And here are today's pics



I can't get the pic to show the scale, but the longest icicles are about 4'.


It's not that we love Batman more than Cosmos. Despite many, many attempts, Cosmos is always a big black blob against a white background. For example,

If would help if we had some sunlight, but that's just a pleasant memory. LOL
...and to answer Aimmee in Ohio's question re: Batman's heritage, both of the boys are shelter dogs, so there's some supposition involved. We've pretty much decided that Batman is mostly Maltese, with just a touch of Yorkie to explain the black ears. He *looks* like a cute, cuddley ball of fluff, but this just disguises a grumpy old 7-pound man with Little Dog Sysndrome...but we love him, anyway. If you really need unconditional love, Cosmos is your "man".

Linda

Ouside faucet sprung a leak this morning, so we've shoveled the driveway, and are cuatiously making the one-mile slip-and-slide to Fred Myer for repair parts.
The following diary entries go out to all home-bound Northerners LOL Like my Thanksgiving Turkey story, it's been circulating for a couple of years, but it seems appropriate.
More pics to follow.....

A SNOW DIARY

DECEMBER 4 - 5:00 It started to snow. The first snow of the season and the wife and I took our hot buttered rum and sat by the window watching the soft flakes drift down, clinging to the trees and covering the ground. It was beautiful.

DECEMBER 9 - We woke to a big beautiful blanket of crystal white snow covering the landscape. What a fantastic sight. I shoveled snow for the first time in years and loved it. I did both our driveway and our sidewalk. Later, the snowplow came along and covered up our driveway with compacted snow from the street, He smiled and I waved back. I shoveled it again.

DECEMBER 13 - The sun melted most of our snow. Oh well, I’m sure we’ll get more before this lovely winter is through.

DECEMBER 14 - It snowed 8 inches last night and the temperature dropped to about zero. I shoveled the sidewalk and driveway again. Shortly, the snowplow came by and did his trick again.

DECEMBER 15 - Sold our car and bought a 4 x 4 Blazer, so we could get around in the snow. Bought snow tires for the pickup.

DECEMBER 18 - Fell on my ass on the ice in the driveway. $139.00 to the Chiropractor, but nothing was broken, thank God. The damned sky is getting dark again.

DECEMBER 19 - Still cold, icy roads, making driving very tough. Slid into a guard rail with my wife’s car. Probably $2,000 damage or so. She’s really pissed off…

December 20 - Had another 11 inches of the white shit last night. More shoveling in store for me today. The goddamn snowplow came by twice.

DECEMBER 22 - We are assured of a white Christmas, because another 7 inches of that white shit fell today and with this freezing weather, it won’t melt until August. I got dressed up to go out and shovel that shit again (boots, jumpsuuit, jacket, scarf, earmuffs, gloves, etc.) then I got the urge to pee.

DECEMBER 24 - If I ever catch that son of a bitch that drives the snowplow, I’ll drag him through the snow by his balls. I think he hides around the corner and waits for me to finish shoveling, and then comes down the street 100 miles and hour and throws that white shit everywhere.

DECEMBER 25 - MERRY CHRISTMAS!! They predict 12 more inches of this fucking white shit tonight. Does anyone know how many goddamn shovelfuls of snow 12 inches are?? The hell with Santa, he doesn’t have to shovel this shit. The snowplow came by asking for a donation. I hit him with my ice pick. The doctors think he’ll live.

DECEMBER 28 - We got 11 more inches. I must be going snow blind or have a severe case of depression, becasue my wife is beginning to look good to me.

DECEMBER 29 - The toilet froze and the roof is starting to cave in. If you go outside don’t eat the brown snow.

DECEMBER 30 - I torched the house and moved to Florida.

Happy Holidays from Linda, Creighton, Cosmos and the Batman.

Creighton's pic is an old one. Snow is now up to the Scotty door handle.

Nothing like a new hat to put one in a festive mood.

Batman's antlers didn't show up well in the group pic, so here's a closeup of his Christmas ourfit from Mary Kay.


