My New Best Friend

I got an iphone last week. OMG. I'm in love. This thing is THE COOLEST NEW TOY EVER! I have spent every second that I wasn't at work at home downloading applications (apps).

Some of them confirm my utter dorkiness... the light saber and the phaser, for instance. The shooting gallery with very lifelife shotgun noises may very well have saved people's lives this week. And they have bejeweled, which is the best game ever... organizing shiny things into patterns - never has there been anything more perfect for me. Then there are the apps that may come in quite handy... one of them uses the product bar code to go online and find comparison prices as you shop. One takes the lyrics from the song stuck in your head, finds the song, title and artist, then gives you the option to buy it from itunes. Another tracks the location of public bathrooms, for those times that you need one now. One is a German translater, to help communicate with my dear colleauges. I've got maps, news, music, search engines - really this gizmo is like something out of the Jetsons. I may not have my flying car, but I'm sure Apple is working on an app for that.

I Broke.

Friday was one of the top 10 worst days of my life here, and trust me when I say that that is saying something. It started off at 7:00 am with my first phone call with a supplier, then moved to several meetings due to MAJOR crisis that were all completely preventable but were brought about by stupid people and went downhill from there. At 2:00, I made a major mistake. I thought to myself, "well, that's probably the worst of it." When will I learn?!?!?! 'Cause not even 10 minutes after that, I got a call about a major problem requiring us to sort every part in stock before our next production run and 10 minutes after THAT, I got a call about a final audit failure.

I had every intention of leaving before 5 to go to the studio, because every day last week was hell and I was on my last brittle, hormonal little nerve. Then something else came up and it was 7:00 before I made it home, where I found ginormous roaches in the entry and cat yak all over the couch. Ever think some days that someone upstairs is fucking with you just to see how far you bend before you snap? I curled up in a ball on my cat-yak free recliner and sobbed for a while, then crawled off to bed.

Saturday, I got up and went to the studio, where my friend, who I was supposed to meet at the studio on Friday, wondered what happened, since I hadn't returned any of her calls, after texting her that the studio wasn't going to happen. I told her that I'd tell her about my day on Friday, but warned her that if she dared to defend anyone in Development (her department, btw), I would rip her face off and feed it to her. I'm very calm and even tempered, you know. The rest of the day was spent glazing and centering myself (if not the clay, but that's another problem). I decided that going to see "Rocky Horror," which was playing at 10 pm, was a bad idea because I realized that I hadn't gotten myself back yet and one person flipping rice the wrong way and it could all be over. Sunday was spent in blessed solitude.

I really thought I'd gotten myself back to suitable-for-use-with-other-humans, I really did. Then, in today's 7:30 am meeting, the cause of a great deal of my frustration had the gall to demand to know when he'd get paperwork (about 30 MB worth) that we BOTH received Friday afternoon. And, in front of the entire room, I looked him dead in the eye and told him to shove his paperwork. He started, in his slimy little way, to laugh it off, but I really wasn't kidding. And it showed. He ended up getting very quiet and someone else distracted me from the utterly silent death glare I was giving him. Yeah. That whole playing well with others? Not so much.

Up until, well, now, these people had no idea what they were dealing with in me because I was quite careful. They saw me, lite - the fluffy bunny version of me. But dealing with the never ending bickering and stupidity and pettyness has finally gotten to me and well, they'd better brace themselves 'cause it's going to be a bumpy ride going forward. I have had enough. They will by God do their jobs, and do them the right way and if I have to ride every one of them into the dirt, well, it's way overdue. Thank the gods you don't have to deal with me right now 'cause until I drag this damn project into launch, it is not going to be pleasant for anyone around here. I personally guarantee it.

(picture stolen from here)

Reading... Sometimes, It Rots Your Mind.

You ever read a book and get to a point that you realize that the asinine plot, stupid characters, utter lack of any cohesiveness or sense and assorted other problems with the so-called storyline are actually draining IQ out of you with every page? I'm so there.

When I was younger, I used to consider it a point of pride that no matter how much I disliked it, I would power through and finish the book I'd started. Some time ago, I asked myself why I was subjecting myself to such unnecessary torment. Self had no idea either so we, um, I stopped.

I have to confess that I (normally) thoroughly enjoy what I call "brain candy books." It's light fiction, beach read sort of stuff - and a lot of it is extremely well written. On a lovely Sunday, with a pot of coffee and no cares, I can rip through 3 or 4 of them.

