Take Me Out To The Ball Game

Today I went to my first-ever Baltimore Orioles baseball game, and it was at Camden Yards in ... Baltimore. I drove. I got lost looking for the parking lots, but then I got un-lost. I'm good that way. It's all about the adventure, and I saw some unplanned sections of the city I'd rather not discuss right now.

I am not a sports fan, but I decided I need to be able to say I've been, so I went. I later found out the Orioles are in the basement of their league, and maybe the basement of all professional baseball at the moment, which probably explains the parking lot:

I thought since I'd been too dim to order a parking pass with my ticket that I'd have to walk 12 miles from available parking to the ball park, but when I asked about General Parking, they waved me into this lot. This lot is next to the ball park.

The gate I went through was this one:

Um, okay. There is really a street with this name in Baltimore. I just looked it up and I see it's also a city name in AL. I learn so much when I blog.

Please keep in mind that I am not a sports follower, and since (in my opinion) baseball is more of a business than a game any more, I stopped trying to keep track of who plays for which team. I think back in the late 70s when the Reds were in the World Series I had a clue, but not since then.

So the few pictures I took today have nothing really to do with the actual game itself. For example, this one:

I love the way they cut this grass to make it such a nice checkerboard pattern, don't you? And look! The checks are smaller in the infield than in the outfield! How do they do that?!?!?!? Is there a reason for it? Like would the infield players lose all focus if the checks were too big?

This is the score board:

Oooh, let's zoom in a little ...

Mmmmm, eye candy:

(Sorry Mrs. Ripkin, but I cannot tell a lie. I also cannot figure out how to make this picture any larger, or I would have.)

Another observation: look at this guy's sox:

He looks like a baseball player, am I right? But look at the rest of the guys:

Long pants - every last one of them, on both teams. What's up with that? Too cold for them? Or did the other guy not get the memo?

Some other non-photographed moments of the day:

1. Everyone was really nice.
2. You can grab a beer when you enter the property and walk around drinking it.
3. Nice bathrooms. Clean and plentiful.
4. Great food options. I had a Corned Beef sammie as big as my head.
5. Everything costs a bazillion dollars.
6. LOTS of kids, and I'd say every last one of them (near me, anyway) was well-behaved.
7. No drunks. I liked that.
8. Guy next to me put his peanut shells in his empty beer cup instead of tossing them on the floor. Nice!
9. You can get pretzel bites, like 2"-long pieces of soft pretzel. OMGSOGOOD!
10. There was a guy taking orders for food so you didn't even need to get out of your seat to be fed, and constantly if you wanted! The guy would enter your order into his "phone" and then someone from inside would bring you your food. SHUT UP! I KNOW!
11. I need to get out more.

All in all, it was a great day! Drove home with the top down on the Miata, got bugs in my teeth, came home and made some cards. I DID! So let's move on to the shameless commerce portion of our show.

I made a pack of these for someone I visited in KY last month:

... so I took the opportunity to photograph them and post them as a customizable item in my etsy store. Finally. If I make them 5 or 10 at a time, it's not such a big effort, so I decided to go for it.

I have the rest of this week off - partly to play tourist in my own town, and I hope to also get caught up on a few "life" things. If I do anything fun, or make a card (crazy, but it could happen) I'll be sure to let you know!

Thanks for stopping by!

It's All About Perspective

I am old. I say that a lot, but sometimes, with the speed at which things change these days, I sure feel old.

When I was a kid, we only had Black & White TV, with a knob on it to change the station or the volume. Cable had not yet been invented. We had a manual typewriter. We wrote letters. We called each other on the phone. We played outside, a lot. We went to friends' houses to play or just hang out after school. We had dinner with the whole family, every night. We called our friends' parents Mr. or Mrs.

We rode our bikes somewhere if our parents could not take us. The Mall was new, and it was a special treat to go there. We walked to school. We stayed in school. School started at 8:30 am and we did not get out until 3:00 pm. 30 minutes for lunch. No after-school care needed.

When I was in High School, my boyfriend had a job and a car. For a date, we could go to Arby's OR a movie, but not both, because he also needed to pay for gas for us to get there. And this was okay.

A computer was a conglomeration of tubes in a big room at IBM. Actually, I think they had to build the building around the beast.

No, I did not walk to school barefoot, in the snow, uphill, both ways, but my parents did. They used to tell us they did not travel across country in a covered wagon.

My kids are college-age now, and they grew up with computers. I knew this, but when my youngest was 6 and he pulled out his Dad's cast-off Palm Pilot-type device to get a phone number, I knew I was out of my element. One year I got him a video (VHS, remember those?) of the top 15 Super Bowl moments. When he thanked me for it, he asked why some of them were filmed in Black & White. ... ... Um, because they were? It's all about perspective.

I have a cell phone, and have had one for many years. I use it mostly for emergencies, and it is more likely to be out of juice than usable. I almost never use it. There is no one I need to talk to so badly that it cannot wait until I get home. Or I can email them and they can get back to me whenever. I cannot understand who all these people on cell phones all day long are talking to.

So apparently in the last two weeks I have entered the 21st century, or so I have been told by the 20-somethings with whom I slave all day. I tweet. I have a Facebook page, though all I post to it are links to my etsy postings. My Google Reader is exploding with all the new blogs I now read because of the tweeple I have met. I am learning new things, and seeing other peoples' art. My Blackberry is in-transit... currently being held hostage by the FedEx guys. Sigh. It is all moving so fast!

What happened to my little world? I was so happy in my little cocoon of no television, no technology (relatively speaking), no noise! I liked being unplugged!