We're spending a quiet holiday here at home, kinda hunkered down and keeping warm. Went for a glorious walk late last night. Then celebrated with Burn After Reading DVD (HIGHLY recomended) and "movie style" popcorn. None of that 100-calorie crap on a holiday LOL.
I finished Creighton's sock about 3am. It doesn't fit :-( If any of you know a one-legged man with long-skinny feet and fat ankles, I could make him a hell of a deal LOL


Wishing the best of the season to all.

Linda

MORE SNOW!!
I still can't get my boot on, but here are a couple more pics from a few days ago. We've gotten another foot since these were taken, and it's STILL snowing.

Whoo-Hoo! It's a BIG, BIG SNOW DAY!!
Creighton and I had been on holiday in Mexico, and I'd intended to post some pics of the week, but what's happening here is a lot more interested, IMHO, than another view of a beach. Remember how I'd whined that last year's lengthy snow in Spokane was just a fluke, and I'd be disappointed this year? Well, Creighton is not letting me forget that inane statement. I'm certainly getting my "snow fix" this week. We got back from Mexico very late at night, and were grumbling because we had to chip a few inches of ice/snow off the car before we could drive home (and then were locked out of the house, but that's another story). We were very lucky that we got back when we did. Shortly afterwards, began a "50-year storm" that has dumped over 2 feet of snow at our house. I only have a couple of pics from the car window and the back porch, cause I fell down the steps of the hotel when we left (it was dark, and the steps were black tile) and sprained my ankle. The snow has stopped for now, but another storm is coming in tomorrow night, and I expect to be out documenting it better than these pics. Creighton dug out the car and driveway so we could get to the post office this afternoon.

The bir feeder looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. LOL

Linda

I was only home for a day after Madison, before heading to California to visit my mother, Dakota and Ariden, so I never got my Thanksgiving Turkey Joke posted. Here is is now....either a belated Tahnksgiving Joke, and early Christmas Joke. Take your pick. It's been around for several years, but IMHO, funy enough to re-visit.

A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary.

Every word out of the bird's mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.

John tried and tried to change the bird's attitude by consistently saying only polite, words, playing soft music and anything else he could think of to "clean up" the bird's vocabulary.

Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even ruder.

John, in desperation, threw up his hands, grabbed the bird and put him in the freezer. For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed. Then, suddenly there was total quiet! Not a peep was heard for over a minute!

Fearing that he had hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the door to the freezer.

The parrot calmly stepped out onto John's outstretched arms and said..

"I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I'm sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my unforgivable behavior."

John was stunned at the difference in his attitude and as he was about to ask what had made such a dramatic change when the bird continued..."May I ask what the Turkey did?"

Had a good visit in California. Adrien and I decided to dye our hair purple. Here is Adrien in the "during" stage

and me in the "after" stage.



Linda

Back from Madison today. It was a good show and good end to the season -- lots of happy people having a good time. Here's my car when I got up this morning to head to the airport.

Note to self: credit card or driving license makes a good, albeit small and cold, snow scraper
Then when I got to the Spokane airport, I tossed the luggage in the back of the card and hit the fire extinguisher. It filled the card with smoke, then disolved into a bunch of weird green power. Interesting. I'd never seen this before.
Finally, the bathroom upstairs sprung a leak in the toilet intake (thanks GAWD not the outtake) valve last week. We'd been trying unsuccessfully to dry out the rug for days by running a heater. (Yup, the ONLY warm room in the house is the one that not useable.) Well, mystery solved this evening. There was a secondary leak that came through the ground floor ceiling. Nothing like a good plumbing job to make pressing rubber look like a pretty fun job LOL. The TOILET is in the middle of the bathroom. sigh. So it's time for another Picture of the Batman.


Linda

In a few hours I'm headed to Madison, WI for the last show of the year, but first I want to post this beautiful sample of the Two Ballerinas sent by Lost Coaster, Hanne, of Norway.


