More from Moab

A canyon country inspired bead!

A few more pictures from my trip to Moab. These are all from Canyonlands, a place I really love. The first shot is from the Green River Overlook. In my opinion Canyonlands is far more impressive than the Grand Canyon. Canyons within canyons for miles and miles!

On my first trip to Canyonlands we almost headed to the bottom of the canyon. It was Easter weekend '85, and we had only lived in Utah for a month or two, having just moved from Ohio. We left after work and arrived in Moab long after dark. We were headed up to the Canyonlands campground. Back then the park was pretty primitive, all the roads were dirt and not well marked. We made a wrong turn, and found ourselves heading downhill on what seemed to be a jeep trail. It was narrow, with rocks rising up to our right and a what appeared to be a 1000 ft cliff to the left. After driving down a bit we realized we must have been on the wrong road and decided to turn around... in our stick shift Honda, in the dark, on a one lane dirt road with 1000 ft cliff and no guard rails. I think we made about a 100 point turn... turn the wheel and pull up a few inches, back up up few inches; repeat about a 100 times making sure to stay away from the edge. It was a little more excitement than we expected on our first trip to canyon country!


I only bring this up because one of the overlooks Rose and I stopped at over looked what had to be that scary road. The picture above shows the road we accidentally headed down. Imagine turning a car around there! The next picture shows where that road headed had we continued. The road is the Schaefer Trail, an old road that ranchers used to take their cattle down to the Green River for the winter. I'd love to know how the first person managed to forge that trail!

I wish that somehow my pictures did Canyonlands justice. It seems to be impossible to capture the expansiveness, grandeur and scale of Canyonlands

Moab Weekend

What a wonderful weekend I had! My beadmaking friend Rose was in town on business this weekend, and we took a road trip down to the National Parks near Moab, Utah. We spent Saturday touring Arches National Park; hiking out to see the arches and enjoying the red rock landscape and desert flowers. The picture is of us standing in front of Landscape Arch, one of the prettiest arches in the park.



On Sunday we headed to Canyonlands, and took in all the spectacular overlooks. 1000 foot cliffs with no guard rails gave Rose a chance to test her acrophobia. For someone who claims to have fear of heights she looks pretty comfortable near the edge of that cliff don't you think?


Traveling with a fellow beadmaker was fun. It was interesting the discuss which glass colors could best be used to capture the colors of Southern Utah. Our consensus was that none of the standard colors are quite right, so Rose has challenged me to try to mix my own. I see a challenge in my future!

Just to pretend it was "bead" weekend here's a shot of Rose looking at beads at the Moab rock shop. OK, we didn't purchase any beads we both got some cool rocks!

This week...

I have been in a bit of a fog this week. After all the excitement of Matt's graduation and having my parents visiting from Florida I was rewarded with a killer cold. I'm not sure getting up at 4 am on Monday to take my folks to the airport helped me any. I've been dreary, and the weather has also been dreary. We've had several days of cold rainy weather and snow in the mountains. It's funny how here in the high desert a couple of rainy days actually feels like a treat!

So I haven't managed to get much done this week, I left work early the other day to go home and take a nap and after I woke up I decided to fire up my torch for the first time in over a week. Turns out it's hard to make beads with a drippy nose, and silver foil flys all over the place with a good sneeze. I did manage to make a new bead I kind of like. I'm calling it Canyon Flower. (Or is it too weird?) Perhaps it will lead me into a new direction.

Speaking of canyons, I'm heading down to Moab, UT, today with my beadmaker friend Rosemarie Hanus. She occasionally comes to Salt Lake on business, and since she's here over the weekend we are going to go to Arches National Park. I'm planning on having an inspiring weekend hiking in the red rock country!

Graduation!

It's hard to believe I am now the mother of a high school graduate. I will swear that adorable baby boy was just born the other day, yet on Thursday night he walked with the Skyline High School Class of 2007. Wow!

As graduations go it wasn't too bad (I expected a big snooze fest!).The kids marched in to the tune of "Pomp and Circumstance" which quickly transitioned in to the "Theme From Star Wars". The student speeches were actually pretty darn good, and (thankfully) the administrators weren't too long-winded. It's a big school, so reading all the names actually took a while.