I read this post today, and it got me thinking about all things relative. I remember we were all sent home from school the day President Kennedy was shot, and I have always wondered why, after 40 years, we still remember that day, and not his birthday. I was at summer camp when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon for the first time. (I also served Mr. Armstrong dinner when I was a waitress back in my college days, but that's another story for another time.)

So once I get my hands on my new toy, I'll read the manual (yes, Lydia, I will), figure out how to turn on the dang thing, make sure I can get the phone part working, then hopefully get to the Interwebz before I go to the Market on Saturday. I'll report back on if I survive all this technology, or if I need to be pulled back into the dark ages.

I think I need to go stamp something. Thanks for stopping by!

A Twittery Update

Remember last week when I told you I'd dipped my toe into the Twitter pool? Well, it's been a whole week, and I thought I'd give you a crooked-type review of how it's going. Notice I did not say "gone", past tense; I'm still there.

So this twitter thing? While I can see how addicting it could be, I do agree that (as with any controlled substance) if used carefully, it can be entertaining and a GREAT way to meet people with common interests.

Case in point: Since the beginning of my adventure last Sunday, my blog comments have increased several-fold (and we know it is ALL about the comments, right?), and I made an etsy sale! My first! More people are following me, and it really is a lot of fun.

I love the people connection, and that the varied interests across the group lead to an expanded exposure to things I normally would not have seen. But you know what? I am going to stop now, because one of my first Twitter friends posted about this very topic the same day I was drafting this post, so instead of repeating what she said (though she did a MUCH better job than *I* could have done), I'll just send you over to her post. It is really quite eloquent!

In conclusion, I think in moderation, Twitter is a fine (and fun) diversion. I will not stop stamping to twitter on Twitter! Nononono! In fact, I am getting all sorts of ideas for cards from the things people say, so it is really another source of inspiration, and some days I can really use that!

Tonight, well, tonight my printer and Cuttlebug and Nesties all decided to throw fits, so I put them to bed early without dessert. Too early for ME to turn in, so I am doing a little catching up on my Google Reader and some tweets. Harmless, it is.

Tomorrow, it's back to stamping. I plan to wrassle with the printer & Cuttlebug & Nesties until I win! I WILL WIN! Wish me luck.

Thanks for stopping by!

A Capital 4th Observation

Every year our Nation's Capital has a real bang-up Fourth of July celebration. They spend the first part (while it is still light out) exposing the masses to culture in the form of song from various venues. We just had a Soprano sing one of Irving Berlin's songs that was in the running for our National Anthem. Now, to put that in perspective, I am watching Jerry Lee Lewis play Great Balls of Fire, and most of, if not ALL of, the people on stage with him were not yet born when Jerry Lee hit it big back in the 50's.

Didn't he marry his 14 year old cousin or something? Then these people could be his grandkids or great-grandkids. I'm just sayin'.

And now we move on to the 1812 Overture. Oh, wait. It's dark out on TV, but not in real life. And there's fireworks on TV. WHA?! Are they re-running LAST year's celebration!?!?!? THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS!!! And man has not really landed on the moon, either. It is all a facade! THIS IS JUST WRONG! I cry foul!!!! FOUL!

That's it! I'm off to write a letter to the producers of A Capital* Fourth.

ETA: Yeah, that was A Capitol Fourth 2008. I am okay now. A Capitol Fourth 2009 is starting now. Never mind.

* The Capitol (with an 'o') is the physical Capitol building in DC. Every other use of the word capital (with an 'a') is spelled with an 'a'. They can call this show A Capitol Fourth (with an 'o') because it is held on the steps of the Capitol. [I've warned you I am full of trivial, sometimes useless, information.]

Why I Will Never Lose Weight (aka: A Stamper's Lament)

1. I want to get an elliptical machine.
2. I have no room in my Living Room or Dining Room for an exercise machine.
3. To make room in my LR or DR for an exercise machine, I'd have to get rid of the Scrap Heap.
4. To get rid of the Scrap Heap, I'd need somewhere for it to go.
5. Logically, one would think all those scraps belong in The Other Room.
6. I'd need to clear a space on the table in The Other Room to house the scraps.
7. To clear a space on the table in The Other Room, I'd first need to clear a path to the table.
8. Every time I start to work on clearing even a few square inches of a path, I find cool stuff, I get distracted, and I go off to create.
9. I sit at my Dining Room table and make cool cards to post for our collective enjoyment.
10. Sitting so much makes me gain weight.
11. I really need to lose weight, so........
12. Go to 1.

I am doomed.

A Non-Crafty Aside

One of my lurking hang-outs is Stefani's And Another Thing .... I just love her work! Tuesday she posted this non-crafty post, and I was just blown away. I literally stopped, picked my lower jaw off the table, and started thinking about what *I* could do. After reading the article, I was almost embarassed that I have a decent job and my company probably will not go under because of the economy.

(I command you to go read it now, if you have not already. Go ahead ... I'll wait ....)

Isn't it a nice thought that this trouble with the economy has the potential to make us less dependent on "things" and more dependent on each other? I was just talking to #2 about this, and we both hope that people will reassess their situations, take stock of what they have, what they really need, and what they can give to others who may have less, and are in need of assistance.

Wouldn't it be great if we we all took a step back to something like the Barter System? Maybe we could give something of ourselves to help someone else. Maybe we could actually meet the neighbors!

I have high hopes that this economy thing will force us to be better people and to return to some of the more personal interactions that we miss in this electronic age. A girl can dream.

Now back to your regular programming.

I Think I See The Problem Now ....