Linda

It's a SOCK! My very first!!
My friend, Karen came over from Marysville a couple of weeks ago for a Girls' Weekend. She was staying at Tina's house (yup, count 'em, I have TWO friends LOL), and we decided it would be a good time to introduce me to knitting socks. So we swung by the yarn shop and picked up all essentials. Tina truely is the Sock Queen. Her work is exquisite. Well, she said that I'd get bored with a simple sock, and picked out one with a lace pattern. After about 3 hours of her endlessly having to fix my errors, she seemed to have developed a bit of a twich in one eyelid. I know that the book said it was an easy pattern, but it had a bunch of YO (that's yarn over's to those of you out of the knitting loop -- excuse the pun), and purls, and I just couldn't seem to get the yarn on the correct side of the needle. Each needle was *supposed* to have 18 stitches, but sometimes mine had 17 and sometimes 19. Eventually Tina would say "yes, Linda, just add a stitch" or "yes, Linda it's OK to purl those two together"....so it is a bit of a mutant sock....and I'm pretty sure I turned it around and knitted the wrong direction for awhile, too, which explains the odd cuff in the middle. Regardless, I figure that no one is going to get close enough to my ankle to see the flaws.
Now for the heel :-O

Linda

Welded Chicken

Chestnuts Roasting on a Open Fire....da-da-de-de-da...was the plan, so we harvested the chestnuts in the backyard using everyone's favorite harvesting tools, the rake and snow shovel. Had planned on a bounty of walnuts, too, but the squirrels left us only five nuts.

So I Googled "roasting chestnuts" and carfully followed directions to make an "X" in each so the steam could escape. It's too early for a fire, so we thought we were substituting "Chestnuts Roasting in Westinghouse", but it should have been "Chestnuts Exploding in a Westinghouse".


I guess I didn't make the "Xs" deep enough. Google had not been that specific. The rest of the inner bits will have to be scraped off the walls of the oven next time I have a Domestic Moment and want to bake something. With any luck, it will all have disintegrated by then. LOL

Linda

We're back from Art & Soul. It rained most of the weekend, so, aside from the show evening, we huddled in the Scotty and watched DVDs on my laptop. Cosmos picked out his spot. He doesn't get much blog time because he usually doesn't photograph as well as Batman -- in most pics he's just a big dark outline with glowing alien eyes -- so I'm glad to have something of him to post. What a pretty dog!

The wierd black stuff on the window behind Cos's head is duct tape and a towel to stop a drip -- and very successfully, I must say!
We usully drive conservatively because the car just gulps gas when pulling the Scotty, but on the way home a truck with the biggest pumpkin I've ever seen passed us. I was determined to get a pic of it, but he was going much faster than we, so for about 5 miles we had the poor Escape/Scotty both going faster than they'd ever gone...but success was ours! And fortunately, we didn't get caught!! LOL

There was a last-minute cancelation at the Adventures in Stamping show outside Cleveland next weekend, so you Ohioans will be seeing me there on Saturday.

Linda

We're headed to Art & Soul in Portland tomorrow morning. It's a drive show, so everyone -- C and the boys -- are all going, and it's be a camping weekend. Creighton took time this week to get the Scotty ready for the trip. I thought he was going to do some refurbishing of the interior, but he had other plans. This is from yesterday, when he was about half through stripping the blue paint from the interior.

Not what I was expecting, but it's his project....and it all had to be done in 7-minute intervals to coincide with the vuncanizer cycles. LOL
Hope to see some of you Saturday night at the show.

Linda

It was yet another show this past weekend, but it was right here in Spokane. Crieghton was also around to help with the booth, so it was quite an easy and short show -- No travel on Friday and Monday, AND home in the evenings :-)) I'm really enjoying this week at home. Yesterday I made a dozen altered journals from old children's books (they'll be going to Art & Soul in Portland on Friday), and today I finished up three felted bowls. I bought a humongous roll-top desk on Craig's list,
so everything from the old desk is in the middle of the living room, but I'm slowly cleaning the debris field that's accumulated in the last two hectic months.
I found this Barbie head in a Goodwill store. I already have several and wasn't planning to buy any more, but none of the others have rotating hands, so she had to, of course, come home with me.

And here she is after Step One.

OK, after swearing off anymore Barbie heads, I also bought a big plastic My Little Pony head, but I'll save it for another post.

