Just wanted to share one picture I took at the convention today that's too cute not to share here:

I'm pretty tired and rather sore - hauling all my stuff from the parking lot to the table is exhausting. I've pretty much got the loading down to a science - on the last day I'll be taking so much stuff, too. I also realized today that I have some perfect beads for this convention's theme. Little carved skulls, might be bone, too. Oh, well.

My table mate Carlos has been wonderful. Not only do I enjoy his company, but he's been so nice to keep an eye on my things when I have to dash to the restroom or want to grab a snack. He does lovely drawings and I bought a print today that is very clever and quite whimsical.

I also bought one of the items in the art show, a lovely piece made from watch faces and gears. I think I'll put a clasp on the back and wear it as a brooch.

I saw some of my favorite lanyard necklaces go to happy buyers this weekend. I'll miss them, but I'm also glad to know that people really like my work enough to buy it.

Time For Me to Pack Up for the Day

But I'll leave you with some pirates and vampires (?) before I go.

LiveBlogging from Bay Con

Having a very fun time at Bay Con. Meeting lots of very nice people and enjoying the sights of the pirate costumed attendees.

Not everyone is here as a pirate, though.



Things are a bit slow for the moment - people must be attending events or panels. I need to finish a commision, so this will be all for now.

Update: Dawno No Longer Annoyed

Got a personal response from MyBlogLog with the solution to my problem. I needed to sign in under a different Yahoo account. Combination of memory loss, user error, and them not looking at the actual account for the answer before sending me the scripted response. I will take 2/3rds of the blame.

Thank you MyBlogLog for your help. Now, if you're a member - add me to your community!

kthnksbai.

A Bit of Cross Posting - Day 1 at BayCon

I've been talking about showing my beaded lanyards on my other blog for a while now. Today was day one of the convention and the "live" public debut of my lanyard concept. I could just post the link to my other blog, but that would mean you'd have to click over there and I might lose you! So, here's what I wrote:

I loaded up a huge amount of stuff into my car today - much more than I really could have ever used, but I'm one of those people that would rather take stuff I don't use than need something and not have it. You should see how I pack for a weekend trip.

Once I had that done, I had to go to an office supply store for a cash box and the bank for change. Got to the convention hotel at 3-ish. The parking was jammed full, but I found a spot on the ground floor - it was almost as far away from the hotel entrance as you can get, but I really didn't want to take the elevator with all my stuff, so I was glad to have found it.

Getting all my stuff together for one trip was a bit of a logistics challenge. I have a large, black nylon covered, rolling "cube" case - it's intended to be a travelling office - inside it were all sorts of bins and things for file folders and office supplies. But because it's wide and not too tall, it's great for stacking other stuff on the top. It also has lots of great zippered pockets inside and out. I had it crammed full.

I also took my backpack for the camera and some miscellaneous beading supplies that didn't fit into the other containers and a messenger bag for my wallet, laptop and a book, a tote with all my beads and the wire carousels to display them, the bead buddy lap desk and the zippered bead container tote. Most of it fit in or on top of the rolling cube. The downside was that I think I was carrying and rolling about 80lbs of stuff and it was a long hike. Tomorrow I hope to get there early enough to get a closer parking spot and I'm definitely not taking in everything. If I decide I need something, I can just go to the car for it.

Was set up and ready to go by 4. It was fairly quiet on Artist's Alley for most of the time, but I did ok, broke even on the cost of registration and the table fee. I hadn't labeled my necklace lanyards, so part of the time I spent putting on price tags. One of my friends from Absolute Write Water Cooler was there helping a friend who has a booth in the dealer's room and she brought her (Melody Rondeau) over to my table. It was very nice to chat with them and I look forward to getting a chance to check out their booth sometime this weekend. Next time I do this, I'm shanghaiing a helper!

No pictures today, but I'll try to take some tomorrow. The theme of the convention is pirates and there are many wonderful costumes being displayed on the convention attendees. Definitely need pictures! Oh, and there was an artist's reception this evening, too, but I was pretty tired and just wanted to get home.

There was also a graduation happening at the venue as well, and a man in a very fancy robe - like you see on professors at college graduations - walked by with an older gentleman in a nice tweed jacket and dark slacks. He took one of my business cards as he walked by. It was one of those times I wished I could read minds - I'm so curious to know why he took a card!

I did work on, and finish, one more lanyard while I was there - one of the hexagon glass bead styles, this one in cobalt blue glass and silver seed beads. Not sure what I'll work on tomorrow - but I have plenty of supplies to choose from!

Sometimes I see a link in my gmail that I have to click. Today it was Nipple Cream is dangerous. A company put "contains ingredients chlorphenesin and phenoxyethanol that could cause respiratory distress or vomiting and diarrhea in infants, the FDA said," into their cream. What responsible company would put ingredients in a cream for nursing mothers that they weren't 10000000000000% sure was safe for the nursing infant?

This is one reason I can't get completely on board with tort reform. If they didn't know the danger, they should. If they didn't care to check, then company should be sued out of existence. The company also had to recall a product in 2007 "may be contaminated with the parasite cryptosporidium, which can cause intestinal infections and diarrhea.

The Food and Drug Administration found the cryptosporidium contamination.

The product, coded 26952V 10/08, was sold nationally through stores and also online. The company has sold 17,600 bottles since November 2006. "

There are enough things to worry about when you're a new mom, and products sold in your chain drugstores by a company that claims their products (and the nipple cream is still on their website under this claim) are "* Obstretician recommended.* All natural ingredients."

In other news:

• I sent my donation to support the Reno bid for the WorldCon in 2011.
• I have a new camera.
• My son comes home from leave in 36 days!

Dawno is Annoyed

MyBlogLog - joined in 2005 - was probably an early adopter. Even paid them to be a premium member. They got bought by Yahoo. Good for the BlogLog guys who probably retired at 30 as millionaires. You know, when I had problems back in '05 or '06 with MyBlogLog and wrote them, I got emails from real people? Well, don't expect that now that Yahoo owns it.

You need a damn "YahooID" to sign in. I gave up using Yahoo for email when Gmail came along. The Yahoo email was all spam. Anyway, when I sign in with the Yahoo ID, I'm asked to "migrate" my BlogLog stuff, so I do what I'm told, and it says I've already migrated. Ok, if that's so, then why doesn't signing in with the bloody YahooID take me to my account page? Why does it, EVERY TIME, ask me to migrate and then tell me I've already done it?

So I wrote to customer service. Explained the problem. Told them I had a Yahoo ID and had migrated, but the Yahoo ID wasn't taking me to my account. Know what they said?

We understand that sometimes change is hard, but the opportunity of
Yahoo taking in our little MyBlogLog community into its family sounded
too good to pass up!

If you need help signing up with Yahoo, please visit the following link: (link redacted)

Um, did you actually read my email or did some robo-script read a key word and send out an automated POS answer? I don't need help signing up with Yahoo. I need MyBlogLog's people to actually look at the account, figure out what's the problem and fix it.

Of course, a merger with Microsoft will solve all those problems, huh? Yeah. Vista, anyone?

I think I'll go bead something to calm down.

Sometimes I Get Sent Really Odd Links - Other Times, They're Pretty Cool

The perfect tool for serious nicotine addicts who simply MUST light up as they clip their nails. (And , no, I'm not one of them) My question is, which came first, the clipper and someone thinking, "this should have a disposable lighter attached to it, because every time I clip my nails I really need to have a smoke afterwards" , or the lighter and the guy with a hangnail who tried burning it off and thought, "man, a pair of clippers attached to my lighter would have spared me this agonizing 3rd degree burn"

Teeny-tiny projector OK, that one has promise. Watching a movie on the screen of my iPod while flying cross country was a clever idea but so much detail is lost when the screen is two inches wide and not all of it is used for picture due to the wide-screen format of the movie one downloaded from iTunes. I ended up watching them again on my laptop when I got home. But with a mini-projector, why, you can project it on the seat back in front of you!

Of course, there are folk with concerns about the concept. I think they may have a good point. This also may hasten the day when answering your mobile phone means a 3D image of your caller can appear right in front of you, and you can see body language and facial expressions, which often lead to misunderstandings, and then there's the inability to get a word in edgewise, because nobody can see you jumping up and down in your chair trying to get their attention, as in traditional audio only conference calls.









While things like telepresence are available now, it's not something the general population can access, nor afford, with all the equipment needed. By the way - you can get an R2D2 Home Theatre System from Hammacher Schlemmer for only $2,800 - oops, no you can't they sold out. I am not surprised in the least.

