Meet Strip (as in New York Strip, just a reminder that he’s not a pet).

Chickens are so fascinating to little kids (animal and human).

Some new beads to show off:

We went back down to the farm last Saturday to get more stuff cleaned out of the old house. Very, very depressing. There had been a box of Grandma’s papers underneath the chaise lounge (photos of that to come after I get the raccoon poop cleaned off of it), and all that was salvageable was a half dozen postcards from the 1910s. But I found something else that I was hoping to find, and it’s in remarkably good condition, considering where it’s been for almost 50 years.

Here’s another quiz. What do you think this is?

Here it is with the cover taken off.

You would guess right away if it had the crank and speaker on it, but they’re in rubbermaid containers yet.

Yup, it’s an old phonograph, and it plays cylinder records. I haven’t found any of those yet.

We used to play with this when I was little, and I vaguely remember listening to a recording of Thomas Edison.

Cute pet photos, my babies sleeping in a suitcase,

Oh, I wish I could sleep as soundly as these little guys.

I think I should just go shopping.

Last night I was going to list some beads on ebay. Opened my listing program, and forgot that I had upgraded it. So I had to put all of my info back in and go onto Paypal to get an API signature. Noticed my API signature had my old, old email address, so I removed it and made a new one. Still had the old email address. Well, I haven’t been getting notifications from Paypal for the past 2 weeks about payments received or shipping labels purchased, so I thought maybe it was because for some reason they were defaulting to my old email address. Called Paypal.

Half hour later they’re still saying it’s something on my end. Grrrr. Went to make supper for the boys.

Back to the listing program. Took another half hour to figure out that the new update constricts the photos by the smallest measurement of the photo, so now I have to make sure when I crop the photos that they’re shorter than wider. Humbug!!

By then it was getting too late to do any listing, so I did some more researching on interior dimensions of Pandora beads. I want to be positive that my beads will fit. After 45 min of doing that, I ordered a bracelet, figuring the only way I’m going to be positive that my beads will fit a Pandora bracelet is to have one to fit them on.

This morning all I wanted to do was copy some papers. Had to replace 3 ink tanks, and the paper kept jamming. I had a horrible feeling that when Chunk got up on my desks and uprooted all of my orchids, that he flung some chunks of dirt and wood into the printer, so I turned it upside down and shook it. Success!

Another hour of my life wasted!

Had a good laugh at a post on LE. I just had to copy and paste it.

“i didnt write this but i'd like it to be true

To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine...
And those who don't and are always
seen with a bottle of water in their hand.

As Ben Franklin said:
In wine there is wisdom,
In beer there is freedom,
In water there is bacteria.

In a number of carefully controlled trials,
Scientists have demonstrated that if we drink
1 litre of water each day,
At the end of the year we would have absorbed
More than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. Coli) - bacteria
Found in faeces.
In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poo..

However,
We do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer
(or tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor)
Because alcohol has to go through a purification process
Of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.

Remember:
Water = Poo
Wine = Health
Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid,
Than to drink water and be full of s**t.

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information:
I'm doing it as a public service!”

I’ve been working on photos so I can get some beads listed on ArtFire. Doing glass can be so frustrating some times. Look at this gorgeous bead. Nice colors, huh?

 Well, I should have had my close up glasses on before I cored it, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of coring it. Air bubbles!!! Grrrr!

Here’s a couple of wonderful examples of why I love Dark Aurae so much. I’m still haunting Double Helix’s website in hopes they do another batch of it.

 A nice warm color, especially for this time of the year.

And more lovelies:

This one came out just gorgeous! It has purple iridescent shimmers.

And I had to try my hand at dragonflies. I think I’m going to keep these and try to make some beaded cuffs.

Meanderings today, all over the place.

This morning when I was giving Lukas a shower, I was thinking it would be so nice if I could just put him in an ultrasonic booth, push a button and he’d come out clean, just like in the Jetsons. That thought led me to thinking about complaining, and how so many people complain about things, myself included. That let me to my phone (a Blackberry) which says I have a message, and I can’t figure out how to get to the message, and how I wish I had an iPhone (was seriously thinking about it, a phone is only $200, but a minimal monthly plan is $70! No way!), which led me to thinking about happiness. Which led me to thinking that my happiness has to be based, not on a new phone or a new camera (yah, I want one of those too), but on doing things that I know will please God, because God and my faith in his promises is the only constant thing in my life that only I can take away.