Hi there...I'm baaaack. It has been an interesting few days in The Crooked Stamper household, and much has been learned. First, I figured out that while I think I am calm, cool, and collected while driving to and from work (my outbursts are down to one or two a day, now), I find that I fidget a lot more around commute time, which only means that I channel my frustrations to my finger-tips instead of out of my mouth in the form of expletives. This is probably good for my vocal chords, and also for me, in that I am not so certain these idiots that surround me are not armed. And by "armed", I mean with something more than the 2000+ lb vehicle they are maneuvering badly. But I digress.

I have also made the fatal mistake of re-introducing my cat to canned food, and now she loves me even more. I think, based on the ingredients list, that the canned stuff is better for her. I did ponder the idea of actually cooking her food like my Brother does for his furry ones, but then I got over that idea, so I think the canned stuff is the next best thing. Especially when the first ingredient is not Rice or Corn Meal, like it is on her dry food. But since she is a free-feeder, this whole canned food thing is a real pain in the arse. I have to put it out early enough so she eats most of it (1) before bed time and (2) before I leave for work. I still leave her dry food out to sustain her the rest of the time. I think she is so full and content that she now sleeps 95% of her day instead of just plain old 90%. What a life.

The other thing I've figured out is I should not go grocery shopping. You see, when I buy food, I feel compelled to cook some of it, and then I have to eat it. Eating means I need to sit still, so I turn on the boob tube, then I get caught up in some really exciting Food Network show, like this one:

AB is my hero. I will say he has gone a bit commercial on me, but he has great stuff on his show, and wonderful guests, like Deb, the Nutritional Anthropologist and Shirley, who blows me away with science.

But really, I was just playing with my new camera's settings to see if I could take a photo of the tv.

So when I am eating and watching tv, I am not stamping. Then I notice the time, and it is too late to get started on something new before I must head off to bed, and another craft-free evening passes me by. So I have laid down the law: No More Dinner!!! Well, for me, anyway. The cat, of course, pointed out the empty spot where her food should have been, and she was duly fed, but not ME. I got into my jammies and grabbed a piece of paper off the Scrap Heap and set to work! And you know what? That mojo just started to flooooow. I even picked up a few other things along the way, and I have future projects all queued up in my brain for tomorrow.

I had selected a piece of 12x12 paper with the word 'celebrate' written all over it in different colors and fonts. What to do, what to do ... I cut it into 6 pieces, then retrieved some Creamy Caramel for the bases. I opted to make it a Stash card, so I got some of my Bulk Buy chipboard stars, my Cosmo Glitter, my Heat&Stick Powder, some Jumbo eyelets and my Crop-o-dile, and a few yards of ribbon off the ginormous spool in The Other Room (I am down to 3998 yards, now), and I made this:

Not bad. Not bad. No, that is not red glitter stuck all over the paper. I thought it was, too, but it is part of the pattern.

I made two using this blue glitter, and one each of the other colors.





And here they are, all lined up like little soldiers.
.
.
.


Taking a closer look, you can see that I did a really poor job with the Heat&Stick powder. I have never been a real fan of the stuff...I prefer good old glue or tape most of the time. But properly applied, I can see that it would dry a lot faster than glue, which was my goal this evening.

One of the interesting things about this photo is how the color of that star on the left is not even close to its Real Life color. In real life, it is a deeper purple, more like Perfect Plum or maybe even Eggplant, where here it looks kinda pale. I think that's because of the camera (or the photographer), since sitting here and looking over at the cards, that purple is pretty dark.

Well, time to go give these babies an inventory number and move on to my next project. I'll show you that one tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by (and for reading this far!) :-)

Some Things To Think About

You know how I whine a lot? (Did I tell you I also sold my last two Whine Journals this weekend?) Well, to bring me right back down to planet Earth, I just found this through some blog-surfing, and it made me stop and think and to reassess my lot in life. So much so, that I needed to share.



The speaker died this past Friday, and that makes this all so much more poignant. I understand he also has a book with the same title.

Excuse me while I go cyber-hug my kids.

Do They Make A 13-Step Program?

I've heard of 12-step programs, but I think I may need something a little more intensive. Earlier this year I invested in all the Nestabilities. The whole shebang - all the circles, squares, ovals and rectangles, both plain and scalloped. Hey, it was a 'deal' if you got them all!

Then I tried a few of them in my Cuttlebug, and I decided I really did not need them after all, so I sold them on SCS. Talk about a 3-ring circus! I had so many emails in my PM mailbox, it filled up! And I was going to the PO every night for about a month. I finally sold all of them, recouped almost all of my initial expenditure, and I made a lot of people very happy.

Then I got this special order for some cards last weekend, and I sat down last night to make them. I got them all done, right up to the little scallop tags, when I realized after several minutes of searching and trying several of my punches and searching some more, that I'd made the nicely-nested scallops ... with my Nestabilities. Aaaaaaaugh!!!!!

So guess what I did today? Can you think what it might be? Hmmmmmm? Yep - I bought all the Nestabilities again. CRAZY, I know!!!! But now I simply must use them, or I'll never live it down.

Next up: Will the Crooked Stamper cave and buy the Scor-Pal? Stay tuned! You just never know!

The Crooked Stamper Expounds on the Benefits of Bling

As I have said at least once in the recent past, I feel part of my reason for being is to show others how good they really are in comparison to me. If only to make you feel a tiny bit better about yourselves. I think if I can come out and show you all my crooked stuff, then how bad can yours be? Really!

Today's topic is The Benefits of Bling. I like to think I can recover from almost any stamping-related mishap. Well, anything but that card I made Friday night and, um, threw out. Man, it was not worth saving ....