I knew I was in trouble with this one before the end of the second chapter. Then I skipped to the end and it was utterly absurd, and so were the two spot checks in the middle. *sigh* I must remember to not buy any more from this author - now that I'm reading this one, I remember that the last one was drivel too. How do these people get published anyway?

I'm going to go read something by John Sandford and clean out my brain.

Little Bowls, Little Bowls

Not much going on here, I'm afraid.

It's been raining like crazy here, leaving it in the high 80s and MUGGY. My glasses fog up every time I step outside the building at work. In spite of this, I'm still using my space heater with regularity while in the office. My office is fortunate enough to share air with the IT server room. We plugged some of the vents with cardboard and manilla folders but it's still sub-zero. I've learned to dress in layers, and never forget my wool sweaters.

The weekend was wonderful. I bailed from work early and headed to the studio to suck back wine and socialize um, work on my trimming. I got back more stuff from the latest glaze firing. Overall, I was pretty disappointed. My first handle came out pretty cool. (The bowl was lopsided enough that I turned one side into a spout, then decided it needed something else and tried the handle.)


The one that I was really looking forward to getting back was a huge disappointment though. I tried slip painting on it, and it was supposed to be black. (Slip is the gooey clay you end up with around your wheel when you throw pots. It's handy stuff - you use it to attach handles, to patch mistakes, and you can add color to it and use it as paint when your piece is in the hard leather stage (mostly dried but not yet fired).) Then I took a pointy thing and scribbled a design around the top edge. At one time, it looked really cool. Then it came out of the bisque firing and the black had turned red. I attempted to salvage it with glaze and it ended up awful. The outside is this dark mossy greenish brown, you can barely make out my scribbles and there was a problem with the glaze I used on the inside - it separated or jumped or fell or something off the clay so there's bare spots here and there in the inside. It broke my wittle heart, but I guess that's what you gamble when you experiment on things you care about.



I got some more stuff back too. Actually, that's all I accomplished was picking up my glazed things. These are also from the latest firing. The little bowl also had spots where the glaze misbehaved.




These were from the one before. All the glazing I did was in this color. I dipped in black, then brushed on 3 coats of mottled blue. I'm quite fond of this color - you'll probably be seeing it a lot.

Happy Birthday, Tattoo!

Four years ago today, at noon on a beautiful June day, my friend C and I sat on the stoop of Brother E's tattoos in Downers Grove, IL. Yes, my friends, I am such an uber-dork that I had to wait for the tattoo parlor to open. But at least I wasn't alone.

I had wanted a tattoo for years, but I couldn't decide on what and where. My cousin got a tattoo on the top of her right foot. I really liked it, but I didn't want to get the same thing, or the exact same place. I thought about it for a couple more years - hey, this thing is FOREVER, I want to be SURE - and decided I wanted it on my left foot, and I wanted a different flower, and a butterfly.


My friend had also wanted a tattoo for ages and ages. My birthday is in April, hers in July so we went together to get tattoos for our birthdays. We walked in, once they unlocked the door, and were greeted by the smell of rubbing alcohol. Surely this is a good sign. Clean. Clean is good.

Between my flower and the rose she wanted on her ankle, we looked through scads and scads of flash. She found one she liked, her guy started setting it up, we found one she liked better, her guy very patiently set it up. I found something that was close, except move the butterfly here, change the stem, oh and the flower and could you just tweak this... At least I'm consistent.

I went into this expecting agony. Lit cigarettes on flesh, might pass out pain. She laughed at me and told me it wasn't going to be anything. Her guy started on her first, and I have never heard such a string of obsenities. Holy smokes. My guy looked up at me and asked if I was going to swear and jump around like that. My answer: "in all probability, yes." But really, it wasn't that bad, and it was certainly nowhere near what I'd been expecting. True, going over the bones in my foot was not the most fun I've ever had, but not nearly the agony my always fertile imagination made it out to be. Less than an hour later and we were done, bandaged and on our way.

I'd love to get another one, but I'm dithering just as much over this one. I'm thinking maybe a dragon high on my inner thigh, or something on my ribs or maybe something on my back... I dunno. At this rate, it'll take me another 30 years to make up my mind.

So, have you ink?

Wordless Wednesday - This Drive-Thru Open

At Least The Turtle Doesn't Hate Me. Probably.

Work went about how I thought it would, but I made it through to the end of the day. Sadly, it was too late to run by the studio but I had another plan. I was going to go to our pathetic little mall and stock up on the "historical" scents currently at Bath & Body Works, hit the Waldenbooks and then maybe order a pizza or something. High times, I know.