While they distributed the diplomas, my husband relied on modern technology to break up the monotony. He started text messaging Matt:

"It could be worse... it could be me in that robe."

"We're going to find a smaller school for your sister!"

"Are they going around again?"

At some point Bob pretended to be propping his eyes open, and Sarah took a picture with her camera phone and sent it to Matt.

I guess my family is a little loony!

Reasons I like the bead world...

One of the things I love about the glass bead world is how once you are hooked on melting glass and realize how one's current skill level effects (limits!?!) what a person can create, you gain apprectiation for beads that may otherwise not appeal to you simply because you marvel at the skill it took to create them. Seeing Mavis's bead the other day reminded me of that. I was certainly oo-ing and ahh-ing over them the bead store, as well as lamenting that I couldn't create anything like that. But the truth of the matter is while I'm the first to say I suck at sculptural work, I also have to admit that I've rarely attempted any sculptural pieces. Back in December I talked about my sculptural bead attempts; not much has changed since then! But not yet having the bug to work on those skills doesn't stop me from really admiring the work of those who do. I think it's wonderful to know I may have future challenges around the corner, and that one day I may be inspired to make things that currently seem out of character for me.

A second good bead feeling from my Mavis bead experience - I love all the bead world connections! I've never met Mavis, but I've made friends with folks who have. I have a cool bead that I got in a trade with Schermo. It looks like a victorian style purse. I don't recall the entire story, but she came up with that design to make a bead for Mavis. I have another wonderful trade bead; a green vine bead with a cool turtle murrine that was made by Kristen of Gennesee Glassworks. Kristen used a murrine made by Mavis in the bead. So even though I don't know Mavis at all, I feel this tiny connection. It's a nice thing.

My parents are in town visiting for Matt's graduation. Today Matt and Bob and PopPop went golfing, so Sarah and G.G. and I decided to go shopping so Sarah could find a dress for her "promotion" (from Jr. H.S. to H.S.) party. Since recent shopping trips hadn't been successful, and because we had Sarah's grandma to entertain, I decided we could venture out of my usual north valley box and check out Southtown Mall. Southtown is only about 15 miles from my house, but from my world view it's the other end of the universe, so I haven't been there in 12 or 15 years. (I'm a terrible shopper, if it's not for sale at Smiths 3 blocks from my house I probably don't need it!)

It turns out that there is a bead store there, so of course I had to go in a look around. I always check out the locked cases to see if they have any nice lampwork, and today I was pleasantly surprised to find some beautiful lampwork mermaids and fairies that I suspected were Mavis Smith beads. Sure enough they were, and the shop keeper was kind enough to let me fondle them. I've never met Mavis, but I have admired her work, so it was really cool to see some in real life. I was surprised how big they were, and yet how delicate. I don't get to see much lampwork other than my own, so it was really cool to see such marvellous beads in real life.

Paranoia and Spring Flowers

I'm not entirely sure but I think that someone has covertly "micro-chipped" me and is tracking my every move. I think they are reporting all my moves to my boss, so he can catch me when I get to work late. Are these the ramblings of paranoid psychopath, or am I just noticing weird coincidences again?

One nice thing about my job is that (within reason) I can set my own hours. I'm pretty boring though, I usually get to work everyday at about 8, give or take 15 minutes. My boss on the other hand likes to work at home in the mornings, and usually shows up at work around 11 or so. Except.... when I am late for work. I'm rarely "late", but once in a while I schedule an 8 am dentist appointment or need to stop at the kids school or something which causes me to get to work at 9 or 9:30. Never fail, the only days my boss comes to work early are the days that I get there late. 95% of the time I could show up at work 9:30 or 10 and beat my boss to work, but for some reason, on those days I am late (like today!) he manages to come in early (for him) ang catch me come in late. He's never there to notice all those days I'm there at 8.

Today I was late because my parents came to town. They flew in yesterday afternoon, and this morning were heading to Vegas for a few days. So I stayed home so I could make them coffee and see them off. While I was there, the east window light shining on a bouquet of garden flowers looked so pretty I had to take some pictures.

