A Perfect Storm...

Today we had a perfect storm. It wasn't really snowing when I left my house day, but the flurries started soon after I left the coffee shop and headed to work. It was really starting to snow when I arrived at work, and by mid morning we were having quite the blizzard. As everyone else came to work I heard the stories of accidents everywhere, the busses quit running up the hills to the university, cars were all getting stuck then sliding backwards down the hills. I guess I was lucky I got to work before the brunt of the storm. Around noon we heard that the university president cancelled afternoon classes and closed the U. The funny thing was that within about half an hour of that announcement the snow let up, the sun came out and it was gloriously beautiful afternoon. Since I was already at work I stayed at work, but it sure would have been nice to go out and play in the snow.

When I went home at five I helped finish shoveling the 6 inches of wet heavy snow from our drive and the neighbors (gotta take care of 80 year old Auntie Mabel next door!). Had great game of snow ball with Daisy, and decided to to take her for a walk. We headed to the park, where the sidewalk was trampled enough to be walkable. There is something pleasant and satisfying about squeak and crunch of packed snow underfoot!

I'm calling these beads my "antiqued" beads. "Antiqued Teal" and "Antiqued Red". I've made these two, and a third in amethyst is upstairs cooling right now. Does this constitute a series? Other bead makers make beads in series, but me being the ecclectic beader I'm always doing something diferent. I kind of like these, so it might be fun to actually do a series in a variety of colors. I guess it will be interesting to see if they catch anyone's interest on ebay.

A week in the life...

Once again I haven't been good at updating this blog. It's been a busy week. I had Monday off of work for Presidents Day and went skiing with Matt. We had a glorious powder day. As it turns out, the new shorter skis do work better in powder. I'm officially glad I retired my 10 year old Pre's. Except that they were red. I miss having red skis.

Tuesday - we saw Styx in concert. Matt's friend Bobby's mom is the queen of winning concert tickets, CSN, Clapton, I swear when anyone good comes to town she wins tickets and occasionally gives them to Bobby and Matt. So my husband is always chiding Bobby, "When is your mom going win us some tickets". A couple of weeks ago Bobby comes running into my studio yelling "You're going to Styx, you're going to Styx". Turns out that his mom won tickets for Bobby but the concert was at a 21 and over club so he couldn't go. So she decided to give us the tickets. After the concert we stopped at the Bayou (the local New Orleans style club) for a snack. Turns out that it was Fat Tuesday and they had a great jazz band playing. The Bayou is known as Beervanna because of it's very extensive beer list. I drank a Scottish Kilt Lifter Ale. Gotta love the name.

Wednesday - I attended the first meeting of the "Women of the Vine" a new social group started by a friend. We met at her friend's coffee shop, everyone brought a bottle of Merlot and chipped in $10 for a delicious soup in a bread bowl dinner. It was a nice night, good to get out with a different group of people. Even if I was the token weird science nerd amongst a bunch of real estate people. Having teenager's proved handy - my friends daughter drove us there, and I had my son pick us up, so we could actually enjoy all the wine. Are you a bad mom ir you let your 17 year old be your designated driver? Or are you being a good role model?

Thurday - Jr. High school parent teacher conference. Which means wandering around the cafeteria for two hours waiting in line to talk to all your kids teachers. Always an exciting time. Especially when you have other things you need to do. Like take pictures for your submission for the ISGB's metamorphosis exhibit, which needs to be postmarked Friday. Someone tell me why I procrastinate!

Friday - Woke up with a sore throat. Go to work anyway. Mailed off my submission. Nothing ventured nothing gained right? Friday night I went to a gallery show for a friend who's an up and coming potter. My friend makes these exquisite tiny vases and other things as well! I met her teacher, who works in clay, fused glass and silver. She had some awesome pieces that combined all three. I really enjoyed talking to her. Even if it made me feel decidedly un-artist like.

