RIP, blog entries back to November. I probably won’t miss you.

So there was some kind of catastrophe with the servers that our websites are on this weekend and nothing from the past few months could be restored. This doesn’t concern me too much – I tried to fix the links that had been added/deleted in that time, and at some point I will add the little “what I’m listening to” box back into the sidebar. Mikey lost a whole bunch of stuff, and his email and all of his band pages are on those servers, too. Oops. If I cared about eternally preserving these entries I would write them in a notebook, not put them on the interwebs.

Anyway, not a lot happened in my absence. I made some new things and listed them for sale in my shop. Some necklaces a few days ago (the housewife is my favorite) and some more fun plastic earrings this afternoon (more beads in the mail today!):

I’ve also been making lots of stuff for Danielle’s show and trying to figure out how to display what. Maggie made TEN bags and fifty cards and is getting those in the mail, which I can’t WAIT to see. I’ll be way more confident with MAGGIE’S goods on my table! I’ve been getting stuff from Etsy-ers left and right, and Etsy as a whole is sending me some promotional stuff from their press team. So far the people coming the furthest to this show are from Wisconsin and South Carolina. Not FROM those places… they’re WV boys… you know what I mean. I’m really excited / sad / nervous / excited / sad / nervous.

It snowed a whole bunch and Paisley LOVES it. Photos under the cut of frozen campus (I forget which one… they all run together. I know it’s not Mikey’s) and of her playing. I found a remote corner with big drifts and no people/streets so I could take off her leash and let her run. At first she freaked out and pressed herself against my legs, scared of her new freedom and the weird fluffy white stuff. Then she RAN… it was the most adorable clumsiness I have ever witnessed. She kept falling and grunting and rolling and flailing around. By the time we got home she was soaked and shivering and still wanting more.

What else. My tonsils are swollen. I probably shouldn’t have them… this happens every year. I’ve watched six episodes of season two of LOST in the past few days, and finally caught last Wednesday’s episode online just before they removed it from the site for copyright infringement. It’s on at seven again this week, and sometimes I have to work until seven or after. I think this means that I will finally have to learn how to program a vcr to tape something for me. I’ve never in my life had something worth taping. I need to talk to someone on the phone. Last night I called Meggan & Angie, who weren’t home, my parents’ house, which was busy, and Jess, who was out somewhere (but Dustin was watching Lost - I’m so proud!). I gave up and watched Lost, too.

I got most of our taxes done today and Mikey has to do his fafsa tonight. Bills are paid, letters are waiting to be mailed out, the floor is swept. I love getting things DONE. I hate my JOB. It keeps me from getting things DONE.

The dog and the laundry still need washed. Eh.

Ok, photos. Then eating cereal and then boiling old vinyl records. Nothing good, I promise.

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This afternoon Mikey and I listened to his Christmas album twice while I made seven new necklaces and he read. I am now in the mood for Christmas. I’m mentally willing my pumpkin spice candle to burn faster so that I can replace it with pine, cinnamon, peppermint vanilla…

(Etsy is down for the weekend to update to version 2, but hopefully these will all be listed later this evening or tomorrow.)

Getting better. My spine hurts from bending over my table for three hours. Part of that three hours involved sorting through my childhood stamp collection that I brought from home… I have tons of stamps and 1920s / 1930s postmarks set aside to use as soon as I get more glass. The little ones are double sided, made from fabric scraps. And another baby playing card. I have two decks of those, if anyone has a lucky card that they want to wear around their neck. I need to hunt through photo frames at the dollarama to find some with thin glass that I can cut up, and I need a big spool of solder SOON. The little coil that came with my kit is rapidly dwindling.

Last night Mikey and I were supposed to play games with Colin & Cheryl, who I work with, but plans fell through midafternoon. We ended up drinking a bottle of wine by ourselves and playing with voice recognition software… where you dictate into a microphone and the computer transcribes it to text. It was the most hysterical thing ever, and my abs still hurt from laughing.

The results of reciting the nicene creed, with my favorite parts emphasized:

We believe in one god the father of the almighty maker of the governor
of all that is seen and unseen
they believe in one lord Jesus Christ the only son of god
eternally got no father
got from the light from late true got from true god

they got not made one and being with the father
through them all things are made

for us and for hours outpatient he came down from heaven
he was born on the right
he was conceived by the power of the holy spirit
and one of the virgin Mary and became a man
for our sake and was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered item was buried.
On the third day heroes again in fulfillment of the scriptures.

He ascended to heaven and it’s even at the right into the father.
He will come again in Florida judge living in the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the holy spirit the lord the giver of life
for the proceeds from the father and son that of other in Sunday’s worshiping glorified
He is booked into the profits
We believe in one wholly catholic and apps dollar charge
We not shown that isn’t for the forgiveness of sense.
We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world’s common.

A man and.

I might not make it through mass this evening with a straight face.

Listening: Gillian Welch

Today it:
1.) was the ugly-not-refreshing kind of rainy, dark at 4:30 p.m.
and I:
2.) had the day off so I
3.) made some necklaces while I listened to Nick Drake
which is:
4.) the best / worst music for this kind of day.

Ace is mine. The rest are for sale on Etsy, even though they are still less than smooth-edged.

On Sunday my dad bought an old rifle – “you know, the cowboy kind” – and later at home sat in his rocking chair and loaded three shells into it while my mom talked on the phone. When she passed the phone off to him, she started examining the gun – not checking the action and unaware of what he’d been doing – aimed at the ceiling, and fired a round through the roof. My dad retells the story last night on the phone, gasping for air, laughing hysterically, as if delightfully unaware of his own mortality.

Arms are for hugging, kids.

and all the friends that you once knew are left behind
they kept you safe and so secure
amongst the books and
all the records of your lifetime
what will happen in the morning
when the world it gets so crowded that you can’t
look out the window in the morning?

Oh also, last night I had a dream that I ran into Ian Keplinger in a barn at a fair and one of his arms had been medically or otherwise amputated. I had to stop for a moment and think, “did he have this arm the last time I saw him? Would I look stupid if I asked what happened because I should know because he’s been this way for awhile and I’ve just forgotten?”…… I hate feeling stupid in dreams. Especially over something so obvious as Ian having his left arm or not having his left arm the last time I saw him. So in the dream I started thinking about the real-life last time I hung out with him, and I remembered that it was the night that Doug, Chad, and Ian found a bunch of half-inch wooden dowel rods in Mikey’s room as we moved him out, and then spent a good half an hour beating each other with them in the kitchen. I was finally forced to take them away (in real life) when Chad and Doug backed Ian into a corner and he was begging for mercy. I decided, in the dream, that Ian could not have dowel-rod-sword-fought two other grown men with only one arm, so he must have had both, and so I should ask him what happened. But then I woke up. When I woke up I thought about the dream and remembered my first memory of Ian (and Stefan)… they were in a barn stall at the fair, chillin’ with one of their grandpa’s hogs.

How’d a memory from 20 years ago and a memory from two years ago fuse themselves with the weird book I’m reading (involving teleportation and not making it back home with all of your molecules intact and thus having a weird deformity or missing limb) and make it into last night’s dream? I want to be a neurologist.

I ran some errands for awhile this afternoon and discovered a good fabric store in the underground about four minutes from my work. Woo! I bought a few things to make earrings and put them together when I got home & uploaded them to Etsy.

Penguins, as well as sailboats and some bluegray shell earrings.

I also spied these backpacks in a luggage store window while I was down there, and of course I want the little one:

I’ve never listened to this Snow Patrol band, but I downloaded this song because Rufus Wainwright’s sister sings on it. At least I think it’s his sister, but maybe I’m making that up. It’s so pretty. Now I want the rest of the album.

I find the map and draw a straight line
over rivers, farms, and state lines
the distance from A to where you’d B
it’s only finger-lengths that I see
I touch the place where I’d find your face
my fingers in creases of distant dark places
I hang my coat up in the first bar
there is no peace that I’ve felt so far…

listening: Snow Patrol – Set the Fire to the Third Bar

My first soldering attempt is really bumpy and ugly and the glass needs cleaned up, but here it is!! I am so excited. Never has crafting been so dangerous… cutting glass and melting metal and fumes and an anxious Michael asking every ten minutes if I’m being safe.

I’ll have it down by the end of the week. Practice practice practice. All I want for Christmas: spools of lead-free solder and ball chain and copper tape.

More new things @ stick in the mud.

There is a cat or child or some creature upstairs that plays with a pingpong ball at all hours of the day. When I hear it bouncing quietly along the floor, I feel so sorry for whoever lives downstairs from us and has to hear our holy terrors ripping around all night long and slamming into things and jumping onto their ball track from an elevated surface and skidding four feet across the floor. The walls here are very thick, the floor/ceiling is not.  Sorry, downstairs.

Canadian thanksgiving is next Monday, and my grandma sent us a card (I hope everyone has grandmas like this). I’m going to make her homemade noodles (sans chicken broth) for dinner, becuase the Maxwells have NEVER had homemade noodles. I kept trying to explain the concept of a homemade noodle… and Drew just stares at me…. “what, like pasta?”. I told Erin this today, because I’m still in disbelief…. “WHAT?! that’s a SIN!”. It is, m’dear. Lucky for them, salvation lies in ME. Anyone else out there never had homemade noodles or even heard of them? I’m so ethnocentric. Not that Drew & Kathy are of a different ethnicity than I am… unless being from Phoenix counts.

New stuff.

& more.

Mosaic tiles from the dollar store downstairs. They are a huge pain to poke holes in, but I have enough done to make 10 or 15 more pairs of another design whenever I can find jump rings… I haven’t found a good craft store within walking / subwaying distance.

More @ Etsy.

Last batch of jewelry on Etsy before I pack it up. I might try to sew a few more things, but all of the jewelry making stuff is getting packed tightly away so I’m not tempted. The next time I make earrings and things (necklaces soon!), it will be at my brand new craft table instead of on the floor… my spine will be very grateful.

These and more:

(Halloween is coming!)

(Several similar tile earrings in other colors are up – I love these. Most of what I have online I don’t make doubles of for myself, but I have kept 3 or 4 pairs of these.)

Listening: Way to Blue : An Introduction to Nick Drake
Reading: The Mermaid Chair

New stuff. Earrings made from buttons & other things, wallets, and a couple of bracelets.