Science and Art

My nerdy side likes it when art and science collide. Today, CBS's Sunday Morning Show did an interesting story about Robert Lang, an engineer turned origami artist. He does the most amazing things with single sheets of paper. Even more fascinating to me, he understands the mathematics of it and has applied origami to engineering problems, like designing airbags and building expandable telescopes. Now that is something I can't even begin to imagine!

I find origami fascinating and exceedingly difficult. Like every school kid, I can make a paper crane, and I used to be able to make the blow up frog; the one that you blow air in to puff up it's abdomen. When my kids were little I bought a really cool origami book- or so I thought until I tries to fold my first T-Rex. Yikes, even with instructions I found it exceedingly difficult. I don't think I managed to fold more than two things, and they probably didn't come out quite right.

Check out his website, it's full of interesting things. For many of his creations he shows the crease patterns, not that they would help us mere mortals learn to fold anything so complex. It almost makes want to improve my math skills!

Coincidences again

As you may know I am fascinated with coincidences, and and equally amazed at how this web of a world intertwines. I had another cosmic moment the other day, an unexpected intersection of my nerd world, my gardening world and my glass world.

I went shopping to purchase bedding plants for my front garden and deck planters. I prefer to buy my plants at the growers; I love to browse fragrant greenhouses bursting with color! As I was walking through the green house I saw two women that looked vaguely familiar. I'm sure I stared at them, and when we bumped into each other the second time I was sure they were staring at me. So we did the "where do I know you from?" routine. One woman asked me "Do you do glass?" Which of course I do, and we realized we met a while back at the Western Art glass store. Small world. That left woman number two. "Where do you work?" she asked. I said "the university". and they both said "so do we". To make a long story short it turns out we all worked in the Human Genetics department more than 11 years ago, two of us in labs, and the third in the administrative office, where she took care of my accounting. It's funny how I couldn't remember where I recognized them from, but as soon as we sorted that out my memories became absolutely crystal clear. Makes me want to look for the keys to unlock all the other forgotten memories that are rattling around my head!

Nature and numbers(11 again!)

Do you remember me talking about the 11's in my life a while back?
They seem to have returned. The person who left me my most recent ebay feed back has a feedback of 11. Another recent customer currently has a feedback of 1111. I still don't know why I'm so 11-philic lately. I suppose it's just me being over observant of odd coincidences (like when street lights blow out when I go by!), but it sure makes me wonder!

More weird observations...another nerd alert moment...
I've been cat sitting for a friend, and I have been using the need to go to her house as an excuse to take a lunch time jog through neighborhoods near work. The other day while running through the Aves I came across this cool Horse Chestnut tree. The trunk split into two branches, the east half was in flower, but the west half wasn't. I've never seen anything quite like it, and no fuzzy memories from botany major days explain it. I guess I'll have to do some research!!

Thieving Dog two

My Daisy wants to continue her life of crime! I took her to the gully for a swim yesterday, and she made a new friend, Missy (short for Mississippi). Missy had a cool toy, a donut that was made out of tennis ball material. It was tossed in the water for Missy, and Daisy grabbed it and wouldn't give it up. Normally when Daisy gets involved with another dog in a game of fetch in the creek, as soon as the other dog approaches she gives up the stick or ball. She's never been an alpha dog. But with this donut toy she was different, she wouldn't give it to Missy, and when I finally convinced her to come out of the creek she wouldn't give it to me either. When I finally wrestled it from her and gave it to Missy's "mom" she jumped up and tried to steal it back. I guess I'll have to head to Petsmart this weekend and get her one her own, I need to stop her life of crime.


The bad part of yesterdays trip to the gully: Web worms! Or do you call them tent caterpillars? Or more scientifically, Fall Canker Worms ( I think! I'm not an entomologist.) Ugh. I hate web worm infestations. They were hanging all over the narrow trail that leads down to gully nearest my house, so I ended up hiking back up and and walking through the neighborhood to the main park entrance, where the trail is wide enough that you can dodge the worms hanging everwhere. I'm not the phobic type, but inchworms dropping from the trees on threads really gross me out.