If you stamp crooked, or schmear something, or generally have an opportunity to embellish (we have no mistakes in stamping, remember? Tragedies, maybe, like that card I buried, but other than that, no actual "mistakes") ... then you know Bling can be your friend. I cannot tell you how many times I have saved a card by adding a little something and telling myself "I meant to do that".

A little aside on not being perfect out of the gate: When I was in college, oh so many moons ago, I took one of the required classes for my then-relatively-new Computer Science major. I was such a screw-up that one of my fellow students gave up helping me. Everything came easily to him, and I seemed to have to work very hard to get to the same point, so I think he just lost patience with me. I would have lost patience with me, too. Now, anyone who has coded long enough to remember green-bar paper remembers dumps. A dump is what the computer does when you mess up...it actually dumps its memory and all its innards in hexidecimal codes, and you have to know how to follow it like the complex road map that it is to figure out what your error is so you can fix it. Nothing like today's in-your-face here's-your-error messages you get. We had to work at it ... uphill ... barefoot ... in the snow ... both directions ...

Fast forward to the final exam. One of the things we had to do was debug a dump. Well guess what?! I knew exactly what to do, because that is all I ever did the whole semester! Guess who struggled with that part of the exam? Mr. My-stuff-is-always-perfect-the-first-time-you-are-a-screw-up. HAHAHA!

Ahem ... So you see I am used to not being perfect, and I just do my best to recover, and sometimes I think I am pretty good at it. Okay, let's move on to today's patient...

I made a bunch of these cards in an attempt to use some of the embarrassingly-large stockpile of SAB rub-ons I still have. I made some black-on-white, green-on-white, brown-on-white, plus some white-on-brown and white-on-black that I layered on white card bases. They all got a piece of ribbon from my stash, too, and let me tell you, brown is not an easy color to match!

I had a few spare moments this afternoon, so I took these out of the Clean Sweep pile and started to put them with envelopes into clear sleeves for sale at next week's market.

Here is one of the black-on-white cards:


It's plain. It's simple. Maybe a little too much of both. Then I spied that schmear on the right side of the rub-on and I knew it had to be covered up somehow. But how?

Then I remembered this:

I have had this for several years, probably from when I first discovered 'gems' and I thought this was them. It wasn't. This is one of those self-contained sticky things you can stick onto an object. Cell phone, maybe? Back pack? I dunno. But I thought they were individual 'gems', so I bought the thing.

Notice how I have been ripping the buggers off the sticky backing...these will go far! I just stick them onto my projects with some two-way glue.

Now, when you add something like this gem to a card, you cannot add only one. Nope - think about the Rule Of Three. I do, a lot, so I had to add three of these gems. One was going on the schmear, and I found places for two more. Here is a shot of the card post-bling:

I used the green gems ('gems', right, but you know what I mean) and they look pretty cool in real life, even though it is hard to see in the picture I took.

This is a closeup of one of the gems so you can see it is really green. And I got to do a close-up. ;-)

They all turned out pretty good, and I think that added bling was just enough to take them from 'boring' to 'interesting'. And if I make about 50 more cards, I'll even use up this small card of faux gems. But for now, it's back into the bling drawer.

Change of subjects ... time for a little Farmers Market update. Saturday was Hazy, Hot and Humid, just like it was billed to be. I went out to my car early in the morning to put my large rotating fan into the back of the car to take with me, and it was so humid you could see the air, and the air was so heavy it took my breath away. Ugh, it was going to be a long day.

Turned out we had no power at the pavilion, so we could not use our fans. We were all dripping within a few minutes. Fortunately for me, I did not make coffee at home to take with me, and opted instead to stop at Starbucks on the way to get a Mocha Frappachino. Icy and cold and caffeinated. Aaaah, bliss. It really hit the spot. Well, except for the brain freeze I had. I hate when that happens.

Overall, the day could have been worse, and thinking back to last summer, is has been worse. It was oppressively hot, but we did have an occasional breeze that felt sooo good, and I had packed a cooler of not food, but frozen towels. From my years of long, summer bicycle rides, I know the value of an ice-cold towel on an overheated body, especially on the temples and around the neck. I brought several, so I shared. ;-)

Most of us were in shorts and sleeveless shirts, except for Farmer Mike. Farmer Mike was wearing long pants, and a long-sleeved shirt over a T-shirt...he did not want to get chilled. He just sat there and shook his head at all us (we) citified folk and listened to us whine about how hot it was. He actually suggested I try wearing long sleeves next week to see if I stay cooler. Not gonna do it - I am hot just thinking about it!

I got my first CSA share, too. It consisted of lettuce, radishes, kale, spring onions, strawberries, garlic scapes (the green tops of the garlic plants that get cut off so the garlic bulb will grow larger), two herb plants and a few other things. I also bought some taters, raspberries, and both sweet and sour cherries from Farmer Mike (even though he was still laughing at me.)

When I got home I had a marathon of washing and putting away all that produce. Knowing I would not get to the fruit this week before it got fuzzy, I opted to make another Mountain Dew blender drink. This week it had not only strawberries and raspberries, but I also added in some of the cherries!

This is a very yellow shot of the cherries. I was stupid and dumped both the sweet and sour into the collander together, so it will be a total surprise when they get consumed.

I actually pitted all of them, but I saved this pair, because they were too perfect. This shot also shows you how poor the previous photo was. Too yellow. I tried to fix it, but alas, I failed. This is how red they really are. And they are yummy, too!