Linda

I'm back home from the Rhinebeck show. I took a great pic while I was there, but of course, I can't find the SC card. I'm sure it will surface on the landfill eventually. In the meantime, here's Niagra Falls. I had a late flight after the Hamburg show a few weeks ago, so made a quick trip to the Falls just in case I never get back. There was only time for one tour, so I did the Cave of the Winds. The "cave" was just a short tunnel at the bottom of an elevator that dumped us out at the base of the American Falls (not the big horseshoe-ride-the-barrel-over falls). Everyone got a yellow condom to wear (one size fits most).

There was no wind in the cave, but the noise and wind at the bottom of the Falls was impressive. It really did get very wet and windy by the time we got up under the Falls, and everything outside of the condom was soaked. I was headed directly to the airport afterwards, so was glad to have it. I brought mine home for the next time we want to play Dress Up with the medical skeleton. We got spiffy sandals, too, but I pronate so badly that only my toes were in the sandals, so I donated them to a bin routed to some developing shoeless country of non-pronaters.

Linda

AND it was a middle seat :-(

This pretty much set the tone for the rest of the trip, but at least I got home.
Packing today for Mekka in Germany. Will be back here next week.

Linda

Welcome back, dear readers. It's been a long time since my last rant, and I think this morning is just about the right time. I'm sitting on the floor of the Greenville Spartenburg airport at 5:am, and it's already been a Long Day. I've been on the road for 4 weeks and still have two more trips, so admittedly, I just might be a tad cranky. I was ticketed for a flight home late this afternoon, but I'm eager to get there and pack for Germany, so I called the Premier Executive "special" phone number (the one dedicated to their more "valued customers" (yeah, right). Well, they tell me that there are multiple flights connecting to Spokane, starting at 6am, and there are many seats available, so head on down. I'll be brief about the alarm that didnpt ring, so Mary Kay and I were out the door in 15 minutes WITH MAKEUP, and then how we got lost on the way to the airport, but still got there in time. Sounds pretty good, right? I haven't yet gotte all the trying details of MK's jaunt through security Xrayed four times. (like she'll cleverly and subversally sneak dangerous liquids in between each screening). My first big bump in the road was that I wanted a three-et trip, when the original ticket was for a two-leg trip. The ticket people said that the Prem Exec people had to give authorization, and the Prem Exec people said that the airport ticket people had to do this. What a quandry!! Two increasingly hostile phone calls later, they finally give me my standby boarding tickets, but they have the debilatating "SSSS". Those in the know will recognize this -- I'm immediately funneled into the "in-depth" security check. I haven't ben so throughly groped in years!...and EVERYTHING in my carry-ons had to be removed, examined, and screened. Of course, by this time, the plane was gone.
YIKES! Gate change. gotta run.

Linda

I've been on the road most of the last three weeks -- driving to GPS demos in Idaho, and Kennewick, Tacoma, and Bellingham in Washington, and flying to stamp shows in Phoenix, Detroit, Buffalo. I'd intended to do a travel monolog of my trials and tribulations. Priorities change. Sunday night a dear friend ended her long and courageous battle with cancer, and left the body that could no long fend off the disease. She left a husband and a son, and she is sorely missed by many. I like to think that she has continued her journey unemcumbered by a body that failed. We pray for many things -- a good parking place, a profitable business, a diet that works, popularity, love. The God that I believe in does not have time for these small things. We're responsible for them. My God is busy with the big stuff. I pray for my friend and for her family. I pray that she is in a place with no pain, and that she waits there for her loved ones, and that some day, some place, they will be united again, and that she will be there waiting for them.

I'm going to have a glass of wine and play a few tunes for her, and I hope she can hear them.

I will miss you, Eileen.

Linda

We were driving around and enjoying our last Saturday of garage-saleing yesterday, when Creighton spotted this vending machine. I've seen lots of wacky stuff in vending machines, but this one is the wierdest yet. I thought it had to be shared.

It vended night crawlers and maggots. YUCK!!

I found this wonderful cat pillow, which HAD to come home with me. Batman got pretty excited over the addition, but when the cat neither ran away or hissed at him, he eventually gave up on the one-sided confrontation. They're best buds now. LOL

There's a baseball field about a mile from us, and when there's a Home game, they shoot off fireworks at the end of the evening. We heard them start last night, and since it's my last weekend home for a while, we rushed out and drove to where we could see the fireworks. I got out quickly, but C was eating dinner, and was about 10 seconds behind me. Well, when we got home, Batman was nowhere to be found. I called and called, and finally decided he'd snuck out during that 10-second break, so out we went wandering the neighborhood looking for him. Long story short, we found Batman hiding upstairs under the bed with Creighton's pilfered container of cottage cheese. He'd snagged it off the table while we were gone, got the lid off about half way up the stairs, and was much too usy eating when we called him.