Sad days and butterflies

Today was a lousy day for my daughter. Last week one of her friend's mothers committed suicide, and today was the funeral. I don't know this friend very well, and I only met the mom once, but my daughter really, really liked this woman. I guess they had many heart to heart chats and Sarah considered her a friend, not just someones mom. I think it's wonderful when kids find adults they can relate to and bond with so I feel very sad for my daughter. The funeral was up north in a town about an hour away, and at the last minute Sarah's ride didn't work out so I ended up playing hooky from work to driving her and her friend since I could see it was really important to her that she attend.

I guess 15 year olds like to have their own life, their own little world, so she didn't really want me to attend the service with her. Since we were an hour from home I figured I'd just kill time until she called to tell my she was done. I went and got my hair cut which didn't take long at all (good bye 6 inches!) then I decided to go for a hike. I drove up behind the church to where the houses ended and found a place to park and a jeep trail. It was a lovely spring day for a hike up the mountainside. The hills were yellow with mustard plants, the lupines a beautiful blue, phlox and alliums and the occasional astragalus were also in bloom. The sage brush smelled wonderful, the birds sounded wonderful. It was really nice to get out for solitary, peaceful hike on what should have been a work day.

The highlight of my walk was getting to a little spit of a creek. It was rocky, all of about an inch deep, and swarming with tiny blue butterflies. With their wings spread they were a beautiful blue, when closed they were grayish and blended in perfectly with the rocks they were sitting on. Bunches of them sitting on the rocks perfectly camouflaged, until disturbed, when they spread their wings and made little clouds of blue. I wish I'd had my camera with me.

So I ended up having a nice day, and attending the funeral lifted a big emotional burden from Sarah. I'm sure my boss won't be thrilled about me missing work, but sometimes you have to do things for your family, and today was one of those days.

Insomnia and Bird Beads

Insomnia moment... it's 4 am and I can't sleep. The birds are chirping outside. I recently made a new discovery in nerd land...the Cornell University Bird Guide. The online guide has something the bird books do not... bird songs! So I'm laying here in bed with my laptop listening to bird songs, both outside my window and online. I'm trying, with little success, to identify the real bird songs. The funny thing is, when I play a bird song, my cat comes over and tries to stick his head under my computer. I guess he likes birds too.

In another nerdy moment, the necklace in the picture was bird inspired. One of the guys in my lab showed a picture of a Loon at lab meeting last month. I saw it and thought it was perfect bead inspiration... that red eye, the distinctive black and white patterning of the plumage. About the same time Art Bead Scene announced it's first monthly challenge, which was themed
Take Flight, so I decided I'd make a Loon bead necklace. I can't quite decide what I think of my creation. On one hand, it seems, well, loony! On the other hand, it seems a bit busy. Maybe my avian inspiration/interpretation skills need to be honed a bit. (Yup, I'm fishing for comments/criticism here!) I do think though, that I will try to design some more bird inspired beads in the future. I like it when nature inspires art.

Earrings again...

Look, I did it again! Earrings! I found another excuse to actually use some of my beads. I went to a baby shower on Saturday, and in addition to the baby gifts I thought a "mommy" gift was in order, so I decided to make some earrings. The expectant mom, the wife of a PhD student in my lab, is having a surprise baby. She was always told she'd never be able to have kids due to severe endometriosis. She started having some abdominal pain and was sent for an ultrasound, where everyone was afraid they were going to find some tumors, but instead they found a 5 month old fetus!!! Talk about a surprise. A really huge surprise considering that she had had three negative pregnancy tests during those first five months. (She was doing a drug trial for an endometriosis treatment that required pregancy tests) That's probably the most exciting pregnancy story I've ever heard!

Jury Duty

The one interesting and unusual thing that happened to me this week was I got called for jury duty. It began differently than normal; instead of receiving a letter telling me to call in every morning to see if I had to report, I got a subpoena, telling me I had to go to court the week before to fill out a questionnaire. We were told that this was fairly unusual, which made me think it might be an interesting case. The questionnaire asked about ordinary things like your education and occupation, and things that seemed more specific like what you thought about lawsuits, tort reform and capping monetary damage awards. It also asked about your hobbies, your news sources, and my favorite question: "What are the bumper stickers on your households car?" So would my "What if the hokey pokey IS what it's all about?" bumper-sticker disqualify me? Or how about my husbands "What would Buddha do?" Interesting question!