Oh, I mailed off my application for a table at BayCon. If you're in the SF Bay area over Memorial Day weekend, come by and say hi.

Elbows

My elbows are a wreck. I have a leather upholstered office chair at my computer desk that is wonderfully comfortable but the armrests are plain plastic with a pebbly texture. I rest my elbows on them, apparently way too much. My elbows are very dry and cracked - they feel like sandpaper, actually. So I decided today to do something about it. Not sure if it'll work. I've cut the tops off of some long athletic tubesocks, put Nivea cream on my elbows and put the sock pieces over the elbows to keep the cream from rubbing off. If the Nivea doesn't work, I'll try Eucerin next and probably go with something with a heavy lanolin concentration after that.

If you've successfully fought off sandpaper elbows, I'd love to know your secret.

The temps here are going up fast - it was in the low 70s yesterday and hit 80 today. Tomorrow's prediction is for 92. There's no airconditioning here, so we keep a window fan in the front room and that helps some. We shaved Pudding just in time - he's a long hair, you may recall from previous posts about him, and when it gets hot he gets pretty miserable. I caught him sitting directly in front of the fan today, so I think he's grateful.

I'm about half-way through The Cleaner, the book I bought from the author, Brett Battles, and had signed at the LA Book Fair a couple weekends ago. It's been a very good read. If you like clandestine ops thrillers you should give this one a try.

Bought some new iPod tunes today - decided to get a couple things on my "recommended" list, Peter Gabriel's So album and some early Sting (i.e., a Police album). Some of the recommendations were a tad off the mark - just because I bought James Darren doesn't mean I want Jack Jones, but I get why they thought I might. My Dawno's playlist is getting to be pretty good listening while beading. I hope Matt's new iPod got to him ok.

I'm looking forward to Bay Con on Memorial Day weekend - I wrote about my considering getting table space in Artist's Alley in my Beading Blog, so I won't repeat myself here. Whether I do or not, I will still go to the con.

A Very Happy Mother's Day

My son called from Iraq and my daughter called, too. A bit after my son called I found a bouquet of flowers on my doorstep, from him.

Happy Mother's Day to everyone!

Yeah, I've Got Two Monkees Albums on My iPod...So?

Been listening to my iPod while beading tonight. I was reminded by a post on Absolute Write a while back that there were some pretty good Monkees songs, back in the day. So I downloaded a couple of their albums from iTunes.

Now, I didn't see the Monkees when they were first on in the US, we either didn't get the channel (pre-cable days, folks and we were pretty far from LA so the antenna didn't pick up but one or two stations) or it was past my bedtime when they were on - in '66 when the show first aired I was 9.

I got to see them as re-runs broadcast on Taiwanese TV. I remember enjoying the shows, I was 11 or 12 at the time, so that might explain it. Our TV choices in English were limited over there. I think there was Gilligan's Island, too, but I'm not certain. Would that have been in re-runs in '68 & '69? The only other thing about Taiwanese TV that's notable (at least to me) is that I was in a Taiwanese soda pop commercial - true story! Maybe I'll tell it to you some day.

Anyway, I've skipped some of the songs as they came up in the shuffle - most of the Davey Jones songs are particularly treacle-y. The few that featured Michael Nesmith are as good as I remember. There were also a few that edged up to real '60s flower power music - surprising since it seemed the point of the Monkees was to play it safe for the network and their advertisers.

Hey, "I'm Gonna Buy Me a Dog" is playing right now. Is that Mickey or Pete singing? "...Zulu's? No, I usually won". Well, that was over pretty fast. Now it's Paul Simon singing "Graceland".

My playlist is all over the map. Don Henley's "Get Over It", Sting's "Fields of Gold", k.d. lang's "Bird on a Wire', Maroon 5, The Mommas and the Poppas, Fleetwood Mac, James Darren...well, he was in Deep Space 9 and I kinda like that ol' crooner music anyway - which reminds me, I need to get my Sinatra and Dino back on my iTunes.

Making Light is Dark Today

If you, as I am, are a fan of the site Making Light, you're probably already aware of this but I thought I'd just add my support and post the "refugee camp" link. http://www.sunpig.com/abi/

Good luck to Teresa and Patrick in recovering their site!