Never Give Up, Never Surrender!

Galaxy Quest was a movie about the cast of an imaginary TV show called Galaxy Quest and how their fictional roles became reality when the Thermians come to collect them from a fan convention to help save the Thermian people from destruction. The movie also seems to be a comic-satirical look at the whole SF (especially Star Trek) fan/convention phenomenon and how the actors of those shows relate to that. (By the way, if you've never seen Galaxy Quest, it's a fun movie on its own, whether or not you've seen any SF tv episodes/movies).

So, what do you call a documentary about the making of the Galaxy Quest series, which seems to be a, in part, a satire of the Trekkies documentaries? Whatever you call it, I thought it was clever and enjoyed watching "The Galaxy Quest 20th Anniversary Special: The Journey Continues". I didn't know about it until it showed up on a blog on my RSS reader. So if you've not seen it either, Origami Unicorn has put the YouTube captures up on her blog in three parts. Part one starts here. Enjoy!

Things have been quiet on the Author Advocate Legal Defense Fund donation front - if you can help promote the fund or can donate, please help!

Moderating

I'd love to see more discussion of mediation techniques people think work well and maybe links to some posted discussions elsewhere, if you know of them. I've read just about everything I can find that Teresa Nielson Hayden has posted at Making Light and at Boing Boing about her methods. I was drawn to this post at Making Light yesterday because I've seen James in action over at Absolute Write where I am a moderator, too.

I co-moderate the Politics and Current Events (P&CE) forum at Absolute Write with MacAllister Stone. That part of AW has been going through some interesting changes lately.

MacAllister and I have been attempting to create a place where there can be rough and tumble discussion by the members who like that sort of thing, but also create a more comfortable space for the ones who don't feel comfortable in that environment - a topic that the comments in "Got it in one" back on July 1st explored to my great edification at at time when we were just making our changes (the "new P&CE" began on June 30th).

It's been exhilarating, exasperating and exhausting at times to moderate there, and I'm always on the look out for discussions that will help me do a better job.

I hope to see some comments...well, I always do, but this time I'm hoping even more.

note: thank you Dr. Science, for your comment on the above-mentioned thread, where you discussed posting your comments into your blog - I hadn't considered that before now!

Arizona Diet Green Tea Excess

Yesterday I went to our local Walgreen's to replenish our supply of Arizona Diet Green Tea. I bought ten 23 oz cans from the store cooler and got 10 one gallon jugs from the shelf. I've only been drinking the canned tea since yesterday and I noted, during my last trip to the 'fridge, that I am drinking the second to the last can now. Subtracting 46 ounces (plus about 10 that were left over un-drunk from last night's last can and poured out) from 230, I've had 174 ounces in just under 24 hours. A quick check on Google tells me there are 128 ounces in a gallon.

I wonder if drinking over a gallon of Arizona Diet Green Tea a day is bad for me? I may donate my corpse to science for the answer.

Oh, so I go to the website to put in a link for Arizona Diet Green Tea and they've done a huge site makeover. It's pretty. It's flashy (and perhaps made so with Flash, so excuse the pun). There's a lovely little butterfly that follows my cursor around, flapping its wings and even casting an animated shadow. When I moved the cursor up to the top of the page to click a tab, there was a "clinking" sound effect, like glass bottles of tea clanking together, as it "hit" the edge of the page. So I can't put a link to the Diet Green Tea like I used to do, but here's the site if you want to peek: http://drinkarizona.com/

By the way, here's also music on the site... I hate music on websites for the most part, but this music is cool and I'm leaving the tab open so I can hear the songs - right now they're playing Ginger Rose, "Charlie Brown". There's a player at the bottom of the page with a pop up list of songs. You can turn the music off from there.

OOH! There's a decaf version of my tea - has a black label. The regular version has 15mg. per 8 oz of tea, (that's about half of what's in a cup of regular tea, and about a quarter of what's in a cup of regular coffee). Still, after drinking a gallon, I'm surprised I'm not buzzing around like Apu in that episode of the Simpsons where he thought he was a hummingbird...

I had to disable the pop up blocker for the site to get to the storefront - unfortunately they don't have the decaf on sale by bottle or can, just concentrate. I did discover that there are 11 oz cans of the caffeinated diet green tea available, though.

Ok, enough about the tea.

I brought back my bangs - now I look like the avatar picture I use on a lot of sites and in my AW profile again. By the way, that picture is a cropped and de-colorized wedding photo.

I figure with Denvention coming up maybe it'll help people recognize me. I'll be giving away "Do You Know Dawno?" and "I Know Dawno!" badge ribbons. Find me if you want one.