When we returned to court on Tuesday, there were so many of us they need to bring in extra chairs, and the judge had a seating chart telling us where to sit. I wondered if there was significance to the chart. Were we pre-screened as to who the prosecution and defense thought they would like to choose? They handed around another questionnaire, and every one was required to stand up and answer all the questions. It seemed a little silly, as most of the questions had been covered in the written questionnaire we took the week before. It was interesting to see the variety in answers; the various educations and occupations of the prospective jurors, and their interests. Many were pretty ordinary, others more interesting, like the guy why builds and flies experimental aircraft, or the woman who looked about my age that was a skydiver. I admit I was the only one to stand up and say I made lampworked glass beads, and was a member of the International Society of Glass Beadmakers.

The bad thing about the question process, was they also wanted to know what your family members did for a living. Since I live in Utah, where there as so many huge families, those lists went on forever as people listed the occupations of their 5 or 8 kids. From there the questions got more specific, so everyone didn't have to answer: "Have you been involved in a lawsuit, or car crash? Do you have strong feelings about lawsuits?" Some people where actually privately interviewed in the judges chambers. It was interesting to see how the process went, although I think this case was a bit atypical; the judge told us that it was the longest jury picking process she had in her 8 years as a judge.

To make a long story short, I didn't get picked. Part of me was relieved, because they anticipated the case would last another three days, and I'd hate to miss that much work. On the other hand I was really curious about the case. All we were told was that the couple was suing for damages because of back or neck injuries she received in a car wreck. She was wanted to be compensated for pain and suffering, he for “loss of consortium.” I was curious about the case. Were these money grubbing sue-happy people or was she really damaged? Was the driver (who admitted liability) reckless or was it truly just an accident. One alarming thing was that the accident happened in 1999... does this say something for the legal process? Are all cases drawn out for years and years? Yikes!!! I guess I'll never know, darn it. At least I'm off the hook for jury duty for the next two years.

My dog is a thief....

I took Daisy out for a jog tonight. As part of my course we usually take a lap through the park, where I'll let her off the leash to romp around. In the middle of park we saw Tommy and Jetta. We first met them a few weeks ago. Tommy is the owner (or is it really the other way around LOL)Jetta is a sweet, year old black lab, who is very friendly, and, oddly enough, is happy to let Daisy be the the alpha dog. I find that amusing because Daisy is not an alpha dog by any stretch of the imagination. Tommy brings a ball to the park for Jetta; a "squeaky" tennis ball, that my dog Daisy just loves. So tonight Daisy ran over to play with Jetta, then Maggie, a 5 month old labradoodle (who had her own tennis ball) came to join them. While we let the dogs play and chatted Maggie's "dad" and Tommy kept tossing the balls to all three of the dogs. It was starting to get dark, so I told Daisy it was time to leave and started jogging out of the park. Before we got to the road I stopped and put her leash back on her, then we headed out the drive and through the neighborhood. We were a few houses down the street when I noticed Daisy had something in her mouth - a ball, Jetta's squeaky tennis ball that Daisy likes so well. So I guess my dog is a thief!!! I turned around and headed back through the park, and managed to make it the other end just before Jetta and Tommy pulled out of the parking lot. So how do you make your dog apologize for being a thief?? I'm not sure she felt the remorse when I returned the ball... I think she really wanted to keep it!

Orange

I often grapple with the notion of acquiring a beadmaking style. I'm pretty eclectic with my beadmaking. There are certain things I go back to again and again, like florals, which I find very challenging and would like to do better, or "reactive" glass beads, which appeal to the mad scientist in me. Other than that I tend towards making more long beads than round ones, styled in what ever my inspiration of the moment happens to be. I like it when my inspiration comes from new places. Most every morning I stop at my favorite coffee shop to feed my caffeine addiction and chat with my coffee shop friends. It just so happens that the barista does stained glass, so when business is slow often chat about glass. She always tells me I should make earings. I agree, I should, because I love earings, but I think they are hard because it is difficult to make them match as well as I'd like. Last week we had the earring discussion again, but this time I asked "What color?" and she said "Orange. I don't have any orange earrings" Orange is not a color I'm particularly drawn to, in fact, many of first beads were orange because it was color I didn't mind wasting; I figured I'd save the "good" colors for when I was more experienced. So last week I worked in orange, and actually had fun with it. I ended up being pretty happy with my orange earrings, and my coffee shop friend was both surprised and delighted when I presented her with a earrings this morning as I paid for my coffee. It's alway fun to suprise someone with an unexpected gift!

