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. 

Still clinging to our jobs (thankfully) amidst some minor (major for some) changes going on within, but so far no lay offs (yay!).  Though they do have us taking five unpaid days off before June.  I’ll take it though; better than anyone losing their jobs here.

Still working a bit with polymer clay but not being overly productive (quantity wise, anyway).

Still looking around our house at the clutter wanting to pull my hair out over it, but not feeling the energy to get up and do much about it.  The “I’d rather do’s” overtake the “I *need* to do’s” all the time… Then when I seem to get just a teeny bit of headway, more stuff just takes its place.  Gah!

Oh well.  Maybe if I just start using like two hours a weekend to pick up and declutter I’ll maybe start seeing some changes.  We’ll see.  Bleh.

So, despite the fact that I’d rather laze around and enjoy my weekend, I will probably participate and shoot for that magic number, because, honstly – a full week without having to drive 45 miles one way to work??  It’s quite tempting.

I’ve also debated whether to take the five unpaid days off all in one week since I’m salaried and it’ll be broken up over my next ten paychecks anyway… but the first day I picked was Feb 16 because the daycare is closed that day for teacher training, and if I take that entire week off that means one less person working with the group to get our numbers down by the first of the next month.  So… I’ll save the other four days for different dates.  My husband and I may be going out of town at the end of the month for our anniversary so I may use one or two days for that depending on how long we’re out of town.

But it sure would be nice to take a full week off of work, though, without it impacting my personal vacation & sick time.  Ah well.  Not in the carts this time.

It felt so real, I was extremely disappointed when I woke up and realized it had never happened.

I don’t always remember what I dream about, and this is one instance where ultimately I would have prefered to not have remembered.  That’s just cruel teasing.

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

*click click click click click-a*  when I turn the ignition.

A coworker happened to be standing outside when I tried starting my car and was on his phone, since I drive a manual transmission, he offered to push my car so that I could hopefully start it that way.  Another coworker had stepped out (don’t know whether he was on break or leaving for the day), and also helped push the car.  No dice. 

The second coworker offered to jump start my car, since he had jumper cables.  He actually also had a portable battery jumper, so he tried that first; fortunately it worked.  I drove home, left the car running and moved the carseat to my husband’s car so he could go pick up the Kiddo from preschool, and then I drove straight over to the dealership.

My battery was nearly four years old, which is pretty darn good for a car in Arizona.  But it sure hurt my pocketbook to pay for that stupid thing.  Apparently my car’s battery is more expensive than your typical car battery because it goes in the trunk of my car rather than under the hood.  Yep, it sits back between the spare tire and the bumper of my car under the liner of the trunk.  But there is a jumper box under the hood, for just what we needed it for today.

So anyway. At least it was just the battery and not something like the ignition switch, which if it had been, would’ve been at least twice as much as the battery, if not more.  So I guess it’s the little things, eh?

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?

So, will my luck hold out?  Or will I have to trek down and sit all day to see if I get called for a jury?

On the one hand it would be intersting to sit on a jury, depending on the case; on the other, my husband’s schedule will be changing soon – like next week – and if the case runs too long, I may not be able to attend and still drop off/pick up my daughter from preschool.  I guess it just depends on what time they would expect jurors to be present at the court each day and when we’d be released.

And on yet another hand – I tend to get bored easily if I’m sitting around, and when I get bored doing nothing, I have a big tendency to get sleepy and drift off into snoozeville.  It happened a lot in high school and college, and I nod off on the commute to work since I’m not driving… so I don’t think I’d be a good fit for a jury.  Can you imagine?  Some poor sap is giving their testimony and I’m sitting there unconsious and drooling on my shirt and end up getting fined by the court for falling asleep.  Yeah, I am so hoping I either get dismissed tonight or if I do have to go to the courthouse, they find their jurors before they even need to call me in.

Now my back hurts, my feet hurt and the sciatica in my right side is acting up – all for about 15 minutes of work!  Ugh.  Oh, and I have dirt wedged into the creases on my fingers, mostly my right thumb and index finger where the skin is a little rough, that I can’t get out with a scrub brush.  Bah.

We need to scrounge up the money to have the landscapers give the place a once over, and then to have the pest control company spray the yard with the industrial strength death for weeds so we don’t have to worry about those darn things for a while.  Having rock landscaping in the front has it perks (i.e. no grass to mow) but still makes it fairly easy for weeds to take hold.