About the kale. Let's just say I learned a bit about kale last night. I cooked it as instructed: sauteed some onion and garlic, cut up the kale, added it to the skillet with a little water, covered it and let it steam for about 10-15 minutes. It was like slow-cooking spinach. Unfortunately for me, I was not aware of how much fiber is in kale, so I ate it like spinach - a whole plate full. Can you say "intestinal distress"? This was all explained to me by one of my more alert (and kale-wise) customers this afternoon. Her first comment was, "You did not eat a whole lot of it, did you?" Uh-huh. Kale is good for me, maybe, but fun? Not. I may give the vile stuff away next week. I am such a Yankee. And a pansy-arsed citified Yankee, at that!

That's all for today. I am mid-workshops (got another one tomorrow night) so I cannot get too creative this evening, as I'd just have to clean up after myself, and that sounds like work. I think I'll take it easy and do some laundry (how fun!) and watch my latest Netflix movie, "Mrs. Brown". It's about Queen Victoria, post-Albert. I love good historical fiction!

Who'da Thunk?

My brother forwards me interesting tidbits once in a while, and I find them facinating, so I thought I'd share. Yeah, yeah, I know, I should be stampin' something, and actually I am, but I am not ready to share yet. Though I did send out the ribbon pieces to the first two participants in my Candy With A Catch Challenge. I look forward to seeing what you create with it! And if you are one of my blogless readers, you can email me a photo and I'll post it here for you.

Now for the Who'da Thunk Du Jour:

RAILROADS

Does the statement, 'We've always done it like that' ring any bells?

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did they use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay, why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions, and the roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman Army Chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

And you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important!

Too Many Choices

When my kids were little, they attended a Montessori school. Even though they did not finish out their educations there, I think we all took away a lot of valuable lessons from the years they were there. One of these is the word "lesson", but I digress.

One of the lessons learned by the parents is the concept of choice. Even a very young child is capable of making choices and then dealing with the consequences of those choices. The key is not to overwhelm them with options. You should not ask them something as open-ended as "what would you like for lunch", but you could ask them if they would like Grilled Cheese or PB&J. This involves the child in the decision-making process and you get buy-in at the same time.

This concept was extended to the area of toys. At home, a child generally has toys available with which to play. If you have ever walked into someone's house and the floor was strewn with toys, and the child was complaining he/she had nothing to do, that is a perfect example of a child with too many choices. It was suggested that we did not need to reign in our purchases, but that we only make available a fixed number of toys (read: options) at any one time. If you have 6 toys on a shelf, then the child has 6 toys from which to choose. You can certainly swap out one toy for another every once in a while to keep the inventory moving, but there should not be more than that fixed number of options at any one time. It is all about limits.

So why am I blathering on about Monetssori? Because I think, as stampers, we are often overwhelmed with our choices, and then we get nothing accomplished and we feel frustrated and maybe even feel we need to go buy something new, when that is not the case - AT ALL.

Check out my current situation.


This is a card that looks better in person, but it is a piece of Very Vanilla wheeled with the Forever Flowers wheel and Versamark. It makes it look like patterned paper, and was the subtle look I wanted. I think. (If you click on the photo you can kinda see it ...) I added the sentiment from Together Forever in Sahara Sand, and tied a piece of swirly ribbon from my stash. I liked it, but then I thought it was too plain, so I set it aside where it still sits on my work table.


The cat? She does not worry about too much at all. Ever.

Also out on my worktable are these papers from the Ginger Blossom set that are just crying to be used together, but I have not gotten to them yet.

Oh, and those envelopes at the top of the photo? Those are the prizes for the last Spot The Mistake Contest, almost ready to mail.

This was an idea I had that is just not working out, but all the materials used are still within reach on my table. Still nigglin' about this one. It may need a plain-front card instead of the raised-edge variety. And yes, I hoarded these when they retired...I have a whole drawer full of them.

If I can get some variation of this idea to work for me, I'll have justified the purchase of the Lovely Letters Alphabet and the Together Forever sets, plus use up those packs of card stock in my drawer. A girl can dream.


And then there is this pile of mock-ups on the corner of the coffee table. They landed there during my last Clean Sweep prior to my March workshops, and there they still sit. I see them every day, and I tell myself I simply MUST make more of them for selling, but I have not gotten there yet.

Aaaand, this is a piece of paper from my stash that just screams "Very Vanilla card stock with some purple ribbon", but it is just sitting there, waiting in the wings.

On top of all this, a friend of mine emailed me asking if I could bring some Birthday cards and some generic Any Occasion cards to our next get-together in April. Uh, yeah, sure, once I MAKE SOME! Don't get me wrong - I love it when my friends like my cards, but I am just a bit behind this year in the inventory-building exercise.

So you see, this Montessori concept of Too Many Choices now bleeds into our adult lives. I think we (or at least *I*) need to get a grip and get some focus. I just have SO MUCH STUFF that I want to use, that I just cannot seem to focus on any one thing long enough to finish it before I feel the pull to move on to something else. I think my lazy Winter months make me like this, I really do. I am much more organized during the Summer months, as I have to keep the inventory moving and interesting each and every weekend.

Oh, well, enough whining for one sitting. I am home today to take care of a ton of financial things - taxes, IRA funding, investment adjustments, auto and home insurance calls to make ... all the things you cannot do easily from Cubeville. This was just a break in the action, so I am off to make some more phone calls. Perhaps later today I will pull myself up by my bootstraps (if I were actually wearing boots, or ever shoes) and get some FOCUS. I'll let you know how that goes.

