... and then we went aha! I'm gradually migrating family art supplies into the drawers, like gel pens, colored pencils, string and embroidery thread, pipe cleaners, etc.

I also now have a place for all my grad school books, papers, class binders, etc. I hate to throw all those research articles away after all that work... now I have a great spot to pile them up, sorted by class.

Next step is another maple shelf, a pony wall actually, with more space for DVDs and software disks, as well as a few games and heirloom toys.

Oh and speaking of home improvements... we got a beautiful new patio door, it actually opens and closes without waking the neighbors! It's also double paned and much warmer. Not an intentional improvement. But how can you fault Junior and his new ricocheting BB pistol when we really did need to replace the door anyway? Hmmm. I wonder what I can buy him so he'll break the old toilet?

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Trementina

Sorry for my absence of late. I am in grad school and, well, every now and then, I have to study. AhahahHAHAHAhahahAHAHAHAHA [<--sound of panicky, maniacal cackling] I'm working on a paper. We are to write about significant events on our learning journey, and so far I've discovered that it's hard to separate things in one's life. They are so interwoven. So yeah, it's interesting, but demanding when you've already got a full-time job AND that creative urge that's always tugging at you 24/7.

Enough whining. Now, more whining: I've had two migraines in the past month. I think it's from allergies as well as turning on the heater. I always get them in one certain spot, behind my ear. After several hours, all the muscles around that area hurt like hell, and pain reliever does help a little with the peripheral pain. If I take my (expensive) presciption medication at the earliest signs of migraine, that usually kicks it before it starts. But my problem is, I tend to get them in the middle of the night, while I'm sleeping. So I'm usually stuck with them for either 24 hours or 5 days. That is what the past has taught me.

Well, when Junior got hit by a car, I took him to my acupuncturist, Suzette, and she gave him a little jar of salve. Here in New Mexico, they call pine tar "trementina" and it's used for lots of things, from pulling splinters to purging the flu. The Huichol also combine it with beeswax to create the mixture they use for embedding beaded designs into their bowls and such.

Anyway, Suzette gets a trementina-based herbal salve from a guy in Northern New Mexico. His grandmother used the recipe as a healing salve for arthritis. I know it's got osha root in it, but I don't know what else. I love the way it smells, so when I got my second-to-last migraine I decided to rub some on my neck and shoulders, and even behind my ear where the migraine pain was the worsst. I laid down to take a nap and to my amazement, the migraine was gone when I got up!

Thinking it might have been a coincidence, even though I've never had a migraine last less than 24 hours, I used it again the other morning when I woke up with a horrendously painful, and very local, migraine. Laid down, took and nap, and poof! Migraine gone. Well under the 24-hour limit. Still felt a little cloudy, but no pain.

I can't wait to tell Suzette I found another use for her herbalist's salve. Oh and by the way, some of the very best info on traditional New Mexican remedies comes from Michael Moore, whose little pamphlet on Spanish/English herb names I stumbled upon many years ago, before his books were published. The Southwesst School of Botanical Medicine website contains oodles and oodles of information, including a vast catalog of plant pictures. Check it out!

Bead Retreat Goodies

Might as well share some of my stash-enhancement items from the weekend retreat. I got my bestest goodies from Sally Ingram, master of the traditional diagonal weave. In this technique, Sally charts a design and then warps up the beads ahead of time, making sometimes incredibly long beaded bands. I love, love, love this pair, which is one of her medum-length designs. The beads and tiny buffalo nickel charms dust my shoulders:

Sally also makes beaded critters. First she makes the forms from soft white smoked leather, stuffs them, and then she uses tiny charlottes and whatnot to embroider them. She makes pins with the smaller ones. Several of us were able to "ensnare" some of her critters -- here's my new stash!

In the photo below, Judy and I are modelling our new earrings. Me (don't judge me by my hair, I forgot my brush! Seriously!), I'm wearing Sally's diagonal weave shoulder dusters, and Judy is wearing the pair she STOLE from me.

See, I was teaching earring wires, and I tossed a bunch of bottlecaps in my tote bag in case someone wanted to make a quick pair of earrings by smashing the bottlecaps, punching a hole in them, and hanging the bottlecaps from their newly created earring hooks. Rita had handed out some coppery, pumpkin-colored feather charms during our trick-or-treat swap, so I smashed some orange bottle caps and hung some feathers fro them. Left the room for a minute and returned to find Judy stubbornly wearing them. Well, they did match her shirt. So I made another pair. Left the room again, and returned to find Bonnie wearing the second pair! Evil wenches! What the heck, I made Nik a pair in green and gave them to her before she could steal them. ;-)

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Giant Hedgehog Acorns

These little oddities of nature were part of Nik's roomie gift to me. They are ginormous acorn-like seeds from south central New Mexico, around Soccorro. They're about 2-1/2" to 3" long, capped with hairy hats, or rather, hats with bangs! They remind me of little hedgehogs, or critters from a Star Wars movie. At first glance, held up by their "tails," they also reminded me a bit of matachine dancers, with their fringed veils over their eyes. Thank you Sarah!

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Reunion

A joyful reunion -- this is about half of us. Sarah took the picture. Please do not look at my hair! We had just arrived, me after a long week of work and studying. None of that for me this weekend!

From left to right, it's Rita, Moi, Judy the Queen of Retreat Organizers, Bonnie and Suzanne. We rent rooms to get a good rate on a meeting room. Our meeting room is snug but perfect, and there is a door directly to a covered patio, where we can cook polymer clay.

Last night we ate at tres-SantaFe-ish The Shed. We entered through a secluded cobblestone courtyard, and wound our way through all the little rooms in the adobe walled restaurant that was once a family home and donkey shed, to the very back dining room reserved just for us -- it was so gorgeous! There was a large stained glass window, fireplace, huge mirror, and the walls were painted pink, so we were bathed in an amber pinkie glow all evening. Which added quite a nice ambience to my annual margarita gold. ;-)

Of course they always schedule me to teach after my annual margarita. So we played with wire and hammers. Yeah! Pictures to come...

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