Sadly, the Long Weekend is Nearly Over

My nephew got to play in the Davis v SJSU on Saturday, they were ahead 10-0 until the end of the game and SJSU won 16-10. But the nephew got to play and that was exciting. Spending some time with my sister and her family (+ nephew's girlfriend) was fun. The next morning we had a bit of an adventure trying to find the train station to get my nephew back to Davis, but it all worked out and he got home just fine.

My almost daily posting on my beading blog has gotten me on the first page and pretty well positioned on that, of a Google search for "beaded badge lanyards" - not sure how many people actually search that, but I'm there if they do, so that makes me rather happy. Got a comment from Lois at A Beaded Affair who was searching on 'copper' and went to her very lovely blog and Etsy shop - I recommend her to you, too. Lots of wonderful artists I'm discovering who are doing beautiful work at Etsy.

Back to work tomorrow. I love having three day weekends but going on a business trip just one day afterwards will probably mean a lot of catching up next week. Speaking of which, the Saturday after this is the 13th - and my son's birthday, which fell on a Friday back in 1985.

Hard to believe it's been 23 years. I got to talk with him for over half an hour on Saturday morning, which was wonderful. He finally received the package I had shipped to him (Muscle Milk - he's always working out whenever he can, and wants to bulk up - maybe so the pack he carries isn't equal to 50% of his body weight? He's always been a wiry guy).

I also sent him a bunch of phone cards via a special deal the Army & Air Force Exchange Service has set up so non-military people can purchase and send them to the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines they know who are overseas. I don't know if he has them yet or not.

By the way, even if you don't know a soldier overseas, there are special programs that will send your donated phone cards to a service person in the branch of your choice - just go to https://thor.aafes.com/scs/default.aspx and scroll down a bit to read the details.

It's been a while since I mentioned any of my favorite web comics, but A Girl and Her Fed is having a donation drive that's worth checking into. The artist is going to put her web-comics in print and with a donation of $30 you can help that happen and get some original art as a thank you.

Dave Kellett's got a new Sheldon book out - Pugs, God's Little Weirdos and I just received my copy with an original sketch and Dave's autograph. Sheldon's pug, Oso, is definitely a little weirdo.

Finally, and not about a comic strip, I got my copy of Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi. I'm waiting to read it on the plane, but it's been hard.

Notice Anything Different?

Yeah, got tired, after all these years (I started this blog on August 21st, 2005 - Happy Belated Birthday, NVNC IS VIDES, NVNC NE VIDES!), of the green background. I did get some complaints here and there about the color, which I've been ignoring, but it was finally starting to wear on me, too. Also changed text color and restored the text to 'normal' (apparently I had set it to bold instead of just making the size a bit bigger when I decided the text was hard to read - I've learned new things since then).

I added a little blurb at the top - I know I haven't been great about updating, but I do put something up at my other blog almost daily, so I thought, if you're visiting you might be interested in what I've been doing that's kept me from updating here.

I had a great, half-hour long chat with my son today. We're counting the days until he comes home from Iraq. I won't say anything more specific, except that the light is just beginning to glimmer at the end of the tunnel.

He, of course, wants me to be there when he lands and has started 'reminding' me to make plans. I know I don't always do things as far in advance as I could, but it's really to early to be buying airplane tickets, etc. Especially since the current arrival window is about a month wide.

He's always been one to want things structured and thoroughly planned out. Not that he's not spontaneous, but I think just knowing that there *is* even a tentative, flexible, plan keeps him from getting nervous that there won't *be* a plan.

I can't believe it's already Labor Day weekend. This summer seems to have sped past faster than any I can remember. Tomorrow I go to see CSU San Jose vs. UC Davis - my nephew plays for Davis, so I'll be sitting with the Aggie fans instead of the home team fans. Not that college football has ever been much of a passion for me. My college didn't have football. National champion wrestling and basketball, but no football. The local community college had a great team that I think did very well in its division - but I didn't follow it, either.

I don't want to get all political here, but the news that McCain has chosen a woman as a running mate is all over the place. While it's rather stunning that a woman is on the Republican ticket, the choice has me completely bemused. Did he pick her for her looks? Seriously, the woman is probably wonderful, but she hasn't finished her first term as governor (of Alaska) and her other political credits are all very small potatoes. Her positions are very far to the right, but that can't help McCain, he's got the right. Does he think an anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage woman will get him all those disgruntled Hillary Clinton voters in his camp? Color me confuzzled about this one.

Thank You, Charles Stross!

Charlie Stross, SF author of The Atrocity Archives, The Jennifer Morgue, Singularity Sky, Halting State, Accelerando, the just released Saturn's Children (and many more), has posted about the Author Advocate Defense fund in his blog today and the fund got a nice run of donations, it's over $1k now. If you can't donate, please post about the fund, because others will donate if they hear about it from someone they trust.

Some good info on how to post about the fund are in this post on Absolute Write by my blogging forum co-moderator L M Ashton - just skip the parts about joining the blog carnival (or not - join AW and join the carnival!) - there's advice about what to say, links to information about the cause and code for a donation button, all in the post. (Thank you again, Laurie, for taking the time to do the post and organize the carnival)

A bit of personal stuff...

Tomorrow is my son's last day home. Three weeks seems like a nice, long time for a vacation from work, but when the job you have to go back to is soldiering in Iraq for 5 or 6 more months, it's way too short. My dad came up from L.A. to visit earlier this week and we had two lovely days with him. We shopped and ate out and just sat around and talked, it was wonderful. My son has caught up with friends, visited Las Vegas, and also taken care of some important stuff he could only do in person here, so I think he'll go back satisfied that it was a good visit.

Otherwhere on the web...

I hope you're all watching Dr. Horrible's Musical Blog. Act II is up now, Act III goes up the 19th. The FAQ's on the Master Plan page are a good read for the background to how the whole thing was conceived.

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!

Happy New Year!

Yeah, haven't posted since Thanksgiving, sorry about that. It's not that I was too busy, but I was preoccupied. I've been doing a lot of beading, spent time with my daughter and my family in southern California and am also trying to catch up on a backlog of books I've been wanting to read.

Just finished most of the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. I have a few more to go as I skipped the earliest ones and started with Mort, hopped over a few like Small Gods and Soul Music (even though I enjoy the story in that one about Susan).

The reason for this is that one of my favorite ways to go back through the Discworld books is to begin by re-reading the books featuring the Watch. Following the progress of Vimes and Carrot from Guards! Guards! through to Thud! always lifts my spirits. The newer books that have introduced new characters are fun as well - Moist von Lipwig (Going Postal and Making Money) is a great character and I hope there is at least one more book featuring him. Of course the news that Terry has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimers has me a bit down - I hope he overcomes all obstacles for many years to come.

I also skipped the Tiffany Aching books (Wee Free Men, Hat Full of Sky, and Wintersmith) so I'll be digging them out of wherever they're hiding, too. Speaking of which, I ordered some cool stuff from Paul Kidby's site that includes a Jock Mac Feegle statue and a White Horse Pendant like Tiffany wears since I love that design. I hope it arrives soon, I made the order back on the 12th of December.

I've been updating my LibraryThing list, too. Got a CueCat and it's been very handy. One of these day's I'll take my laptop out to the garage where I have my books stored and scan as many as I can. It'll be great to finally have an index of my books.

In other news I received a cool Christmas gift from my husband - a Portable Lighting Studio for Dummies kit! It's very nifty, came with two lamps and a fabric cube that diffuses the light. I'm waiting on a necklace display that's a bit shorter than the one I'm using now to get started taking new pictures of my beaded jewelry. Since I recently opened a shop on Etsy, I'm going to want to take some additional closeups since you can show your work in multiple images there.

We took the tree down yesterday so, aside from the new stuff that was under it, there are no lingering signs of the holidays, which is kind of sad. It went by so fast.

Well, I'll save some other ramblings and maybe put up a picture or two, for my next post - I'll try not to put it off so long this time.

First Post of June

Tomorrow my son arrives for his two week leave. We've got an extended family visit/Disneyland trip all lined up for next weekend. My posting for the next two weeks may be sporadic, we'll see.

I don't send much snail mail. So when the postage went up I hadn't gone to buy any forever stamps at the lower price. I just now had to go dig up a 2 cent stamp to add to one of my old 39 cent stamp to send a letter. I had put this letter in my purse with the intent of mailing at the PO after I bought some forever stamps, but the other day, due to what I'm certain is the complete onrush of total senility, I stuck it, unstamped, in my mailbox and put up the "pick up" flag. My husband brought it in with the mail today and I think there was some rolling of the eyes when I realized what I'd done.

so I go to my file folder with stamps and return address labels (I am somewhat organized) to grab a couple stamps for the letter. Turns out I have quite a few stamps in there - even some 37 cent ones from two Christmases ago (Christmas is when I send the most snail mail in the form of cards). I will need to go grab a long strip of 2 cent stamps to use and while I'm at it, I'll pick up some of those forevers. The way I don't go through stamps, they just might last "forever".

I need to ship some stuff, too, so the trip to the Post Office is getting up to the urgent level. I need to get organized again and caught up with my backlogged to do list. Well, I wrote that about an hour ago. I took a break to grab my full page sticky label paper to print out a label to put on the box that now contains my daughter's purses that she left in my car the last time she was down here(some of the stuff I need to ship, along with a way overdue prize to Rob from Standing Rule for making the 2000th post on a thread I started some time ago on AW). I mentioned that I need to get organized? It took me most of that hour to re-arrange all the stuff that's piling up in my office to find the dang sticker package. However, I now have a bit more open space on the floor.

Coyote Wild's submissions period is open again. Do you write short (under 10k in length) speculative fiction? Think about subbing to Coyote Wild. Non-fiction (query first), Flash fic and poetry are also accepted. Please read the guidelines in the link above.

POD People has openings for reviewers. Email me if interested.

I've been reading (on and off this evening) a Salon article about a Harry Potter fan con down in New Orleans and this quote about a presenter just made me giggle where I've italicized. (The article may be in the Premium section, but you can get a free day pass)

At a session called "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Colonialism," 22-year-old Tracy Douglas was giving a persuasive, Edward Said-influenced reading of the post-colonial overtones of Rowling's fourth book. She pointed out the focus on the eroticized "other" -- Fleur Delacour, Cho Chang, Padma and Parvati Patil -- as the female sexual ideal. Douglas' paper sounded like it could have been given at the Modern Language Association conference. Except that afterward, she thanked her mother. Also, at the MLA, you see fewer people with stuffed owls.

Perhaps the MLA needs to think about that. Reading this article makes me think fondly about the upcoming NasFic in St. Louis. I put a countdown ticker in my AW signature:




Check out my meebo chat widget in the sidebar. Meebo allows you to use one chat program (and it's browser based so no need to download an application) to sign in to any IM, Yahoo, Aim, Google, etc. I decided to give it a try because of the widget.

dawno