A Little Domesticity

I had the day off of work today because I had some workers over to do some drywall repair and few other odd jobs while they waited for the spackling to dry. The drywall work was largely on the ceilings surrounding both ceiling fans they put in last summer. To facilitate this task, I had to disembowel the bed so they could access the ceiling in the center of the room (right over the bed.) As I re-assembled the bed just now, and began putting the layers of blankets back on (much to the cat's relief! She is so low on her sleep quotient today I do not even want to think about it...) I realized I do not have "blankets ... I have "quilts" - three of them! And they are all so very different from each other, I felt compelled to do a photo journal of them. (Boy, do I need a life!)

First up, the first quilt to hit the bed is the one I made. It should be painfully obvious to even the casual observer that this quilt will never win any awards, but then that is not why I made it. Every piece of fabric in this quilt came from a box of fabric I got from my Mom. The scraps represent dresses she made for herself B.C. (before children), curtains we had in houses growing up, clothing she made for me when I was little, and clothing I made for myself before I got smart and discovered Levi's about the age of 14. So this whole thing is one big sentimental journey, and it is huge. I had it laid out on the floor as I sewed it, and I just kept adding rows until I thought it would cover my bed. So it goes on the bed first because I need to tuck it under a lot on the bottom. :-)

Check out the detail in those squares, man! I broke every quilting rule. I put all different fabrics together, like double-knit, heavy wools, thin cottons, etc. And the actual quilting on this one consists of very thin ribbon sewn through the corners between the squares. Very, very advanced. Yeah, right. But who cares? It means a lot to me.



The next layer to go on the bed is a Waverly quilt I had custom-made many, many years ago when I felt I needed a designer to help me "do" my home. (I am so over that now. ) I keep this one around because it wieghs about 150 pounds, and when it is on the bed, you know you have blankets on. It is perfect for those chilly Winter months, but it is also very expensive to clean, so it is rarely the top layer.


Check out the details of the quilting, albeit by machine. I did not select this pattern to make the quilter's job more difficult, but I do not want that job, if you know what I mean.



This last quilt is the one that is on top of the bed right now, and has a few extra pounds to it that is largely composed of cat hair. Some friends and I went to Berkley Springs, West Virgina, a few years ago and we hit a Quilt Show where I felt the burning need to buy this for my bedroom. It is hand-made, and has the name of the quilter on the inside. I love it!

So there you have it - three quilts that could not be more different, and all on the same bed! So now that the bed has been re-assembled and re-made, and the cat is burrowed and finally catching up on her sleep, I really need to get to work on that scrapbook! I was distracted today by the workers and found it easier to make some cards while they were here, so I have not been lazing or anything, just not scrappin'!

A Clean Slate and a Controlled Test

When you go on a diet, one of the first things they have you do is keep a journal of everything you eat. As humiliating and eye-opening as this is for dieters, that is not what I will be doing here. What I WILL be doing is a 28-day study of how my Dining Room and Kitchen transform from a workshop-viable space to ones that look like a toronado hit, then hit again before I had a chance to clean up from the first one.

I had workshops on Sunday, both morning and afternoon sessions. Since I have another session on Tuesday night, Monday is kinda of a free night to make sure I have all the cleaned stamps back at their stations, grid paper replaced, scraps replenished, and basically everything done so when I get home at 6:00 pm on Tuesday, and my first customers follow me in the door like they did last month, all I will have to do is turn on the lights and greet that cat (not necessarily in that order) for us to begin.

So tonight is a perfect night for me to start capturing the Before pictures in preparation for the daily journal of how this all falls apart so quickly. (Is a daily journal in a blog rendundant?)

Here are a few Before shots of what this place looks like for a workshop...

The Dining Room table:

The Dining Room table is where I live when I am home and not nestled into the sunken portion of the couch cushion that perfectly fits my behind. As I clean up from the workshops, this table will be the first to sustain damage in the way of stuff 'stored' there for later. This is also where I sit and play with stamps, paper and ribbon when I have time, so I guess that makes sense, in a way.

The 6-foot table:

This is the larger of the two additional tables I use for my workshops. This one, however, never actually goes away. After a workshop I fold up the folding chairs (!) and then just push the table up against the book cases. For the next month it will hold all the stamping mats (from under the grid paper) in a neat pile, and my paper cutter will come out of hiding and reside at the end of the table.



The 4-foot table:

This table will be the first thing to actually get put away when I clean up. All the stuff from the top gets set on one of the other tables, and this guy gets collapsed and stored up against the wall, along with all four folded folding chairs. Otherwise I could not walk into this room for a month without going postal.

The cat, resting up from her all-day nap:


And no, she was no help in beginning this chronicle, nor do I expect her to be any help in the future. At least we understand each other.

And last, but not least, the Kitchen table (aka: The Shopping Station):

I think I misspoke when I said the Dining Room table would take the first hit. In fact, the Kitchen will be the first fatality, because when I come in the front door in the evening, the first thing I do is toss the mail onto the Kitchen table. There it sits and piles up until the night before the next workshop, when I go through it, decide what gets recycled, what gets filed, and what should have been paid by now, thus clearing the surface so people can sit there and see the catalogs and order forms.

Amazing, but this tiny place can actually accomodate 8 women moving about for several hours. Well, okay, it holds 7 women much more comfortably than 8, but if they are good, close friends, 8 is doable.

So there you have it - the Before images that may not be seen again until this time next month. Starting Wednesday night, I will chronicle the evolution from Workshop Stations to a total mess. Let's see how long THAT takes to happen! I'll give it two days. ;-)

Update: And so it begins. Look what just arrived:

This is the box that just arrived on my door-step. It contains my most recent Demo order. Normally it would get opened, then shoved under the long table to sit until I figured out what to do with everything, but noooooo, people need to sit at that table tomorrow, so now I need to figure out where to stash it. Sigh.