Check in....

Geez, I guess I've been a bit remiss in the blogarama world lately. I've been nursing a headache all week. I don't know if I'm getting sick like Sarah was a week ago, or if I'm suddenly allergic to something, or just stressed or what; either way, it hasn't made for a terribly productive week. But I guess that's enough whining for now.

My big news for the week is that after his trip last weekend to check out the school, Matt has decided he wants to go to college at Ft. Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. Matt is interested in video editing and photography, and the program there seems stronger than what's offered at Westminster College here in Salt Lake, his other school choice. The proximity to mountain biking and skiing may have have helped aid in his decision. He was was jazzed to see the dorm rooms all have bicycle hooks... definitely his kind of place.

Now I just have to get used to the idea of my baby moving away in the fall. I know experiencing new people and places is a valuble part of college life and will be good for Matt, but I know I'm going to miss him. Poor Sarah is sad he's going away to school, but she'll get used to the idea. I am truly blessed that my kids love each other and are really good friends. A mom can't ask for much more.



So what do you think of this little red car? It's the rental that the insurance company paid for for 10 days while we looked for a replacement for Matt's wrecked car. It funny they gave us red, since all our cars are red. I like little cars, so I had fun driving it instead of the "bus" (for hauling teens) I normally drive. My favorite part about using this car for the week was the comment Sarah made when she first:

"It looks like a car that five clowns should come out of!"

She and her friends laughed whenever we drove it somewhere. To be honest. I've always loved clowns so I thought it fun!

My Loose Screws

The camera I use for my digital pictures is a Pentax Optio S5, the tiny camera that will actually fit in an Altoids can. It is actually my second digi-cam, my first was a Toshiba that took excellent pictures, but after a day at school with my daughter, ceased to work. For my second camera I decided to go small. One advantage of digital is being to take as many pictures as you want, with out having to worry about film and processing costs, so why not get a camera that can easily be taken everywhere so you can take pictures when ever you want. It's not exactly a fine professional camera, but considering it's size I think it does a great job. I've had that camera for three years now, and most of the time it has been floating around in my purse, unprotected, or in my pocket, or beach bag or knapsack. I recently noticed that a bunch of the screws that held the case together had fallen out. Things were seeming a little loosey-goosey, so I figured I'd better look into getting some new screws before my beloved little camera totally fell apart. I called Pentax's service department, where I pretty quickly got connected with a live service person. I fully expected to be told that it would cost me $50 or some other ridiculous amount to repair my 3 year old $200 camera, but I was prepared to bite the bullet and purchase them. I was completely surprised when the woman sent. "We'll just send you a set of screws, what is your address?" "You mean for free?" I asked. "They're such an inexpensive item, and shipping is $8.00 minimum, so it's not worth charging for them" she replied. I was shocked. It's not often a big company gives you anything for free. My screws came today, and sure enough the invoice was for $0.00, with no shipping charges. It sure is refreshing to get such great customer service!

Big Spring

So what do you think of this bead? For me it is a fat bulky bead, I seem to tend towards slender beads. I kept adding to it, and it kept growing, and by the time I finished encasing it was a fatty. (Like it's momma LOL!) I named it "Big Spring". It will be interesting to see if anyone in the ebay world likes it. Even though it's not my "normal" style, (as if such thing exists!) I have a vision of how I'd use this bead. I picture a long multistrand necklace made with an assortment of seed beads and other small beads. The bead would have silver bead caps, or Bali spacers on both ends and hang vertically. I would have loopy dangles of the same small beads coming out of the bottom. It's too bad I don't get around to string things more often. I'm allways collecting beads and stringing materials, but it is rare for me to get around to using them. It seems that when I have free time, I tent to turn on my torch. Maybe someday I'll have more leisure time and actually work on all there stringing ideas tossing around in my head. Who knows, if the auction gods don't favor this bead, maybe I'll actually string it up.