As I zipped down the highway, I noticed a lump in the middle of my lane. Then I realized that the lump was a turtle - half a lane into attempting to cross 4 lanes of traffic - at rush hour. *sigh* I'm not capable of leaving turtles in danger like that. I was probably close to 15 yards down the road before I managed to safely get parked on the side of the highway. I trotted back toward the bump, who was a very huddled bump as cars went whizzing over his head. (He may have been reconsidering his foolproof moving scheme.) As I got closer, I recognized the shape of the bump. Drat. Snapping turtle. And me without my handy broomstick. (At one point, I found snappers crossing the street darn near every time I left the freakin' house, so I took to carrying a nice strong length of broomstick to assist in getting the turtles to the side of the road - both of us unhurt.) I'm told that other people find non-bitey creatures to rescue. I wonder what that's like?

So I got even with the turtle, tramped down into the ditch to find a stick, came back to the side of the road, waited for a likely break in traffic and zipped out into the middle of the highway to rescue the turtle, who promptly snapped my stick in half.

Damn! Need bigger stick. So, back to ditch for better stick, back to road, wait for traffic, zip out again and herd the turtle back to safety. (I have to confess, I helped Mr. Turtle a bit with the side of my foot. We had to HURRY.) Right, so now what? Well, the turtle had some scuffs on his shell and I got to thinking that maybe he had been hit. Clearly, I had to take him to the wildlife lady. She saved the last injured turtle that I found along the road.

This presented me with a slight logistical problem, given that the turtle didn't seem to be entirely friendly so I wasn't interested in just grabbing him. (Snapping turtles can reach practically any location on their shell, so there really isn't a safe place to grab them.) I gave him a firm command to stay, trotted back to the Jeep, dumped a milk crate of junk into the back, and trotted back to the turtle. I'm so glad I was still dressed for work in three inch heels and a long sleeved shirt - 'cause it was 82 degrees with VERY high humidity and I'm running around the highway chasing turtles. Brilliant. The turtle had spent the time coming towards me, along the side of the highway, so I had to overshoot him a bit to retrieve my stick. Since the turtle did not volunteer to hop right into the crate, some gentle persuation was necessary. That's went I realized that the turtle didn't exactly fit into the crate.

So, here's a picture for you - me, in business casual and nice shoes, walking along the side of the highway in the very bumpy grass, holding a milk crate in front of me with one hand and a stick in the other, which I was using to block the turtle's VERY active attempts to clamber out of the crate, which was not hard for him because he was kind of bigger than the crate. Weird how I'm the only one I know who gets into these situations. I finally made it back to the Jeep, jostled the turtle until he was sort of wedged at an angle into the bottom of the crate, then I wedged the crate between the dash and the passenger seat of the Jeep, put the stick within reach - just in case he tried to escape in the Jeep, hopped in and away we went to the wildlife lady.


Just about this time, my friend called to invite me over for dinner and LEGO PS3 games. I told her I had a pitstop to make, which led to her volunteering to come help me corral the turtle. Already done says I - I'm almost at the wildlife care center. So we decided that she'd figure out what her spouse was doing for dinner and call me back.


The wildlife lady was still there, which was fortunate 'cause the turtle would not have fit in the emergency wildlife drop box. She leaned into the Jeep, poked at him, said he was one very lucky turtle and he was fine and then she gave me directions to a park where I could drop him off near the water. *blink* But... um. I got him INTO the crate. Isn't that enough?? Apparently no. So I headed off to the park to drop him and my friend called back with ideas for food. When she learned that I still had the passenger, she asked if I'd bring him to her house. There's a little creek nearby and she wanted to see him.


She met me in her driveway and we each took a side of the crate and walked him to his new home. There a steep slope from the road down to the creek. Once we got him out of the crate and pointed downhill, a gentle shove sent him lumbering on his way.


The closer to the water he got, the faster he went. He was hidden, but we could see the weeds moving in his path. And plop! into the water and he was gone.


When I was eight or so, my father brought home a snapping turtle that was more than three feet in diameter - it couldn't rest flat in one of those large green trash cans, so I thought this guy was kinda small. He was probably 13 or so inches across, and 16 or so inches long, not including tail. Turns out, for this area, he was apparently quite large - my friend said that's the biggest one she's seen around here.

After releasing the turtle, we headed back to her house for stuffed chicken breast and the LEGO Indiana Jones game - which is so so fun. The little clips are HILARIOUS. And, once I got home, I broke out dessert - the first cherries of the year. Yum!


Tomorrow, I'll go play in the mud and then (maybe) to a coworker's daughter's birthday party. Have a great weekend!