Cold enough for you?

I just read this on GinaK's blog, and what a hoot! Sometimes (okay...MOST of the time) I laugh at people in DC when they say it is freezing cold outside and I am still in short sleeves. Having grown up in the Midwest, including 2 years in Chicago, I completely identified with this post:

http://blog.ginakdesigns.com/2008/01/19/11-below-zero.aspx

Here in DC it was in the teens yesterday, so yes, I finally put on my winter coat this morning! :-) Now back to work!

I had to share ...

I just experienced a way-back moment, and I had to share! I was in the kitchen, mixing up a new batch of Emeril's Essence, and desperately hunting through my spice cabinet for the ingredients. If you watch Emeril's shows, you will know he taunts the audience about the presumed shelf life of pre-ground spices, and it is not the "years" some people keep them - "and you know who you are!" Well, I am one of those guilty parties with decades-old spices on hand.

So imagine my amusement when I hunted for Thyme and found this:

Yep - and it was full! For the young-uns reading this post, this is a metal tin of spice, and they ALL used to come this way. I think the darkness of the container (not much light gets through metal) plus the tightness of the top kept these fresher for longer than today's plastic. Actually, I am not sure we HAD plastic back then...LOL! Kidding! Just not for our spices. And even in a metal tin, I am pretty sure this one has lost just a wee bit of its potency.

For some more way-backness, check out the top and bottom of the container:










Yes, you needed an instrument with strength, like a metal teaspoon to pry the lid off these things. On the right is the bottom of the tin with the price: 29 cents. We now take a moment to pause and reflect on the good ole' days .......................................

Okay, enough reminiscing! Back to cooking! BTW, this nice Jewish girl is making a ham. That is correct - a HAM. I have seen so many cooking programs with people making their own honey glazes that I had to try it. I also had to look up the recipes - like *I* would know how to cook a ham. Guess what I will be eating for a week. Mmmm...smells good in here.

Do NOT Try This At Home!

Call me 'wet behind the ears', but I have a lot to learn about blogging! I do not normally have much free time to just surf, and I rarely read other people's blogs, at least not on a regular basis. If I have free time, I like to stamp!

But alas, I am still a bit burned out from my mad dash to make Holiday and Birthday cards the past few days, so I decided to take tonight off, especially since in a weak moment I turned on {shudder} Network TV and was just in time to see a commercial for The Grinch. YAY! So I am on the couch waiting for movie time and thought I'd check out some blogs.

Where to get started? I checked out the few blogs I have listed here (really my bookmarks so I can find them again), but then those are the few on which my reading is up-to-date, and they are all celebrating Christmas with their families, so there are no new updates. (Do not be sad for me! I do not celebrate Christmas, so tomorrow is just a day off for me!)

Anyway, I have seen the "next blog" link on the blogger page and thought, hmmmm, that would be a cool way to see other blogs without having to really look for them. This would be the "do not try this at home" part. Let me tell ya, there are some straaaange people out there, and a few of them have sites without naked women! The rest of them ARE ALL NAKED WOMEN! Some local, too! Who knew!?!

So no more of THAT, no sir! I think I'll go check out the SCS Bloggers site and do some safe surfing! But "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" just started, so I must curl up with the cat and watch those cute Who's in Whoville! G'nite!

The Rush is Almost Over

In today's episode, we stop to ponder our life's choices. I got started in stamping thinking I could make some money selling what I made. [HAHAHA - what was she smoking?!?!] No, seriously, I love to make cards, and as my Living Room filled up with all my creations, I thought I could make more than one of each and sell them, which I promptly started to do. The challenge is there is not a good profit margin on a card. So while I do make money on every card I sell, it ain't payin' the mortgage, if you get my drift. It sure is a good thing I like doing it so much or I'd have to rethink my life's decisions!

I had my last show of the season this past Saturday, and it feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. It was actually a good show! Pretty well attended, I sold a good amount of cards (and not much else), and I got three new potential customers for my SU classes. YAY! I think I just get tired at this point every year, and I regroup and regenerate over the Winter months.

Lesson #1 learned: Start preparing for next year's Christmas shows before November! There really is something to the discipline of making Holiday cards starting in January.

Lesson #2 learned: Stop trying to be something you are not. I am a card-maker; I am not a paper crafter. I love all the other things we can do with our stash of stuff, but I found I really perfer to just make cards. I tried the paper crafting, and I think we all had a good time at my first Holiday Stamp Camp...I liked it, but I found myself asking, "But where's the stamping?"

So I left last Saturday's show and went straight to my storage unit (I told you this condo was teeny tiny!) and unloaded my craft show walls and tables into storage. Now I can see out the back window of my car, too!

Next up: I will triage the remaining items in my inventory, because technically (for taxes) I do not carry an inventory. This time every year I go through all my remaining cards and thin the herd. All the stuff I am either sick of looking at or is just plain not selling gets put into boxes and I ship them to people who make up care packages for the troops. It is a win-win situation for everyone.

This year I have the added pleasure of donating all my unsold ornaments to local charitable establishments or maybe some Senior Living facilities or Half-Way houses. I liked them, but apparently no one else did, so out they go.

Now I can focus on Stampin' Up! and my monthly classes/stamp camps/whatever they are. I love doing them, and now I feel I'll have the time to focus more, which is what I meant by "the rush is almost over". I have my workshops this next weekend, and I am so NOT prepared! Okay, I have 3 of the 5 projects made; I just need to think up 2 more and call it done! But first I need to go through my cards so I can get everyone IN here on Sunday. Off to triage!

