Some Recent Discoveries

This evening I feel like posting random discoveries of mine from over the past 36 hours. And what a 36 hours it has been! This could be quite revealing. ;-)

1. I am not capable of sleeping past 6:00 am. Even on weekends. Ever. And heaven knows I try! On weekend mornings I find I actually wake up earlier than my alarm goes off on weekdays. How sad is that? I lie (lay?) there, wide awake, and the ole brain starts to make its lists, and I am doomed. I get up and wander around in my jammies, just doing random stuff. Sometimes I make coffee, sometimes I read email. Eventually I shower to really wake up and become a semi-productive member of society. But sleep in? Not.

2. I should not go to my LSS right after I've had a bad sales day. I had planned my LSS Field Trip for this past Tuesday, but I was sick on Monday so I went to work on Tuesday, figuring I'd just go to the LSS on Sunday. Saturday night I spoke with MB and she decided to come along for the ride. Actually, she offered to drive. When we arrived, I picked up my order and started my usual browsing of all the goods on the shelves and displays. This is one of those LSS where you'd better grab a basket when you walk in the door, because you'll grab stuff off the shelves on the way to the counter to pick up your pre-ordered items. And I saw a lot of stuff I liked. When Recollections went out of business, this LSS bought a bunch of their paper display racks and she now stocks a ton of paper. Rats! One of my weaknesses. I used to be safe in that department since she had a small but tasteful paper section before. I now have quite the collection myself! Sigh.

3. I should never go to the LSS with MB. No, she is not enabling. Well, she is, but not forcefully so. If I show her something as if to say, "Do I need this?" she might just look at it and say, "Oh, cool! Do they have another one, because *I* sure need it!" As if this would talk me out of buying something...

4. I should never go to the LSS when the owner is there. Talk about enablement! But she is SUPER! She knows your name and remembers what your last special order was, what did not come in yet, and what she will need to pull out of the box and hold for you when it does come in. Like I said, SUPER. And enabling. She was teaching a class with the new Mini Clipboards from Stampendous:


I knew about this class ahead of time, and had agreed with MB to not take the class, but to just get some of the clipboards to play with on my own. So out the owner comes with the bag o'clipboards and asks me how many I want. See? Enablement! (I took two packages.)

Then later the owner came to the front of the store and rummaged through a box of stuff waiting to be put out on display. She pulls out this mini craft knife:

Then she looks up at MB and me and asks if we've seen these. Um, no... do we really need it? Oh, yes we do! DARNIT! We each took one and tossed it into our respective baskets. The owner just smiled and went back to her class. Her work with us was done. Sigh.

5. Stamping, or even just buying stamps, is fattening. I have reported this finding in earlier posts, but now it has been confirmed. And scientifically, too, I might add. MB has been losing weight. Not because she is trying to, but because she is in a hiring frenzy for her family biz, and she gets to deal with teenagers and their parents for 4 months each year. Just about now she is close to postal, and yesterday was her much-needed day off. She called me this evening and told me that the greasy and very yummy hamburger we'd stopped for after the LSS extravaganza made her gain back 2 pounds. See, scientific proof. And she even stamped something, too, which we are sure contributed to the weight gain. (Oh, and CB, if you are reading this, MB had a Veggie Burger. With grilled mushrooms. And bacon. And fries. Me, too.)

6. If you are in line at UPS, and someone comes in after you, they get to go first. No, really. It must be so, because it happened to me this evening. I have no idea where these rules are written, but I tell you the guy who got in line behind me tonight handed the lady his pick-up slip ... even reached around me to do it. I looked at the woman and she noticed I had a huge - H U G E - box, then noticed it had a pre-paid label, so she took it, then went back to the guy behind me. Truly amazing.

7. I did not lose my DVD remote. I thought it had gone missing, but it was just under something on my coffee table. I only plowed through the stack of papers 6 or 10 times this weekend, but never saw it. It is found! Now I can watch the movie I got from Netflix about 6 weeks ago.

8. I did not lose my Basic Gray and Basic Black markers. I actually have 3 or 4 of the black, so all but one of them are still missing in action, but I did find one of them, plus my Basic Gray one. I had stowed them in a safe place, which usually means I will never see them again. I am still looking for my Basic Gray reinker. I need Lo-Jack for my stampin' stuff.

9. Just because I have a schnitload of ribbon does not mean I will ever find one to go with the card I am making. I swear to you, I have gone through all my ribbon spools trying to find a color that coordinates - not even a match, just a 'goes okay' - for several cards, and I am at a loss to understand why I am failing so. You'd think this fact would make me stop buying. Nope.

10. If you get into a new habit of suplementing the cat's free-feed dry cat food with wet food at dinnertime, she will remind you loudly, over and over and over again, that you are home from work and you have not yet brought out the good stuff. She might even scratch at some nearby furniture, just to piss you off, then remind you again that she has not seen wet food yet this evening. 'Scuse me a sec ........ okay, I am back.

11. If you buy ribbon because you just know it will go with something, it won't. Here is an example:

This card uses the Mike's purple and yellow ribbon that I just knew would be a perfect match. But you know what? After several hours of futzing, I am not so sure. I have several failed attempts at drafts that are definitely not blog-worthy, but this is one that survived the cut. It was made as a b'day card for MB, as she feels like banging her head on something most of the time these days.

If you can get past the bad lighting, you might see the ribbon.

This is one of my Viva Las Vegas Stamps sentiments. This might be a good seller if I can get the right color combo .... I know a guy at work that could use one of these right about now ....