As I mentioned in my last post, we went down to the farm yesterday and I bought a few things back. Here’s a quiz for you. This is something that poorer country people like my family used,

and this is something that more well-to-do people, like my grandma, used for the same purpose. Can you guess what they are?

A hint. When my brother saw the first pot, he explaimed, “I remember that, and sitting by the stove using it.” And my sister replied, “How did you rate? We had to use it upstairs.” (where it was colder, especially in the winter).

My sister told me that we only got to use it at night, otherwise we had to go outside...



to the outhouse.


Figure it out yet?

Another day down at the farm today, trying to get more stuff salvaged from the old house. So much of it was soaked from the rains they had down there last week. This will most likely be the last trip down, since the days are getting shorter and I can’t see to drive at night, and it’s 6 hours of driving time.

I went out and covered my dahlias. It’s going to get frosty tonight. I quick shot some photos this morning before I left.

Believe me, it looks much better in person.

Recently, my blog been deluged with anonymous comments selling everything from women to watches, so I’m switching comments prefs to word verification, which means if you want to leave a comment, you have to go through the hassle of typing in a couple of words that Google puts up.

Stupid spammers! Get a job!

What a dark week it’s been.

Tomorrow it will have been 9 months since David died. I miss him. Tears have been all too ready the past couple of weeks.

We’ve passed the autumn equinox now. 3 more months of increasingly dark and dreary days.

More goofy, unseasonable weather. Lots and lots of rain. We had 2 1/2 inches here, and further south, in the Mankato area they had 11 inches, and Owatonna is flooded. We’re used to hearing of flooding in early spring, but in the fall?!

Monday, if she makes it that long, I’m going to call the vet and see if I can get David’s cat in to have her put to sleep. She’s 20+ years old, and has a tumor on her side, and is having trouble with her breathing.

As I said, a dark week.

We went down to the farm this past weekend to try to get more stuff salvaged from the old house, which is slowly collapsing. My grandmother had to be put in a nursing home in the early 60s because of dementia, so her house had to be sold to cover the costs. My mom packed up everything and moved it to the house on our farm, which wasn’t being used, since by then she had remarried (my dad died in a farming accident when I was a baby).

When I was a little girl, I would go up into grandma’s attic and pluck away at her ukelin (I was quite surprised when I googled it and saw utube videos showing it being played with a bow). Well, that was one of the treasures we found. I opened the box and was relieved to see it looked in excellent condition, but when I got home and pulled it out of the box to show my boys, I saw that the strings had never been loosened when it was put in the box, and between that and the dampness, both ends have pulled up. I’m hoping that a friend who repairs guitars will be able to fix it.

I wonder about its history. I never saw grandma play it. I wonder if it was from her mom or dad.

ArtFire is running a really good deal right now for anyone who’s been thinking about setting up an online shop. If they reach their target of 20,000 sellers, you can get a Pro shop locked in at $5.95 a month, for life. Etsy is more well-known, but unlike Etsy, ArtFire doesn’t charge a listing or final fee. And also, the items you list don’t expire. They stay in your shop as long as you want them to.

I signed up for the $7 a month for life when they first started up, and I’ve been very happy with them. I find it easier to list things on ArtFire than Etsy, and they have a lot of tools to help you promote your shops, which I really need to investigate and learn how to use.

There’s more info. here, http://www.artfire.com/groupdeal

Blahhhh, computer problems!!! It’s been going wonky for the past couple of weeks, and this a.m. couldn’t get it to start up. Finally wiped one of my drives and installed a new system. So now it’s getting everything re-installed and back the way I like it.

Scientists think that monkeys are so amazing for their tool using abilities. They should study ferrets.

I have a cabinet that is about 6 inches shorter than the room, so I put a couple of empty cat litter boxes back there to keep the ferrets from going back there and pooping (their natural instinct is to find a dark corner for relieving themselves).

The cabinet isn’t finished, so I have a 24” sheet of wood against it to keep the babies out of it, so there is a gap of a foot between the top of the wood sheet and the cabinet top. Chunk is severely challenged when it comes to limitations. He just HAS to find ways to get into things he’s not supposed to. And right now, getting into that cabinet is his main goal in life.