Sexy beads in the spring time.

So do you think this bead is sexy? When I posted this picture in the LE gallery I was told that it had a sexy shape. I've never thought of my beads as sexy... maybe I should do more beads in that shape... they can be my porn bead series!



So remember my pretty spring tulips? This is what they looked like when I came home from work today. Spring in Utah. 70 degrees one week, snow the next.

Eleven!

Perhaps you caught my post the other day about the weird occurrence of the number 11 in my ebay actions. Johanna of Canyon Echoes Lampwork was the person with 110 feedback score. She won the auction, and my posting feedback for her lightning fast payment bumped her feedback up to 111. So what was up with my eleven day? I guess I don't really know, but it turns out that there are other people out there pondering the importance of numbers. Johanna (Thanks!!!) sent me this cool link, that explains all about the significance to the number 11.

Number Eleven possesses the qualities of intuition, patience, honesty, sensitivity, and spirituality, and is idealistic. Others turn to people who are 'Eleven' for teaching and inspiration, and are usually uplifted by the experience.

I'd say 11 seems like a nice number, I'm glad to have had an 11 day!!

Spring Garden

Did I ever mention that I like flowers? This bunch of tulips in my garden looked particularly stunning to me this weekend. My tulips are looking a little thin to me this year, I think I'm going to have to remember to plant more this fall. I haven't gone on a fall tulip planting binge in a bunch of years. I think that year I bought something like 300 bulbs taught me a valuble lesson in moderation - I never thought I'd get all those bulbs planted. Gardening is such a love hate thing. I love the results, but am not always thrilled to do all the work. I did more spring weeding this weekend, mostly clearing unwanted things from my backyard perennial garden. I wish there was some sort of gardeners force field that would keep things were you want them; like periwinkle up on the hill but not in garden, a small patch of that pretty lavender flower rather than one that wants to overtake the entire garden. As I weeded out the rouge periwinkle and other invasives I felt like I was finding buried treasure, a young daylily buried here, some columbine buried there. Hopefully they will reward my labor with some pretty blooms this summer.




This is one of those beads I can't quite decide what to think of. It has a mossy, earthy look that I really like, but it it has a "fall" feel that seems out of place this time of year. I'll probably have to revist these colors in the fall.

Trash Talk

I had a nice a workday on Monday. We had a visiting scientist who does research in the same area as one of our lab's projects. So rather than doing "real" work on Monday I got to spend time meeting with my boss and this scientist, got taken to lunch, attended a seminar and was trained to do new analysis techniques. My boss was even nice enough to invite me to dinner with his wife and our guest. Prior to going out to dinner my boss invited us up to his house to take in the view (he has a nice house with am amazing view) and enjoy a glass of wine. It must have been trash day in my bosses neighborhood; everyone's trash cans were out at the curb. As we drove up to his house Lorna, the visiting scientist, who happens to be from England, asked what we called our big wheeled cans. "Trash cans, garbage cans" I responded. "What do you call them in England?" Her answer was "Wheelie bins"! You know, I love that name. It is much more fun than trash can or garbage can. So from now on my refuse is going out in the "Wheelie bin" and I intend to convince my friends and neighbors to do the same! So if you have a big wheeled dumpster at you house, you need to start calling it a "wheelie bin"!

Eleven...

Today I've had an interesting ebay numbers day. I have 6 auctions up, as of last night one had a bid already. The bidder on that auction has feed back of 110 (at the moment I write this at least). I decided to peak at my auctions from work this morning, and was delightedly shocked to see that two more beads have bids, by different bidders, both of whom have a feedback of 11. One of those bids came at 11 minutes after 9, and today is 11th day of April. There seem to be a lot of 11's in my world today. What do you suppose that means, other that that I perhaps I should post this post at 11:11 on the 11th?

Happy Easter!

Happy Chocolate Lagomorph Effigy day! I wish I could say I made that up, but it was really Andrea Jane on LE that coined that greeting. It really appeals to the biology nerd in me!