Since I had the Pale Plum out, too, and had all the sentiments nicely layered on colors I was no longer lovin', I pulled out a ribbon that does kinda go with the rest of things:

I also used my bought-long-ago, but just-now-taken-out-of-the-package Cuttlebug embossing folder to give the background of this card some character. I think plain cards are boring, though I am constantly challenged as to how to correct that. But hey, if it were easy, they wouldn't pay us. Oh, wait, I do not get paid for doing this...forgot myself there for a moment.

Here's another one, just a different sentiment.

(Sorry, kids, you will have to enlarge these if you really want to see them. I am too garaged to just crop out the good stuff...thank you.)

And another. Love that dog image (Inky Antics). I also pair him up with a 'Celebrate Silliness' sentiment I have.

Oh, and these sentiments are from the SU Smarty Pants set from the Spring/Summer Catalog. I actually mounted it this weekend to use it. ;-)

One more. Oh, wait, this one uses the ill-fated "it will go" ribbon. Eh? Maybe not so much ... Click on the pic to get a good gander, and let me know what you think.

12. It is graduation season. Not having kids in local schools, I tend to forget these things. I do not usually make a lot of special-occasion-type cards, because after the event has passed, I have to store the cards that did not sell, usually for another year. Like I have space for this! But Graduation cards seem to last all year round. You have your usual May-June frenzy, then you have your August 'needed to retake that @#$& Senior Econ class' group. And your December 'missed it by a semester' group. So I keep them around. But my collection is really sad, so I decided last night to make some new ones.

This is what I had as of last night. I made two each of four colors: Hunter, Burgundy, Red and Navy. Every year I look up the local High School colors, and every year I am stumped, so I have come up with Plan B. Plan B states that most schools have a rich color as one of their two main colors, so by only using one color on a card, I have a chance of hitting a few of them by at least 50%. Of course, my sons' HS colors were light blue and silver, so forget that. But I would hope to hit a few of the local schools. Actually, last year most people buying the cards did not know the color of the HS or college they were buying them for (for which they were buying them), so it really does not matter much.

So ANYway, you will notice I could not decide on which sentiment to use, so I made one of each. Also, I used the Marvy oval punch to punch out the grad image (A Muse), then realized I did not like the next size up as the under-layer - too big of a border of black. So improvising as I usually do, I punched two black ovals the same size as the white one and just offset them a bit behind the white one. I really like how it came out.

This evening I decided the cards were boring without something in the background. I was going to either Versamark some star images or emboss them, but then I remembered I had some sticky gold stars in my stash, so I grabbed them and created this:

I think they add just enough oomph to make it look more finished.

13. You can still get good customer service. Once in a while, anyway. A few years ago I had new windows and a new front door installed. The windows are guaranteed, even if some neighbor kid puts a ball through it. So I emailed them on Sunday to ask if the weather strip on the bottom of the front door was covered under the same, excellent plan. Within the hour - on a Sunday! - I had a reply that my email was being forwarded to their Customer Service department. Wow! I was impressed. And I know it was not a form auto-response since the sentences were so poorly constructed, but I digress. The point is: they got right back to me!

This morning at work I was minding my own business, and looking quite busy, too, when I got a phone call. It was the company switchboard operator, transferring a call from the window company. Turns out they knew who I worked for, but did not have my personal work number, so instead of just leaving me a message on my home answering machine, they called the main number for my company and had the operator hook us up!

But wait, it gets better! Not only do they have the part in stock, they gave me the first appointment of the day, and this Thursday! They actually care!!! How refreshing! (Man, am I channeling Sally Fields right now or what...)

14. Cats age, as do people. My kitty, who is nearing the 12 1/2 year mark, has always been challenged jumping up onto, and down from, surfaces, even when I first got her at 3 1/2. She must have had some trauma in the early part of her life... Sometimes I find myself reminding her she is a cat, and she can do it! However, as I slow down, so does she. I had to pick up her food bowl last year because of impending Ant Season, and I put it on a small bookcase in the kitchen. I also put a stool next to the bookcase so she could get up to her food bowl. That started to become tough for her, so I moved her bowl down to the floor, but I have it up at her neck level on top of something, to avoid the dreaded ants. Now that I did not need the stool in the Kitchen any more, I pondered what to do with it.

Oh, did I mention that when I got this water fountain thing for my end table, she adopted it as her new water bowl? Okay, now you know. So her water bowl is in the Living Room, on an end table. She went to jump up on the table last night and missed. So I have moved the little stool to the Living Room. For her. Poor dear.

15. If you read in bed, and you are reading a really good book, you will read far beyond the time you needed to be asleep already in order to wake up and go to the Day Job. I know this. I do it every night. Even if I go to bed early so I can read more, I still read way past lights-out time.

And for my last revealed discovery for this evening:
16. If you neatly fold a polo shirt, and put it on the pile of newly-folded laundry, then you fold, say, some blue jeans, and put that on top of the polo shirt, then you take the whole pile to the bedroom and put it on the bottom of the bed (you will put it away later, right?), then on Monday morning, when you are bleary-eyed and praying you remembered to fold the stuff from the dryer, and you retrieve your polo shirt from the pile of clean clothes, it will be wrinkled beyond repair. But it is Monday, and you really do not care too awfully much. If anyone were to say anything to me about it (and they wouldn't), I'd blame it on the seat belt. Seriously! Did you ever wear a just-ironed shirt that contained even 1% Linen content? If you so much as look at it, it wrinkles. I would look like I'd slept in that shirt by the time I got to work, so a few wrinkles in a cotton polo shirt won't bother me. Not one bit.

Okay, my plans going forward for this week include touching, fondling, and maybe even using some of my newly-acquired stash. I'll identify the new items as I break into them. ;-) For now, it is past 9:00, so if I go to bed now, I might be able to mostly finish that book I am reading ....