Hence, the use of the empty litter boxes to further his purpose in life. He pushes them out from the side of the cabinet and around to the front so he can use them to be able to climb into the cabinet.

Monkeys are so outclassed by ferrets.

Here is Chunk using a rubbermaid box as a launching pad. He would jump (and every jump he made ended in a belly flop at least a half a foot from the cabinet), then go back and get on the box for another attempt. Persistent little bugger.

This one looks like he’s going to make it, but he’s a good foot away from the cabinet yet.

Boom!

Yes, ferrets can be very focused if there’s something they want.

It was a long weekend, my nephews and 4 kids/grandkids came along with, and stayed overnight. Gets a bit hectic with 4 kids 10 and under! But the boys got my kitchen/family room ceiling sanded and 2 coats of paint put on. One more coat to go, and then that ceiling will be done. Sanding is just the pits, and I didn’t even do any of it. It leaves a fine dust over everything. I think Scott was ready to shoot me when I told him there were only 9 more ceilings to go. I hate popcorn ceilings!!! With a passion! They’re dirty and hard to clean or paint. So they are going, and I’m going to have just plain white ceilings, and hopefully, over time, I will get woodwork and ceiling borders put up.

Today they got a gate built by the hay barn, and fencing put up by it, so in the winter if the tractor or snowmobile won’t start, it’ll be a lot easier getting hay to the animals.

Winter, oh yuck!! I hate the thought of it. The days are getting shorter so quickly, and I’ve been getting more and more melancholic. Today I got some pork out of the freezer to have for the boys’ lunch, and it was dated 11/09, and it just hit me that David was still alive then.

Little things like that.

I’ve been working at getting beads ready to list on ArtFire, and here’s some of my favorites, bright, cheery and warm colors, except the last one:

Tomorrow’s Monday, so I get to play at the torch.

I got to play a little bit with some new Double Helix silver glasses last night.
I really like this one,

And this one I need to try reducing more. That’s what I did with the small bubbles, and they came out a lighter sea green, and maybe some striations.

This one I like too. Maybe I’ll get some of the reactions like Dark Aurae.

My sister was watching a ‘hoarding’ show last night, about a woman who had so many cats that she quit counting after 120.
Not to mention the smell, why would anyone want so many cats, and I was especially thinking that this morning as I was cleaning up the paw prints on my floor from the cat who jumped up on the cabinet I was staining.

It’s amazing how much damage one little ferret can do to a dozen orchids.

We were gone Saturday morning and when we got back, Chunk had use a small wooden box to jump up on the chair, and then onto one of my photography desk, spilled a vase of water, then went along the window sills into my orchids, every single one of them. Dirt all over my computer and glass desk.

Well, the upshot is that my glass desk is all nice and clean now.

Now talk about a kid in a candy store, Frantz had Double Helix’s new glass, Kalypso, in their store, so I had to order that, and then Double Helix posted a bunch of experimental glasses on their website this afternoon. Now I’ve got to get some beads sold to stay ahead of the game.

Dreary, cloudy day, with tons of mosquitoes. I’ve been trying to get out to do some planting and weeding, but even dousing myself with OFF, they’re still getting me. They’ve been just awful this year.

The heat this summer is just going on and on. Another 90° day today. This is really starting to get old.

There was a story on the news tonight about an airplane crash about 25-30 miles from here. Star Trib reported “The pilot, 32, and his male passenger, 34, died when the craft went down in a marshy area of Wright County. Witnesses say they'd been doing aerial stunts.”

As soon as I heard a witness describe how they had been sitting on their porch watching the ‘free airshow’ it hit me, it was probably the same guy who was doing the acrobats over the refuge last summer. We stood out there for 20-30 min. watching him, and I wrote about it here, http://greyhavenart.blogspot.com/2009/09/9209.html.

Here’s a photo of his plane that they showed on the news,

And here’s a photo I took last year of the plane by our place,

Sure looks like the same plane.

The bad thing about it is his passenger was getting married Saturday.

I’ve been off on a old/new tangent, coring beads. I bought a coring machine a couple of years ago, but had a hard time getting them to turn out OK (caps on evenly, and not breaking the bead). I’ve decided I have this $200 machine sitting gathering dust, I really need to learn how to use it. So far out of 8 beads, I’ve only broken 2.

Here’s some of my successes: