This one is intended for my side biz, for my jewelry.  Actually I already have a link to it here, except it used to be my e-commerce site.  I switched things around over the weekend, moved the e-commerce pages to a different folder (essentially making it invisible unless I give a direct link), and put the new blog on the main directory.

I created both an Artfire Studio (basic for now) and an Etsy shop, where I’ll eventually start posting items for sale – jewelry, polymer clay beads, etc..  The links to both are at the top of the page on that blog.  I am also going to try out a plug-in I found for wordpress which allows one to host an e-commerce solution straight from the WP blog.

Technically I could re-list some of the stuff I had up previously at my e-commerce site, but I’d like to re-take the photos of a bunch of them with better lighting and backdrop and whatnot, before I do that.   Plus I’m also trying to work on some polymer clay stuff to be able to sell as well.   Once that is all ready I’ll put up another post here, as well as at the new blog, letting anyone who still drifts by here, know about it.

I know I’ve lost a lot of readers (geeze, do I even still have any at all? LOL) due to my extremely sporadic posting and even less frequent visitation and commenting at other blogs… And that’s ok with me, to be honest. It’s nothing less than I deserve for slacking like that.  I’ll just have to work on posting more often, either here or at the other blog, and trying to visit other blogs.  Unfortunately with the micromanagement at work looking over my shoulder for claims of excessive slacking there, i.e. surfing too much, it’s become even more difficult to do much of what I used to do from work – which was read others’ blogs and such.  And because I’d rather work on things like, you know, building up a stock of jewelry and whatnot when I’m at home, that doesn’t leave a lot of time for blog surfing and posting on my own blog… Except when I’m in a creative funk, of course.

Talk about being spread thin. 

Anyway.  Summer is definitely here where we live.  This weekend it’s supposed to get to over 110 degrees.  My poor garden, I’m glad I built the shade structure over it.

My celebrity tomato plant keeps getting attacked by tomato worms (they burrow into the tomato and eat it from the inside, causing it to rot on the vine), AND those that don’t get attacked end up cracking.  I just can’t seem to win with that plant.  My cherry tomato plant is still plodding along despite that nearly all of the bottom branches are completely bare (no stems at all) from having to clip off the dying ones.  And my better boy is now trying to take over the box that IT is in (like the celebrity did) and has a few branches that span the entire width and length of the box (4×4) plus a foot or two.  It’s still budding tomatoes too, although I wish the birds would bugger off… (if it’s not worms, it’s birds).  I’ve only managed to get one good tomato off of it in the last month thanks to the darn birds, and I picked that one before it was completely ripe.

My watermelon plants started growing like crazy, all the way up the five foot trellis with one of them now snaking horizontally across the top of the trellis, too.  I think I spotted at least three good budding melons so hopefully by the end of the month we may have some big enough that we can eat?  They’re up high too, so I won’t have to worry about my daughter picking them off long before their time.

Despite that my cucumber plants are sprouting baby cukes like crazy, they never get very far (I presume due to the heat)… I think I found *ONE* little one this morning that seems to be getting further along in growth than all its predecessors, so maybe I’ll get a lone cucumber, we’ll see.

The corn was a bust.  It got hot too fast and many of them started drying up before I had a chance to pick them, so I left about six ears out for the birds to pick at and eat if they want.  They weren’t very big either, maybe six or seven inches was the longest ear of corn.  There are still a few small ears that I left on hoping they would grow, but I’m not holding out much hope.

I pulled up the peas last weekend, they were done.  I left the beans but they don’t seem to be producing anymore, so I’ll probably do the same with them soon.

There are quite a few things I will do differently next time around, in addition to planting earlier in the spring, many of the plants will get their own designated garden beds so they don’t have to compete with other plants, and to increase yield.

So now I just have to start planning for next spring and figure out how much more timber I’ll need to buy, and what size beds to build, in addition to purchasing the soil ingredients again as I have very little left from the spring planting.  I’m not sure I’ll do another shade structure though.  There seem to be quite a few people who garden around here without it, so if the one I have survives until next year, I’ll experiment and see how the uncovered beds do compared to the covered ones.

I rarely keep up around here on my ol’ blog (gee, as if that wasn’t obvious), and my other blog is even more neglected.

I guess it’s in part due to how busy it has been at work, and there are no plans to hire anyone new to help with the workload.  So we’re all burdened with a never-ending pile of orders to work, with no end in sight.

Then when I get home, I either just want to sit and surf, or more recently, kill Zombies in a new Popcap game that my husband suggested, “Plants vs. Zombies”.  I think I played that game for nearly four hours straight the other day.

Meh.

The garden is still going well.  Several ears of corn are on the stalks, although I have a bit of an issue with damn aphids on the flower stalks on those, though.  My beast of a tomato plant seems to make orange tomatoes (rather than red), so I’m not exactly sure what type it is.  My cherry tomato plant seems to be struggling, the stems & leaves are dying off from the bottom out, yet it continues to grow up and out like it’s trying to outrun whatever is killing off the lower stems.  And now the beast tomato plant is having the same issue, so I am wondering if it’s either A) something contagious, or B) a nutrient deficiency.

My peas are about done, they fell over before we went on vacation and didn’t take to being tied up very well, so I think they’ve got one foot in the grave and will probably be pulling most of those up before too long.  My poor beans haven’t been doing great whilst being dominated by the beast tomato plant, so I may pull those up too.

I never did get any sweet potatoes like I planned, so those will have to wait for another year I think.

Aside from the mystery issue with the tomatoes, the biggest problem I’ve been having is the damn birds getting to the tomatoes before I do, sometimes before the tomatoes are even ripe, despite the bird netting I put up around most of them.  Ugh.  Stupid birds, leave my mater’s alone!!

So anyway.  Just a quick update, now it’s time for the long drive home from work.  Yay.

I think I may try to hit the hay a little earlier than “usual” tonight.  If I’m as tired later as I am now that won’t be a problem.  But we’ll see, if it’s a typical night I’ll probably get engrossed in something and end up staying up later than I intended…  I’m shooting for no later than 10pm.  Ha.  We’ll see.

It was a good game, though.  And at least the Cardinals gave the Steelers something to work for instead of being an easy win.

We had watched the game at my husband’s brother’s house across town, so we had a bit of a drive to get home.  At about  the mid-way point downtown, driving down the freeway, we noticed the car we were closing in on in the next lane over wasn’t holding to their lane very well.  After a mile (and not passing them), we realized the person was probably drunk, so I had my husband turn down the radio and I dialled 911, who connected me to DPS’s 911. I told them we were behind a car that appeared to be weaving and swerving in their lanes and encroaching on other lanes, gave the plate # and description of the car.  The first guy I talked to said they had actually already received a few calls about that car and they were trying to get an officer out to pull them over.  I thought that was good, and hoped we’d see a cop soon.

We followed this guy (or girl) for several more miles, not seeing a single DPS officer anywhere.  We were approaching our own exit and my husband said we’d follow the guy until the next Loop and then we’d call it quits.  By this time there was at least one other car following this person like we were, also on their phone (presumably to 911).  We kept our distance but watched in fear that this guy would crash or take someone else out…

He/she got terribly close to the K rails in a construction zone – we don’t know how this person managed to keep missing the walls and other cars (yay on the other drivers for avoiding this guy though, they deserve more credit than this driver).

We came upon an exit only lane and this driver was in that lane (we were about four cars back), and my husband was watching carefully to see if this driver was going to yank back out onto the freeway when realizing he/she was on an exit-only lane… and he/she did (narrowly missing another car), and the SUV/pickup immediately behind this guy also jerked back onto the freeway (it was one of the vehicles we realized was also following this drunkard like we were).  However, we had a car immediately to our left so we could not move back onto the freeway, we had no choice but to give up our “pursuit”.

We were livid that the DPS officers had not shown up yet.  We had driven 15 MILES following that schmuck and had not seen one SINGLE cop.  Not ONE.  What the hell?  We could not fathom why DPS had not doubled or tripled their force on a night when it’s pretty clear with our home team in the Superbowl, that there would be a lot of partying and drinking going on, which would mean drunk drivers.  What. The. HELL!?!?

I just hope that whoever that dipstick was, they got to their destination safely and without incident; so far I have not seen any news aritcles about any accidents (fatal or otherwise) out west of where we had to exit.  I am thinking about writing a steaming letter to DPS complaining about the utter lack of officers on the freeway last night; we should not have gone five miles without seeing a cop on the road, and more importantly, not seeing one in pursuit of someone who it was clear to several other drivers, was driving drunk!

If this is what putting up all the new speed cameras has done to the number of DPS officers on our highways in town, this is just one more reason to have those damn things removed. It was supposed to free up officers for other matters, and to (mainly) bring in more revenue for the State.  But let’s face it – I’d rather see someone speeding down the road at 80 mph who is in control of their vehicle and get away with it, than a drunk doing anywhere from 45mph to 80mph and barely in control of their vehicle – and no cop in sight to pull that person over!

Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.

Lately – and usually – I think it’s because since my job entails being online all day – not necessarily surfing the web, as that is not my job, but just being on the computer – by the time I get home, I may get on my computer to check email and such, or IM my husband, but blogging is the last thing on my mind otherwise.  Since I joined that Christi Friesen class for a steampunk gryphon, much of my time has been spent either looking for old watch parts, and now that I have those, I’ve been working on my gryphon.  (yes, I will post photos when its complete)

Then my daughter requested I make something for her; her first request was a puppy.  So I set about making one she could play with, but before I could put its head on, she woke up from her nap the other day, saw the splotchy spots on its body, and declared it a cow.  So a cow it became.  It has short stumpy legs and no horns (safety, you know), but it is cow-ish and she likes it.  She gets upset if she misplaces it.

She still wants her puppy, though, so instead of another play toy, I told her I’d make one for a necklace – mainly because that silly cow took a good four hours just to put together, and I wanted something simpler for her second request so I could still work on my own stuff, too. LOL  So it’s going to be a necklace bead a bit larger than the circumference of a quarter, accompanied by two doggie bone beads, two large circle beads and two smaller circle beads, with hearts on them.

Oh, and her color request for the puppy?  Pink.  Heh.  So I compromised with her and said I’d maker her a white puppy with pink ears.  So that is what I made, a white pup with pink ears and a darker pink bow, and the circle beads are the same color pink as the ears, and the hearts are white and dark pink.  Yep, I’ll post pix of those, too, when they’re cooked.  I figure later tonight I’ll cook those and part of the gryphon (or maybe the rest of him, too, depending on time).

So that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing in my off time, rather than blogging… working with polymer clay and perusing the yahoo groups for my class and Christi’s other group.

Oh, I also made a filly bead based on her style, too, that is done but I’m not done stringing the necklace for it, once that’s all done I’ll include pics of that, too.  I’m still trying to decide how to do the clasp for it, it’s a bit heavy for a necklace so I’m thinking about making another polymer clay bead to make a toggle clasp with, I figure that would offer the best support for it.  Just gotta find the time to make that one stinkin’ little bead. LOL

What the heck is up with that?? It’s 79 degrees outside according to my iPhone’s weather widget.  Where the hell did winter go??

We had to turn on our a/c because due to our vaulted ceilings throughout the house (which, by the way, I do not ever recommend to anyone – ever) and shoddy air circulation, it’s currently 82 degrees in my office/den, where I am currently sitting and contemplating finishing the last few tasks for work (telecommute day).  And the fact that my 24″ LCD monitor gives off quite a bit of heat probably doesn’t help my room temperature much.  I don’t know what is up with that.  I can put my hand up in front of it a couple inches away and feel the heat radiating off of it. 

Anyway… I know all you in the frigid climates may be jealous of the temperatures here.  But honestly, I’d rather it be 30-40 degrees cooler right now, it’s too early for this kind of weather!!

A colleague of mine who was also tagged for jury duty today was not nearly as lucky; while he did not have to report to the court at 8:15a, he was told to call back after 11am to see if he was still needed.  That time is quickly approaching, I wonder if they’ll make him drive downtown for the rest of the afternoon?

I took it to a mechanic, and was told that my a/c compressor was shot. It was going to cost $1500 to fix it!! The blue book on my car was barely $1200, so there was no way I was going to fork over more than the car was worth just to fix the air conditioning, nor was I going to drive in 115 degree summer heat without an air conditioner (so I got a new car).

However, if I’d known about Discount AC Parts, I found that the ac compressor for my car, brand new, only costs about $400! Granted I still would have needed to find someone to install it for me, but I’m sure someone could probably have done it and kept the entire cost under $1k, and probably could have continued to drive my old car for a few thousand more miles. I really miss that car actually – it got great gas mileage – 35-40 mpg on a good week.

Based on what I found that I could have saved on my own car, I would say it’s worth checking them out if you’re in need of a new a/c compressor for your own car.  My in-law’s drive Toyotas, so if they’re ever in need of a Toyota AC Compressor, I would have to say I’d send them to that site to compare prices.

I have seen these Space Bags advertised on televsion and have seen them at the local super store, and have considered picking up a couple of them to try out, particularly for the loads of clothes I have currently stashed in those big plastic totes, waiting to either be given away or set up at a yard sale.  But it looks like there is a better deal if you order these Space Bags  online – 7 bags for $19.95 plus shipping & handling.  That’s a pretty good deal, considering I have seen them selling only two or three of the medium or large bags in the stores for the same price!

They are a good way to store all your winter clothes until they’re needed again next season, especially the bulky sweaters, blankets and coats that would ordinarily stuff your closets.  So if you’re looking for something to help save you some closet space – or even to be able to shove them under your bed to make cozy with the dust bunnies – go check out the Space Bags at that site to get seven of them for $19.95 + S & H.