MOTIVATIONAL QUOTES and JEWELRY

THIS WEEKEND

I'm excited about this weekend. I want to do some metal clay stuff. I need to remember to order some dremel things. Can't remember off-hand what I need, but I need to get back to experimenting with FINISHING my projects instead of just learning new ways to START projects.

Tomorrow I need to make some flight arrangements. It used to be that you'd get a better deal if you called early. Now you seem to get a better deal if you call at the last minute. Eek! I wonder how long before the kids have to fly that I should do this. I've got Gabe going to L.A. twice, Mon going to Vegas once, and Gabe and I going to New Hampshire once. I think (hope) that's it.


JEWELRY

Here's a new one that I haven't listed yet 'cause I need to get some decent photos of it.



I guess we'll call today "sneak preview". Here's a pair of earrings I haven't listed yet…



... and ...




MOTIVATIONAL QUOTES

I know, they sound trite. I realize that. But really, they are (IMO) so important. Get past the schmaltziness of them and listen:

"It's hard to beat a person who never gives up." Babe Ruth

"Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors." African Proverbs

"A man is not finished when he's defeated; he's finished when he quits." Richard M. Nixon

"A goal without a plan is just a wish." Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"The reason people blame things on the previous generations is that there's only one other choice." Doug Larson

"Each player must accept the cards that life deals him or her. But once in hand one must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game." Voltaire

"When it's all over, it's not who you were ... it's whether you made a difference." Bob Dole

And here's one that seems to be about me (ha ha ha!): "Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them." Tom Stoppard

I hate responsibility yet it seems to follow me like a shadow. Is that because I actually DO things?



see more Lolcats and funny pictures


see more Lolcats and funny pictures


see more Lolcats and funny pictures


Oh, here's a quote that's not motivational but it IS something I feel strongly about…

"There are no facts, only interpretations." Friedrich Nietzsche

Blog Exit Pages... and a Bracelet Gallery

WHERE ARE PEOPLE GOING ONCE THEY READ MY BLOG?

Here's something interesting. I was looking at the stats for my blog and wanted to see where people go when they're here.

The overwhelming majority go to my website… whew!

Then about 20% go to the Art Beads jewelry carrying pouch that I talked about awhile back. (10% go to the Art Beads enamel link.)

Third on the list at nearly 15% is the page on peri-menopause symptoms. Heh

A bunch of people go to my blogger profile, but I don't have anything there… sorry.

The rest is divided up with: polymer clay tear-away sheets, Hadar Jacobson's site, Gaffer Girls, Rana Mountain Studio, and the Woman Resource (another of my websites).



RANDOM QUESTION

Does anyone know why kittens often have splayed eyes until they get a little older?


HILARITY


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Karen Hardy finds the coolest stuff… You have to click on this link and then hit play… it's wild.


COMMENTS (referring to my earlier blog on "mondegreens")

ChezChani (Elayne) writes: From the Broadway sensation Miss Saigon, the real words are "I eat too much ice cream." What I hear is "I eat too much. I scream."

Ha! I hadn't heard that one before. I love it! BTW, happy belated birthday. Sorry to hear you don't have any great memories of past ones. Come to think of it, I don't either. Maybe it's a Cancer thing… wait a minute… is Roz the Cancer? 'Cause we're still into Gemini now. Or are you just thinking ahead?

Mike Bracken writes: Don't forget your other classic, beat the meatball. :p

Yeah, but I don't remember what that was from. What were the real words?


THIS WEEKEND

I am going to have more adventures in metal clay and photography. Whoohoo!!!


GALLERY

Oh yeah! Almost forgot… I got ONE of my gallery pages up. It's "bracelets".

SRAJD Updates

FOOD

Breakfast today was a new one. I made a bowl of oatmeal, but I had to think of some way to make it palatable without the use of sugar. I sliced up a mango and added it to the oatmeal and it was perfect!

That held me for my walk to work, and once there I had some raw almonds and watermelon.

Yes, I'm eating more fruit than I probably should be at the moment, but it's WAY better than eating all the sweets and other things that provide my body with ZERO nutrition.


