Meanderings all over the place today.

http://artisancraftpage.com is a digital cork board for artisans, handcrafters, and handcrafting supplies of all kinds, and for the month of August, all ads are 50% off. So that’s $50 for an ad that runs until 2014! All proceeds go to the Artisan and Glassworkers Legal Fund.

For anyone who has seen the latest Wyoming Chamber of Commerce tourist ads, with the wild horses running, if you want to see wild horses, you’d best get out there fast. The BLM, at the urging of ranchers running thousands of sheep and cattle on public land, have been for the last dozen years decimating the wild horse herds from California to Montana. The ones that can’t be adopted are farmed out to ranchers who are paid to feed them, and others are sent to government holding facilities to live out the rest of their lives. Wild horses are dying in the roundups and are illegally being sent to slaughter houses in Canada and Mexico. An interesting article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/08/the-quiet-war-against-wyomings-wild-horses/243286/

Someone on Lampworketc. posted the link to this website, http://dearphotograph.com/. Funny and so terribly sad.

The Baltimore Orioles are back, winging their way south now that the babies are all grown up. Such gorgeous birds, I just can’t help snapping more photos of them.

I really do have to get beads listed tonight. I’ve got 4 bags in the drawer and the kiln is just about full. I’ve been on a roll the past few days making beads. I made 11 this morning! Maybe it had something to do with Chester having to go out at 5:30 this morning. Here’s some that I just listed on Artfire:

The 8 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers:
1. Effective bloggers are prolific
(Uh, when did I blog last?)
2. Effective bloggers are concise
(Yup, that bead is a shimmering blue.)
3. Effective bloggers are analytical
(Analytical? What's that? I had to look it up to get a concise definition: (of a language) characterized by a relatively frequent use of function words, auxiliary verbs, and changes in word order to express syntactic relations, rather than of inflected forms.)
4. Effective bloggers are lifelong learners
(OK, one out of eight isn’t bad.)
5. Effective bloggers are focused and consistent
(Where did I put my glasses?)
6. Effective bloggers plan ahead
(What's for supper? Oh, I have to make it?!?)
7. Effective bloggers are persistent
(Oh, those weeds will go away when it snows.)
8. Effective bloggers are self-starters
(Ree of Pioneer Woman had a recipe for making iced coffee concentrate. I have a gallon jug in the fridge. Does that fit the definition?)

I’m finally starting to get over my bronchitis. The steroids helped, I don’t sound like a rusty old steam engine anymore. Now I just need to get rid of this cough. Our weather is helping, it’s cooled down a little bit, and the nights are getting cooler so I can open the windows. In paradise (my paradise anyway) it’s always going to be between 50° and 70°.

Our health care system leaves a little to be desired, to say the least. Lukas turned 25 last month, so in June Medica sent out a form for his doctor to sign verifying that he’s handicapped so he could stay on the insurance. Christian dropped the paper and the envelope off at the clinic and I assumed that it was filled out and sent in. Then last month I got the new card without his name on it! I called the doctor’s office and they didn’t know anything about it. I called Medica and they said they’d send out a new one and as soon as they got it he would be reinstated without lapse of coverage. Got the paper, Christian took it to the clinic and told them to hold it, and he would pick it up. They had it done by the next day, so I sent it off to Medica with delivery confirmation. They got it the 23rd of July. I called the next week to make sure they got it, and the guy I talked to said that it needed to be reviewed and it would take 2-3 days. Reviewed!!?! He’s been on Medica for years, they paid for some of the operations he went through to keep him out of a wheelchair, and they’ve paid for the ambulance to take him to the emergency room for seizures.

Monday Christian went in to pick up Lukas’ seizure medication, and he’s not covered!! $93. So back on the phone with Medica. The lady I talked to tracked it down to the enrollment department, but there was no one there to talk to (this is at noon), so she said she would follow up and let me know. At 4pm I called again, and she tried getting a hold of them, but they had already left for the day. Huh, talk about banker’s hours! She called the next morning to let me know that she was still following up, but the guy who was doing the reviewing was in a meeting. A few hours later she called to let me know that she talked to the guy and Lukas is back on the insurance.

It’s really simple, health care should not be a for-profit industry. I was reading in the Consumer Reports about doctors and hospitals pushing for heart tests that are not necessary, and a story about how Medicare is spending so much more money since for-profit hospices took over the market. Seems they get patients from nursing homes into their hospices, and then when the 6-month limit is up, they return them to the nursing home. What a crooked system!

End of rant.

My sister has been nice and has not bugged me about listing while I was sick, but she warned me my vacation is at an end. I wished I liked selling the beads as much as I like making them. :) A couple of whispy, shimmering beads in my Etsy store.