Saturday - Woke up feeling like crap, so I didn't go skiing with Bob and Matt even though it would have been a great powder day. I think I just ran my self ragged all week. And stressed out too much about trying to submit the ISGB thingie. It's hard to go from being the boring person with virtually no social life to having stuff going on every night of the week. So I spent a lazy day, mostly on the computer listing beads on ebay. I think I need to change my "business" (can you really call it that?) name to Linda's Eclectic Beadery. I like to make so many different styles of beads.

Sunday - Sitting here slumming again. I woke up to houseful of kids. I would have sworn last night my daughter asked to sleep at her friends Adrian's house. The house was quiet when I went up to bed at 10:30 to watch Saturday Night Live. I guess they (6 of them) all walked to our house around 11 and spent the night at our house. Boys and girls sleeping all over the living room and den. So unbeknownst to me my daughter had a coed sleep over. Are you supposed to let your 15 year old daughter have coed sleepovers? That may have to be discussion for another blog.

Yikes, I think I have rambled way too much today. maybe I should quit and go upstairs and make some beads!

My Fan Club...

I had a meeting of my fan club Sunday night. The kids didn't have school on Monday, and for whatever reason (just because we allow it??) a bunch of kids showed up at my house. My daughter Sarah isn't terrible interested it my beads, but her friends are. Some of the girls wanted to see my beads, and I ended up bring down my wonky bowls for them to paw through. I have tons of wonkys. Well, not exactly wonkys in the mishappen way, but tons of experiments and practice beads, and beads that that when finished weren't what I really wanted. I told the girls to take what they wanted and showed them how to make a simple pendant with beads and colored artistic wire. Once I convinced them that it was really OK for them take them, that I was happy to give them way, they were like kids in a candy store, filling little baggies with my beady babies. It's kind of fun to see what the kids like, it nice that they don't see the flaws I see, and since they didn't make them they don't know that the design didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to. I have to admit I like the teenage squeals of delight and thank you hugs!

Nostalgia....

Today is a day that I'm feeling a bit nostalgic for my childhood in Cincinnati. Cincinnati was mentioned on the news last night because of the severe winter storm. Just for the heck of it I got on the internet to see if my nieces and nephews had a "snow day". Sure enough, they did. I have fond memories of those winter mornings back when I was in Jr. high and high school. Radio tuned to WSAI AM, Jim Scott in the morning, waiting and listening and hoping that my school district would close the schools. Rumor had it that if Dr. Hammond, the superintendent of schools, slipped and fell while retrieving his morning paper from the driveway, school would be called off. If he made it back inside without incident, we'd have to go to school. Regardless of how the decision was made, our district was always the last to cancel school. Once, when I was in high school, I was on the bus halfway to school when a mother came out to the bus and told the driver that school had been closed. Those snow days were always exciting, there was nothing better than hearing your schools name on the cancellation list!

Sometimes I feel bad that my kids never experience snow days. Salt Lake is used to and prepared for heavy snow, so they pretty much never cancel school here. Once, when the kids were in elementary school, we awoke to 16 fresh inches, with snow still coming down like crazy, and they didn't cancel school. I thought it was unsafe to be out and about so I gave my kids a snow day, that was one and only snow day they ever had.

When I told my kids that their cousins had a snow day they sure were jealous!

Dazzling

My alter-ego strikes again. On one hand I'm the "miss all natural" type (just look at my gray hair!) but on the other hand I love a little glitz and sparkle. That's the side of me that loves dichroic glass! I recently purchased some super stellar dichro from Debbie, a fellow forum member. I like to call it "Debbie's Dazzling Dichro!" She had it specially made and it's the nicest dichro I've ever used. I'm having fun trying to come up with interesting ways to use it.


Here are few of my newest dichro creations. I tend to like my dichro kind of subtle; little glimmers of sparkle rather than something super glitzy.

One of those weeks...