Linda

Luggage finally showed up today. It was a stressful week waiting for the illusive luggage. I could deal with losing many things, but the thought of starting over on sample boards could have pushed me over the edge.
We made a trip down to Oregon this week to do a GPS demo. It was basically a long drive past nothing but wheat fields, so have no interesting pics. The demo went well, and may generate a sale, but losing the production time has put us behind on rubber pressing, so now it's back to the vulcanizing salt mine :-( I'm headed for the Art Unraveled show in Phoenix next weekend. Hope to see some of you there.
My Bush Economy Incentive check finally arrived. I guess I can get a tank of gas with it :-(
I'm still looking for someone to run my booth at Westminister, MA. Beat the last-minute rush and call me NOW!!

Linda
509-536-6616

Good News - Website is FINALLY functioning again, and all the new stuff is uploaded. YAYYYYY! It's Do the Dance of Joy Time.
Bad News - Spend 7 hours in the Dallas airport yesterday trying to get home from the Grapevine show. Finally they put me on Delta flights through Salt Lake City, so I was in a middle coach seat, but frankly, they could have catapulted me off the DFW roof. I was that eager to head home......and of course, the luggage was lost. Again. Sigh.
I'm still looking for someone to run my booth in Westminster, MA. Make friends, earn valuable prizes! Not really, but you will make some cold hard cash and get lots of rubber.

Linda

HELP! I'm desperately looking for someone to run my booth at the Westminister, MA show. It's the last Saturday and Sunday of September. If you live in that area, and want to earn money and rubber, please give me a call.

Linda
509-536-6616
I'm in Dallas for the Grapevine show, but Creighton is home.

I'm sitting in the Seattle airport, on my way to SSAT's Pittsburg show. It's my first road trip in a month, and I'm really out of practice. Backpack is too heavy, I dressed in the dark, and am wearing my old flipflops, but at least I don't *think* I've forgotten anything vital.
We had bizarro weather yesterday. Steady winds at 40 MPH, with gusts to 60MPH. It was pretty kewl -- howling wind sounds and BIG tree-swaying -- but there were a number of fires caused by downed powerlines. One was up in the foothills behind our house. It was quite large -- last I heard it burned 1200 acres and 5 houses. We're about a mile away from the evacuation area, but upwind, so there was never any danger to us, but it was impressive. We drove to the site to get some pics for the blog, but I'd taken the SD card out of my camera, so once again, have nothing to show :-(
Website is STILL in transition to a new server, so the Schedule page and New images still don't load. I don't know if I should blame Mindspring or Dotster, so i think I'll just hate, hate, HATE them BOTH. Some of the new stuff will be in Pittsburg this weekend, and even more will be at Grapevine next weekend. I'm always so danged excited to have new images, and am throughly bummed that I can't get them loaded.
Hope to see some of you tomorrow!

Linda

Happy 4th!!



We dressed Batman in his red/white/blue shirt, and took him and Cosmos downtown for the fireworks show in the park, but all dogs were 86'ed from the festival. We all hung out at a bar across the street -- still had a great view of the sky, beer, and no kids. Sounds like a win-win situation to me LOL.

Website new images and convention schedule are still broken. I'll tackle that problem on Monday.

Linda

Part of my website is down. I need to get caught up on blogging, but first want to thank those of you who wrote to tell me that the new images are broken, and the Convention Schedule page has disappeared. I've known about it, and am trying to get it fixed. Spend two wasted days with outsourced tech support getting useless and incorrect information. Finally spoke with someone last night that has clue, and they have me pointed in the right direction. Still, I expect it will be another 48 hours until I can access the site again.
My apologies. I'll post here when the new images are up.

Linda

Batman-Stuffs-His-Butt-In A-Small-Box Day

Kewl Big-Hailstorm Day

I-Can't-Stop-Making-Bowls Day. Actually, this is EVERY day. Believe me, there are more than just these three.