SRAJD

Aside from processing memberships today, we added a new article and are finally starting to organize the chapters.


JEWELRY

Got some ideas brewing.

This one (that I never got around to listing) is gone. Hope the new owner likes it.

Bronze Clay, Mondegreens, and Healthy Eating

BRONZE CLAY RESULTS

Did I already mention that what came out of the kiln was less than stellar? I had three small bronze tube beads… two of them opened up at the seam. That doesn’t surprise me. I felt like a dweeb when I was making them. Hadar was really nice, showing me some tips and tricks, but I still felt I was doing a really bad job at them. And I guess it turns out I was.

One piece that survived the kiln was something that was GOING to be a pendant bead with holes on each side… holes that I forgot to drill before firing the piece. Argh!

One piece that didn’t survive was a plain pendant. It cracked down the middle.

Oh, and my pieces had blisters on the backs… this is the first time I’ve had blisters. Shrug… I thought that was a sign of over-heating…. But I didn’t have a higher temp.

I obviously still need a lot of experimenting to do.

Then there were two pieces that are too thin (IMO) and I did something stupid… It was going to be bronze textured background with copper inlay, but I forgot that if I don’t push the copper through the hole that I made (for the jumpring finding) it will bake in place. D’oh!

I didn’t polish anything yet. Y’know… it’s sort of anticlimactic. Maybe I’ll do the inlay ones and see if they’re salvageable.


HEALTHY EATING

Today is day five. I still have massive sugar cravings, but I haven't really caved. Not with sugar anyway. I did have some tamales with cheese in them. I'm not going to wig out about some things here and there that are still healthy but not exactly part of what I am doing at the moment. To me, it's still better to eat energy-giving food so I'm okay with things like cheese, a little fatty meat, a piece of bread… stuff like that.

There's been dark chocolate and cookies and stuff like that at the office this week. I haven't had one bite.

I also didn't eat one chip after the kids opened a big bag of cheddar potato chips to go with the hamburgers.

I'm not used to having will-power so I'm pleased by this. Hope it lasts.


MONDEGREEN

Do you know what a mondegreen is? It's when a word or phrase is misheard or misinterpreted. Like instead of "it's a dog eat dog world", the person actually thinks the phrase is "it's a doggie dog world". Or thinking "for all intents and purposes" is "for all intensive purposes". There are a TON of lyrics that get misheard. One of the most famous is the Hendrix song, "Excuse me while I kiss the sky..." misheard as "Excuse me while I kiss this guy…"

See… they sound pretty much the same. It's all about interpretation.

The word "mondegreen" was coined by Sylvia Wright (a writer in mid-20th century America) because as a child she was read a poem that went:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray,
And laid him on the green.
But what her mind heard was:
Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl Amurray,
And Lady Mondegreen.

Some more good ones…

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life (Psalm 23)
Becomes
Surely good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life

Half a league, half a league; Half a league onward," (The Charge of the Light Brigade)
Becomes
Haffely, Gaffely, Gaffely, Gonward

Stand beside her and guide her through the night with a light from above (God Bless America)
Becomes
Stand beside her and guide her through the night with a light from a bulb

The girl with kaleidoscope eyes (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds)
Becomes
The girl with colitis goes by

Then there was the 1943 backwards mondegreen song by Drake et al…
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey; A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe
Was a clever play on:
Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy; A kid'll eat ivy too; wouldn't you?

And I guess I should admit my own…
"I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me" (Beck song)
I swear (swear Swear SWEAR) that if you listen carefully it sounds much more like what I thought he was singing …
"I'm a lizard baby so why don't you kill me"


PHOTOS

Did I mention I got a new photo cube… and tried it out (sort of)? I'll probably explain in my next entry. I hope to be able to shoot tomorrow night.

TTYL!

Healthy Eating, Changing My Metal Clay Firing Schedule, and a Haircut

HEALTH

I want to get back to it. I’m incredibly unhealthy at the moment, so I’m making a few changes.

I already gave up my parking space at the office and now I walk 25 mins to work and 25 mins back to home each day. I also walk Bear once a day or so. I will add a routine with small weights soon and/or yoga (particularly yoga breathing).