Saturday-could have been a better day. First I received my Bead Review rejection in the mail. I had been doing my best to think positively about my submission so I a was a tad disappointed, but that's life. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

Then I get a phone call from my son (danger boy, I should call him). He was up at Brighton trying out his new skis. "Mom, I fell in the half pipe and I'm coughing up blood. Do you think I should come home?" Now that's the kind of call a mother just loves to get! So 20 questions from me:"How much blood? Can you breathe OK? Do you feel bad?"..... It wasn't "that much blood" and he could breathe fine, but I told him he should come home anyway - Duh! Of course I was nervous waiting for him to get home, picturing his lungs filling with blood or him passing out or something. He arrived home safely, and when I had him spit in a cup there was only a tiny bit of blood. I think he's fine.

Later that day my husband goes to use the hot tub, and it is perilously low on water. When the water gets too low two of the jets shoot the water about 8 feet out of the tub. Refilling the tub in the winter is a pain in the butt. Hooking up frozen hoses at the spigot 6 inches above the ground behind my potting bench is always fun. Unfortunately, when we turned on the water as much water leaked out from behind the tap as came out the hose. Not a good sign. Oh well so a little water is running in to my crawlspace. No biggy, finish filling the tub.

Sunday- Matt wakes up feeling like he's been run over by a truck - *surprise*! I think he probably cracked a rib, which of course there's nothing much he can do for it. I go to take my shower, and there is no hot water, and no one else has used it all up.
Crap, I'd better do down in the crawlspace and see why my water heater's not working. I hate going in my crawlspace. It's more of a "stoopspace" but the floor is dirt and of course it spider webby. Sure enough the "little bit of water" managed to work it's way to the hole in the dirt where my water heater sits, and flooded it. So Bob and I crawl around in the mud and try to light it, to no avail. Time to call a plumber. So try to get a plumber to come out on Super Bowl Sunday! Plumber #1 - $250 to relight my water heater. No thank you. Plumber #2 - I wait and wait and no one comes. I call their dispatch who says "Oh didn't they tell you we're backed up and only doing warranty work today" Which, I think, means they're watching the game. Plumber #3 will come out at 9:30 Monday morning.

Monday- "Pioneer" showers suck! I took the morning off to meet the plumber, who had to take apart the water heater burner to unplug the waterlogged gas line. An hour and $55 later my water heater was working again. I think I got off easy. I need to get the plumber back to fix my pipe. He didn't have time to do that too. Thankfully it only leaks when the tap is on. Matt stayed home from school since he was hurting so bad from his little ski accident.

Things aren't much better at work. Our imaging system gives me an over-temperature error. Considering that every service call runs ~$5000 or more, we live in fear of it breaking. Luckily our department electronics guy found a bad fan near the laser, so he should be able to fix it. But of course his fan source is out of the part. I locate a different supplier- new fan $5.99! (Would be $59 from the instrument company! Hows that for mark up?) I think I'll have him replace them all. Better to spend $24 dollars on fans than to risk overheating a $50,000 laser. Later that day we notice things in the freezer that should be frozen are thawed. Crap...is the freezer broken or did someone leave the door open? If you don't put the sample racks back properly the door doesn't shut right. So I move all the expensive perishable enzymes to a different freezer just in case, shut the door and pray that everything is frozen in the morning. So now I'm scared to go to work tomorrow, for fear I'll have a broken freezer to deal with. We have 5 freezer, that are pretty darn full. No good overflow system if one breaks.

I need this crappy week to change!!! At least I managed to go the gym today, and walk the dog. Both things good for my stress level. And this morning my daughter made me happy. She thanked me for her "bones". She decided she likes her facial bone structure. A 15 year old girl who is actually happy about her appearance is a wonderful thing!

We can breathe again...

Yesterday morning we awoke to a few inches of snow, and today it's flurrying some more. Not a big storm, but enough to blow most of the crap out of the valley. We can actually see the Oquirhh mountains across the valley again and if I want I can actually use my fireplace tonight! We've been on burn restrictions for weeks. It's not supposed to last long, but thank goodness we have clean air for at least a couple of days. Take a deep breath .... Ahhhhh!!!!