Oh, NO! Bath-Day!!


Linda

I found this note inside a used book I bought last week at a garage sale. Hope they at least got a wash and wax included. LOL! I know that I WON'T be parking there.

Linda

What more can I say. I just thought this was funny :-)

Heading for the Collinsville, IL show early tomorrow morning. Hope to see some of you there!

Linda

A loyal Lost Coaster wrote to me this morning because my convention schedule didn't look quite right. Well, she was correct, and while checking it, I found a few GLARING errors, that I MUST GET FIXED TODAY. So...if you've been thinking that I'm coming to your town, please check again -- especially you folks in West Springfield and Colorado. W. Springfield is definately out, as is Loveland, CO. We're still on the fence re: Colorado Springs. And to top it off, I have the wrong date for Novi, MI; it's been moved to Aug 16-17. On the positive side, I will be in Pittsburg July 12-13. Other than that, the list is correct. Sigh. My friend, Kim will be running the booth for me in Orlando, so please stop by and tell her she's doing a TERRIFIC JOB. I'll be back there myself next year. MaryKay and I are going to say a couple of extra days and ride rollercoasters till we puke.

And because no days is complete without a dog wearing a bowl on his head......heeerrreeee's BATMAN!!!!

Finally....Ta-Da!...Presenting the last day of the wood pile.



...and there's nothing like a good sniff and pee to celebrate a job well done.

I uploaded a few new images to the New! webpage tonight. Plates aren't back from the engraver, but should be here in a couple of days. I know that there are some images at the bottom of the New! page that are getting a bit long in the tooth, but it's too darn late to work on it tonight....mostly because my incompetent debugging turned the cut/paste/upload of a few simple commands into a Major Undertaking. I'll see if I can REALLY mess it up tomorrow....but at least the wood is now in the shed :-)

Linda

Record amount of water in the Spokane River due to snow depth and a few outragiously hot days to melt it. Se we, and about half the Spokane population headed for the bridges to take a peek. They later closed the walking bridge because it was too wet, but we got across before this happened.

Linda

Back from Puyullap with a couple of wonderful Goodwill store finds! I have so much stuff still in boxes with no place to put them, so I'd been looking for anything display'ish to hang on the wall. I've had the most fun this week painting my new treasures and digging in boxes for "decorations".




The purple one was was partially painted white, and had the most horrible big wooden bows at the top and bottom. I knocked off the bows and replaced them with a couple of cheap wooden medallions from Michael's that I painted teal and rubbed with burnt umber. The blue one was (I think) a headboard for a single waterbed. The pic is kinda small to see much, but there are two of my newer bowls on the top shelf.

Linda

A couple of weeks ago I accidently deleted the FTP address on the server where I keep my web code. Uh-oh. Not a Good Thing. Well, I finally got it sorted out this afternoon and happily went about uploading some new designs. Not to be content with that, I thought I do just a *bit* of housekeeping on the site. Big Mistake. Here it is, 2:30 in the morning, and I *think* I've fixed all the major bugs. I suspect there are a few cosmetic issues -- like that whimsical "View Shopping Cart" button that seems to have a mind of it's own, and shows up haphazardly on some pages, rather that neatly at the bottom of the page...where it's INTENDED TO BE :-( -- but the worst is now OK. Please let me know if you spot anything glaringly bad.
I'll have all new stuff at Puyallup this weekend. Hope to see some of you there.
I made a bunch of felted bowls on the last roadtrip. Will try to post some soon.