My weekend could have been better. I "put out" my back Saturday morning. I wish I had some great story about climbing a high peak, or skiing off a cliff, or jogging 20 miles messing up my back, but in reality I was in my studio and bent over to toss something in the trash and "tweak", I got that bad feeling in back. Instead of resting it I spent the day gardening...digging all the *$%^$#&* grass out of my gardens and from the perimeters of all my front yard flower beds. I have a lot of flower beds. Our clay soil is pretty much like concrete, especially first thing in the spring, so you can't just pull weeds; you have to dig (jackhammer!) them out. It was difficult, as I couldn't stand up straight, so I'd turn a few spade fulls of weedy dirt, then sit down and break up the clumps of dirt to pull out the freaking grass. So now my back is killing me, but at least my front yard is cleaned up and ready for me to plant annuals when the frost date passes.

Today I decided I better be nice to my screwed up back, so after my family went out and had a nice Easter breakfast with my next door neighbors and the neighbors across the street I decided to drive the 78 miles up to the hot springs for a nice soak. There is something wonderfully therapeutic about soaking in hot mineral baths. In a total nerd alert moment, I decided to catch up on some scientific reading for work while I soaked. This actually caused a high school student, who was actually interested in the journal article I was reading, to strike up a conversation with me. It turns out she is keenly interested in science, so we had a really nice chat. She had actually taken learned to use prepare samples for and use an electron microscope as part of a (sadly, now defunct) high school program. It was actually really refreshing to meet a kid who was so interested in learning. Our science conversation sure got us a lot of funny looks from patrons at the springs! It added a nice twist to day.

So now I'm laying in bed, resting my back, surfing the web and watching tonight's ebay offerings not sell (my weird beads!), except the for the one in todays picture, which actually thrilled me by getting a couple of bids. Hopefully my back will calm down before I have to go to work tomorrow.

Weird Beads?

Are these beads too weird? If you know anything about my bead making "style" you know that I: a. love to experiment, b. like to make beads in many shapes and styles, and c. am always hoping to discover something new and different and exciting. The problem with trying to do things that are "different" is sometimes it's hard to know if what you've created is "different good" or just "different weird". For some reason, I really like elongated focal beads. When I get in the mood to make jewelery, I like to turn them into focal pendants. So I rather like these. Although it's hard to capture in photos, they are encased and have nice depth. I'm especially fond of the pink one. Rubino on silver pink encased in a pale pinkish-violet made an interesting magenta color. But as much as I like them, judging by the lack of bids and watchers on ebay, I'm guessing I may have crossed over the line to "Different Weird". I guess I'll have to wait and see. Even if they don't sell, it's always fascinating to see what people like, and what people don't. Sometimes the ebay experiment is almost as fun as the bead making experiments.

Old friends and weird cosmic experiences..

I know I've mentioned this before but I am always amazed and intrigued by the phenomena that I call "weird cosmic experiences"; which I define as those odd times when the stars and the moon seem to align in a meaningful away. Sometimes I want to call them "weird cosmic coincidences" but I deep down they don't seem like coincidences, but things that for some unknown reason are just meant to be.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about my old favorite tie-dyed t-shirt. In that entry I mentioned that I had forgotten the name of the woman who had the tie-dye parties and taught me to tie-dye. On Saturday I need to fill a prescription, and since it was such a nice a day (and Matt had my car anyway) I decided to walk Daisy down to the walk up prescription window at Smiths. As I approached the window I saw a familiar face, and the pharmacy tech said "We played softball together!" Sure enough, it was Alisa (yeah for name tags), a woman from my intramural softball team 10+ years ago, who also happened to be woman threw the tie-dye party! It's funny how I had just recently been thinking of her and poof, bumped into her after not seeing her for ten years. As it turns out, after having two kids she decided it was time for a career change (she had been a lab tech like me) and was now in pharmacy school, and working at the pharmacy by my house. We had a really nice chat, I had always liked her and it was nice to catch up on what she'd been doing. I'm looking forward to bumping into her at the store again.

I find it sad that people come and go so easily from our lives. I guess it's only natural that people's lives head off in different directions, and it is so hard to keep track of all the people who have touched our lives. It's really nice when they pop back into your life, even for just a brief chat.