So I went out this morning, armed with a couple recipes, to my local Whole Foods (which is more expensive than Trader Joes but they have more variety).

Tonight I’m making Lamb Curry… except that I don’t really like lamb so I’m using beef instead. I don’t really like beef either, but if I try to go vegetarian I’m afraid my choices will be too limited and I’ll revert back to “easy” food. So this “lamb” curry involves: meat, onion, spinach, lentils, ginger, garlic, and a bunch of spices.

After shopping, I came home, had a bowl of low-sugar granola with oat bran, then spent the morning cleaning the apartment. Doing that threw me off any kind of “eat six small meals a day” thing, so now as my lentils are pre-cooking (I got raw, organic everything… no cans, no packages, etc) I’m munching on a snack of what I’ll refer to as my “cheater foods”.

Cheater foods are things that don’t fit the strict curriculum of my healthier eating choices, but are still very far from the really nasty stuff I was putting into my body. For example, right now I’m dipping Lundberg Brown Rice Organic Lightly Salted Cakes (yes, although I’m a salt-junkie… everything is now low sodium) into La Cascada (a local taqueria) Spicy Eggplant Hummus (garbanzo beans, eggplant, garlic, lemon, olive oil, peppers, cumin, salt). It is an AMAZING snack. It’s really, really good.

I’m not exactly sure why I consider that “cheater” foods… maybe it’s the salt. Shrug. If anything, the breakfast was cheater food… I mean, the cereal may have been low sugar, but it still had SOME sugar in it… and raisins. But I’m not going ballistic on this. Just watchful and judicious.

Oh, I should make some brown rice to go with my curry… also a salad. Here’s my dressing recipe: olive oil, lemon juice, kelp powder (dang! I forgot to get that), sea salt, and tahini (diluted with warm water). I got a large container of organic mixed greens. It will last me a week or more.

Supplements I’m taking now include: B complex, psyllium, acidophilus, maca, and Chlorella (I may add Spirulina someday).

The basic “don’t eat” foods include (a lot of white stuff): simple carbs, sugars, vinegars, fermented foods/ liquids, processed foods, condiments, coffee/tea, fast food, and starchy veggies.

The basic “do eat” foods include: high fiber low starch veggies (most of my diet), healthy proteins (second most), complex carbs (next most), fruit (least… like maybe a dessert or with breakfast).

My intuition (helped along by such symptoms as: sugar-cravings, lack of mental sharpness, lethargy, sinus issues, etc) tells me to go back on this sort of diet that keeps the “bad” intestinal bacteria at bay. This is also a diet good for those prone to hypoglycemia (which I am).


METAL CLAY

Went to Hadar’s last night. The “Friday Night Ladies” are very nice. I’m enjoying my time there (when I’m not all stressed out and intimidated about my skill level).

Anyway, I showed Hadar some of the photos on my blog so she could see the set-up I’m using for the firings. We’re trying a few changes this time.

Since my heating element is so high up in the kiln and the interior of the kiln is so big, Hadar suggested I try to get my pieces only very close to the heating element. So until I can find a larger “table pan” (that’s what they’re called at Smart & Final… went there this morning but they didn’t have the size I need), I will only load the back my current square container and will set it back (like it was) close to the heating element and away from the bead door.

I will also place my pieces higher in the square, to align with the heating element more.

I removed two of my kiln stilts and now balance my pan on the edges of two squares in order to have an optimal amount of the underside of the pan open to heat.



Notice how the only place that “ashes up” is in the back… closest to the heating element. That seem indicative.

So here’s how I did my new layout:



Just to get a fresh start, I threw out my old carbon and started with a fresh batch.

I increased my phase one holding time from 20 to 30 minutes.

I decreased my phase two holding temperature from 1480 to 1470 and increased the holding time from 2½ hours to 3 hours.

The kiln is currently in phase two. I should have results and new pics tomorrow.


HAIRCUT

BTW, I got my hair cut Thursday night. I plan to get a better picture later, but at least you can tell from this (photo in a mirror with flash… ha!) what length it is. I totally love it!