Linda

I've gotten very behind in my blog, yet again. I've been on the road. Since Belize, I've back and forth to San Jose between shows in Akron, Ohio, and Hampton, Virginia, and a side trip to see family in Fresno -- all with limited access to the Internet. Along the way, my luggage was lost THREE times! That makes four times in the last month, counting the disasterous trip to Holland, and I'm really getting a bit nervous about my next flying show. I'm very glad that I'm driving to Puyullap next weekend. FYI, when Southwest loses your luggage and you pick it up instead of having it delivered, they'll give you a $50 voucher. I got two vouchers on the Hampton trip, and had used a free ticket voucher to get there, so if I ignore the stress worrying about product in time for the show (it got there in time) I *did* come out ahead. So I guess I need to put on my big girl panties and stop whining. Yeah, like that's going to happen, LOL.
I've been so happy to be home this week. It's given me time to do some of the puttering around the house that has been ignored the last month. We made another attack on the woodpile, which is slowly decreasing. Cosmos got his teeth cleaned -- at least the dogs have dental care. I hauled out all the clothing that had spots and stains, and ran it all through a black dye bath. Good news is that the painted Blue Fish designs are not effected by the dye (a test for you, Teresa!). I got back to playing with my chatskies around the house. This is a wonderful little cupboard that MaryKay found at a Goodwill store, yet she managed to gift it to lucky me. Right now it holds some of my "Frida" stuff and some little dolls from Belize. The cloth party cat at the bottom is by Olive Rose. I bought it (I think) at Art Unraveled last year at Mary Kay's insistance, and I'm glad that she did every time I look at it.




Linda

For those of you that haven't discovered Crazy Aunt Purl, you REALLY need to visit her blog at www.crazyauntpurl.com (sorry the link isn't working) and read her April 24 post on forgetting attachments. This one reminded me of a time that upper management sent an email to the hordes of unwashed employees announcing a pot-luck Christmas party (THEY had a party in a San Fran penthouse and THEY all got cases of Dom Perignon AND bonuses, but WE had to bring a dish), so I forwarded it with a snippy email asking if we, the unwashed, were each getting a Christmas bonus frozen turkey (no lie, they'd passed out coupons for frozen turkeys the previous year), and I accidentally sent it back to the upper management suit. They didn't bother to reply LOL. Anyway, CAP's posts are little pearls of humor that never fail to bring a smile or two. I wish I could write even a bit as well as her, but I also wish I was 25, thin and rich, and ya'll know those haven't happened, so I'm not holding my breath re: any growth in writing skills. Anyway, I like to save her posts for times that I'm stranded in airports, and guess what, that's where I am. again. I've been on the road since last Saturday, and am in the middle of a three-week odyssey. I started from Spokane to San Jose, then Belize (yup, BELIZE!) to do some GPS training, then back to San Jose for my own GPs training, and now on the way to Akron.
The Belize part was SO kewl, and even better 'cause I got PAID for it. I spent three days in a Mennonite community training them to use GPS equipment to make maps. It was a wonderful experience, and I'm grateful for the opportunity -- much more fun that the usual training gig. Pics will have to wait until I get home.
So back to the present. Somewhere in the Midwest a drop of rain has fallen, and my flight to Cleveland this afternoon has been cancelled. Instead of getting to Akron in time for a bit of set-up, I'll be hauling my sorry ass into the Akron Motel 6 around midnight. Do I feel sorry for myself? Damn right!

Hope to see some of you tomorrow in Akron. I'll be the one asleep under the table.
Linda

Philly airport at 5 dark-thirty am Monday morning on my way back home from Allentown.

What sort of sadistic BASTARD would design an airport concourse with non-sequential gate numbers?!?! Really, you can see here than gates 2 and 11 are across from each other. Gate 9 is on down the direction I'm facing....but swear to GAWD, gates 8 and 10 are way, WAAAY behind me.

Linda

Good News, fellow Coasters! The luggage with my booth arrived last night -- just in time for this morning's flight to PA for the Allentown show. Yee-haw! I am full of confidence that I've had enough bad luck, and it shall be smooth sailing for at least a week or too. Many thanks for all your well wishes these past days. It's the dark early hours, and I've already gotten successfully to the Seattle airport, and even better, my next leg to Chicago on American Airlines has not been cancelled....AND I have clean clothes!! I be stylin' now! LOL

Linda

Finally I can upload the pic of the Holland tin and breakfast chocolate.

Just so ya all know that the week wasn't always a whiney mess, here's are some pics from our last day in Holland. Angela, the show coordinator always makes a special day for the English and American vendors. This year was a tour of a wooden shoe factory -- not a new slick, automated factory, but small family-run business in the country. We got to see the entire process, and then pick a pair to decorate ourselves. The day ended with a ride in a horse-drawn wagon, and picnic by a river.