Update, 9:00 pm EST:

Triage is done, and I am stunned. I started with 6 1/2 storage boxes (Container Store Sweater Boxes) of cards, and post-triage, where I did not take much time to decide "keep" versus "purge", I am down to less than 3, one of which is all Christmas and Chanukkah. I ended up with 5 flat-rate boxes stuffed with cards. Then I found a box in the other room I had forgotten about, so now I will load up a few bubble envelopes with the rest of those cards. This is all going to 3 organizations...I feel "cleansed".

Lesson #3 learned: Be a bit more discerning in what is created en masse for sale.

Over the years I have sold a few of my "one of a kind" cards - those made on the way to the final version that I cannot bear to just throw away, but probably not enough to justify keeping them around. I guess I'll have a bit more recycling next year. ;-)

I do have a box of other cards that I plan to drop off at my massage therapist's place. She has always had a small rack of my cards for sale, and now that I can include SU images in that collection I have a few more to add to the offerings. Mostly Christmas ones...I hope to actually SELL some of them! Yeesh.

A little catching up ...

What a whirlwind ten days it's been! The Holiday Stamp Camp actually happened, my first one of two Craft Shows is behind me, as are my November workshops. Time to breathe!

Lessons learned this time around: (1) Do not stuff more than 8 people into the condo at one sitting; (2) Do not plan a Holiday Stamp Camp for the weekend before the weekend that has you doing both a Craft Show AND a series of workshops/classes; and (3) Start making your Holiday cards for your Craft Shows before November.

First, the Holiday Stamp Camp. Most of the projects went well, and people were impressed with their new-found skills. I, of course, over-estimated what we could accomplish in 3 hours, so we only got to 7 of my planned 11 projects. I did make sure to include the one project that incorporated Chocolate, as I felt there was a not-so-subtle undercurrent of anticipation that might have exploded into a full-out riot if I had chosen to skip that particular project. "So, is THIS the project with chocolate?!" I instructed them to take ten - TEN - pieces of chocolate to fit into the tin they were altering. Amazing how many people "miscounted" and had to consume the extras. Then I discovered a bag of Dark Chocolate pieces in my stash and it had to be passed around so that pieces of dark chocolate could to be "exchanged" for the plain pieces previously selected. Then I lost all control of the situation. But The Ladies were grinning and giggling, and a chocolately-good time was had by all. ;-)

I do have to add that the not-so-successful projects were even well-received, and everyone was a pretty good sport about it. I thought maybe it was because they got copies of the instructions to take home with them, but then I re-thought it and I really think it was the chocolate.

Now for the over-booking part. I honestly thought I could pull off the Holiday Stamp Camp on a Sunday, work a full week, set up for the Holiday Bazaar on Friday night, attend the Holiday Bazaar all day Saturday, come home Saturday evening and prep for the Sunday workshops, and still be able to stay vertical. I must have been smoking something.

I can be slow, but I do eventually get it. SCS has a Christmas card plan that has you making 10 cards a month for 10 months. Silly, you say, to make Holiday cards in January - NOT SO, she said, as she tried to figure out how she could make some new cards and still get any sleep before she had to go to work .... I have all these great ideas, but no TIME. Sigh ... pesky Day Job.

But I do learn while I whine. At Saturday's Holiday Bazaar, while I was busy not selling much (the show was not particularly well-attended this year), people kept telling me how lovely my ornaments were, but they did not buy any. Finally, while chatting with one woman about them, I asked her if they were so lovely, then why weren't they selling? She said she thought they were pretty if you looked at them from above, which most people do not do once they are on the tree and above the eye-level of a small child. Made perfect sense to me after she put it that way. Sometimes it takes another point of view for you to see clearly. So I am now on a mission to re-work these puppies before my next and final show of this season on December 1st.

I'll post the Before and After versions of the ornaments later this week. Right now it sounds like work. ;-)

The Halloween Tradition Lives!

I am an old fart. You know, one of those people who grew up in the 50's and 60's, when neighborhoods were still safe to walk at night, and when you went door-to-door for Tricks or Treats, you and your parents knew the people handing out candy, and the people handing out candy knew all the kids. It was a very nice time to be a kid.

The past 10 years or so I have been "not home" on Halloween night. I either strategically planned to be out, or I watched TV in the dark. C'mon, I know there are a few of you out there just like that!

I am not sure where I lost the fun bug for Halloween. I think it was one year when I opened the door and faced 3 football-sized teenagers, with voices that had already dropped to below baritone, saying "Trick or Treat". They got candy, but sorry - they were not kids.

The following year, I really had to be gone that night, so I left a bowl of candy out on a table with a sign that said "Please take one. Happy Halloween!" When I got home, the table, bowl and sign were gone. I found the sign down the street, and the table was broken and tossed behind the building. Never did find the bowl. After that I stopped being home.

So, enough whining, right? Well, tonight renewed my faith in tradition. I had planned to not be home, of course, as I had conveniently scheduled my monthly 1-hour massage for this evening. I have to drive through an old, historic section of town to get to her place, and on my way home back through that neighborhood, the streets were literally clogged with parents standing at the curb waiting for the kids to run up to the houses. And there were other gaggles of kids and parents walking for blocks and blocks. It warmed the cockles of my heart!!!

So I must just live in the wrong neighborhood or something. Hmmm... I'll bet all those teenagers have moved away by now, because I have seen lots of young families with small kids lately. Maybe next year I will stay home and dress up and hand out candy, just to see how it goes. Who knows, could be fun!

Happy Halloween! And remember, after your kids have gone to bed and you are "checking" their candy, try to leave them some of the "good" stuff! ;-)