Still looking for more ideas on how to keep the donations coming in to the Author Advocate Defense Fund.

Stay Safe Son

Woke up at 4:15 this morning to take my son to the airport for the first leg of his journey back overseas. We got to the airport at 5 and I parked and walked into the terminal with my son, expecting to part with him at the security line. The check in line was very long, but as it turned out, it was because nobody was mentioning the shorter one for my son's airline. I figured it out and he walked over to the shorter line. In about 10 seconds an attendant from the airline came up to him and took him out of line directly to a kiosk, got his pass for him and took us up to the counter where she proceeded to get my son's girlfriend and I passes to go back to the boarding area. Wow! We got an extra hour with him before he boarded the plane.

I tried to get some pictures of him as he was boarding, but they were blurry - I think I had the camera on the wrong setting. Yep, it was set to "close up" - dang. Here's the best of the lot:

"Smile son!" I said. The kid is such a goofball. I kept my composure - probably wouldn't have if his girlfriend hadn't been there, though. Now it's 5 or 6 more months until he's back. God bless and watch over you, dear - and the same to all the sons and daughters headed over and still there, too.

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.

Back from Vacation in Vegas Update to Author Advocate Defense Fund News

Just got home yesterday from Las Vegas with my son, his girlfriend and my husband. Stayed at the Venetian, which is beautiful. Two things will keep me from going back, the constant perfuming of the hallways on the way to the room, and the distance from the monorail. I prefer taking the monorail whenever possible to get to other hotels, and from the Venetian you have a long walk out, down the strip and then through Harrah's to get to the station.

We visited the Hilton to have a final lunch at Quark's and ride the Star Trek: The Experience ride (we just did the Klingon Encounter one) before it all closes down in September. On the way home (hubby and I drove) we stopped and bought a couple bottles of Klingon Blood Wine and a case of Romulan Ale.

We went to Zumanity on Friday night and had dinner at Benihana's on Saturday. Don't ask me about the gambling - I didn't come home ahead like last year. I did stay within my gambling budget, but only brought home a little of it. I did hit two pretty big jackpots Friday night and Saturday morning - just gambled with it later and said "bye bye".

While I was gone Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi posted about the Author Advocate Defense Fund. The traffic to the page did take a nice uptick. Unfortunately the Pay Pal script that had been working just fine up to the time I left stopped working. I'm not sure if it's something with Googlepages not liking the script, or what, but when I got back I had some emails saying people had tried the button and it didn't link to anywhere. I've updated the page and will use different coding for the link if it breaks again. There's always the button in the sidebar of this blog, too, if you just happen to be hanging out and decide to help.

A couple posts ago someone suggested starting a blog tour and now there's one going on with the Absolute Write bloggers. Thank you L M Ashton! Now, go give the bloggers some link love, and fund tour in your blog, too!

Another Mention of the Fund!

Origami Unicorn mentions the fund. Thank you Catherine!

Other bloggers are mentioning the suit, and while I'm leaving comments, perhaps if you're a regular commenter/friend on their blog or LJ, it would mean more to them to hear from you about the donation site? Your help is appreciated. Your donations are too - there's a button right over there in the sidebar, for your convenience :-)

Great Comment About Author Advocate Defense Fund Publicity

This came in comments to my last post - and I think it's worth bumping to the front page.

To be clear, I have been commenting where I can find a polite reason to, but I'm not going to become a comment spammer. The post has to have some relation to Barbara Bauer v Jenna Glatzer . I have also sent emails to a number of those writers and agents mentioned. I'm still waiting responses from some.

There are some names I will definitely email that I hadn't known of or thought about, because I'm not a writer so the "how would you get the word out if it were about your book" part didn't occur to me. I should research this as if I was going to send out a query! All these years on Absolute Write and have I learned nothing?? *grin*

But, the suggestions are all good ones and I thank you, anonymous, for the comment. One question, though - who's Patry Francis?

I've underlined some really important points of the comment, not about publicity, too (bold doesn't work, I've discovered). Anonymous is dead right about the cost of this - these defendants really need your help. I'm not a publicist, nor can I dedicate long hours to this, as I have a day job that demands its own long hours, but I'll do what I can.

How would you get the word out if it were about your book? A press release? You'd notify bloggers and publishers that have high reader volume like Gawker, Galley Cat, and Publisher's Lunch. You might ask some of the better known blogging agents for help,people like Kristin Nelson, Jessica Faust, Janet Reid, Nathan Bransford, Jennifer Jackson, Jonathan Lyons, Evil Editor, and so on.

{break added by Dawno to make it easier for her to read}

Even if they didn't, or couldn't, for legal reasons, add a link in their next daily post, they might not mind if you left one in comments. It never hurts to ask. Remember how we all got together to help Patry Francis?

{break added by Dawno to make it easier for her to read}

Organize a blog tour. (note from Dawno: I've posted about this at the AW blogging board, but I can't organize the tour right now, maybe in a couple of weeks, after my son goes back to Iraq) Get out there and be seen and heard. Faint heart never won a fair amount of money, and I can tell you for fact that's what is needed. Would any one of your readers like to mortgage their home for the cause? That's what some of the defendants are being asked to do to pay their lawyers.

{break added by Dawno to make it easier for her to read}

And have you calculated the number of lawyers involved? (note from Dawno: yes, I know exactly how many lawyers are involved, it's public record who is defending them) Everyone is gung ho to jump on the Babs Bandwagon, but in all honesty, they have no idea at all exactly how much this is costing the defendants. The case is what's commonly known as a SLAAP suit -- litigation intended to intimidate and silence critics or opponents by burdening them with the enormous cost of a legal defense so that they abandon their criticism or opposition.

I am not a lawyer, and I can't say whether or not this qualifies as a SLAAP suit, but regardless, it will be expensive and they do need help. Please donate!

Getting the Word Out Is Hard Work

I've been sending emails to people like John Scalzi and Neil Gaiman, and if anyone blogs again about the case, I will try to make polite and appropriate comments. Other than that, I'm wondering how else I can get the word out about the Barbara Bauer v Jenna Glatzer, et al Author Advocate Legal Defense Fund. (as you can see, I hope that using a link to the site with the name of the case will help getting it into more searches - but I know I'd have to do that a lot to get any traction).

If you have any ideas for publicizing the fund, please let me know!

Author Advocate Legal Defense Fund Update

The fund has reached $500. I've been sending emails to site owners/bloggers that I think will be friendly to the cause and making comments on blogs that have mentioned the lawsuit in the hopes of attracting more publicity to the fund.

The other day a site called Journal Fen posted a link to something I said in 2006, as well as the link appearing in the comments at NJ.com and this blog had over 200 visits on that day. I'm hoping the person who made the original post will consider linking to the Author Advocate Fund page, too.

If you add the link or mention it on your blog, I'll gladly add you to the sidebar on the Author Advocate Fund website.

A Little Help, Please?

A certain literary agent sued Wikimedia Foundation last year (the information here shows the case was filed Sept '07 - I have also seen a report that the case was filed in January of '08).

On July 1st the case against Wikimedia Foundation was dismissed. Rumor has it the case against two other defendants, (in addition to Wikimedia there were 19 individuals and the SFWA) but I have yet to find any links to support that.

The lawsuit brought this agent back into the spotlight - the most probable precipitating events were pretty much ancient history as far as the internet was concerned. Places as diverse as Information Week, Gawker, and Publisher's Weekly, have picked up on the case in the past few months due to Wikipedia's involvement, as well as a number of writing related sites and blogs.

I mention all this because I was asked to help some of the defendants in this case by setting up and administering a defense fund. The donation button for this fund is in my sidebar. I've also created a webpage with additional information.

The defendants would appreciate your help. One thing you can do is either share the webpage link or link to the PayPal donation page on your sites and blogs.

Lee Goldberg and Author Scoop - Thank you! There have already been visitors to the webpage and new donations to the fund as a result of your mentioning the fund on your sites.

Thank You Joshua D. Evans!

Joshua posted a comment on John Scalzi's Whatever blog about a website called Pandora. They explain it better than I could:

Since we started back in 2000, we have been hard at work on the Music Genome Project. It's the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Together our team of fifty musician-analysts has been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song. It takes 20-30 minutes per song to capture all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound - melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics ... and more - close to 400 attributes! We continue this work every day to keep up with the incredible flow of great new music coming from studios, stadiums and garages around the country.

With Pandora you can explore this vast trove of music to your heart's content. Just drop the name of one of your favorite songs or artists into Pandora and let the Genome Project go. It will quickly scan its entire world of analyzed music, almost a century of popular recordings - new and old, well known and completely obscure - to find songs with interesting musical similarities to your choice. Then sit back and enjoy as it creates a listening experience full of current and soon-to-be favorite songs for you.

So, I felt like listening to Sting, and thought I'd test the site to see what they would produce - it was pretty amazing. I love my iPod, but Pandora provides more variety and introduces me to artists I wouldn't have known about. Especially since I don't listen to radio or actively search out new music - this takes what I know I like and then offers up songs in that vein - sometimes they're old familiar ones, sometimes they're completely new - but I'm liking all of them so far.

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.