Scribbles & Bits

A Small, Random Post

When I haven't been working or reorganizing my craft room (a.k.a. The Repository For All Homeless, "What-Are-You", and "Someday-I'm-Sure-You'll-be-Useful" Objects), I've been working on this 3"x3" cross stitch.  It will become a card for my cousin/godson who is graduating in about a week.  I will be flying back to see him and, in the process, run into half my old teachers and some classmates since he's graduating from my old stomping grounds (and, actually, the same high school both his mother and my mother graduated from). 

The pattern is from Cross Stitch Card Collection: 101 Original Designs by Claire Compton and the original version is actually shown on the cover.  However, I changed it to the school colors.  Ahhh, the perks of handmade!

Now for the truly random part of this post: I am bothered by the newest Danactive commercial (I would post a youtube link, but oddly it's one of the few things ever televised that hasn't made its way to youtube yet).  So Jamie Lee Curtis is in a grocery store passing out yogurt samples because honestly, what's left after fighting off Mike Myers (the villain from Halloween, not the comedien, although she may have fought him off, too.  Who knows?  Anyway....) and some woman walks up and call her the Danactive lady.  Jamie looks a little sad as she looks to the camera and says, "That's my new name."  Then there's some patter about how supercoolawesome Danactive is and, aside from that moment of wistfulness, it seems like a normal commercial until the end when a random woman stops by the free sample table to announce that she's been using it and now she's "loving life."  I can do a pretty decent job of suspending disbelief (that's how I can love opera), but not when someone announces that she is "loving life" because she's started eating a yogurt that makes her regular.  Beyond the fact that strangers don't normally announce that sort of thing to each other (at least not around here; please let me know if this is normal grocery store conversation in your neck of the woods), I have trouble believing eating yogurt would be the thing that turned her life around.  Either she was so blocked up that that was truly the biggest problem in her life (lucky her) or this is some miracle yogurt.  Maybe there's more to the commercial that got edited out.  "Danactive paid off my student loan, my car, my house, resolved my broken relationship with my sister, offered free marriage counseling to my friends, makes my bed, and unblocks more than my creativity!  Now I'm loving life!"

Yeah, that must be it.

Doing Things is what I Like to Do

It's always nice when I manage to do the things I've talked about and yesterday I started accomplishing two goals I've talked about before.  The card is inspired by the book Paper Quilts.  I saw the picture and, to be honest, didn't read the instructions so I have no idea if my way of creating it was according to the instructions or not, but I really like how it came out!  This one is destined for the card box at work.  They have a box of cards handy for birthdays, sympathy, etc. Sound familiar? Yeah, I've talked about that idea, too.  Anyway, the last time we went hunting through, one of my coworkers made the comment that everybody's gotten a version of the cards in the box.  I couldn't help it: it sounded like a plea for a refresher.  And I liked how the card came out so much, I decided to make 6 more: 3 as Thank You cards and 3 more of the "Just for You" cards.  I'm keeping one of each and sending the duplicates to my grandfather and aunt.  I think they'd like a backstock, too.  I'll definitely hold off and make a bundle so it doubles as a gift, though (another idea I mentioned a while back) So yay for fulfilling a New Year's resolution by doing something crafty out of a craft book, and yay for starting my backstock and double yay for actually starting to plan ahead for the next gift-giving occassion!

I know I mentioned a cross stitch piece I'm working on (Frank Lloyd Wright again).  I figured I'd post a progress pic as well as an image of what it's supposed to look like when it's finished!  I'ts going to be great and I'm not going to stress that I probably won't be posting again until Monday.  Hopefully I'll have tons more pictures (and maybe even a before/after of the train wreck of my craft room: the one room that hasn't received ANY attention since the move.  Well, except for the amazing adding of more boxes while I pretend the walls of that room are made of elastic.  You say they're not?  La la la!  I can't hear you!)

Frost/Nixon Has Nothing to do with Robert Frost

Ok, technically, I knew that.  But that's the show that's in right now.  We bid a fond farewell to Rent, but not before I got to see a 6'+ guy in 6 inch stiletto boots.  I in no way object to his choice of footwear, just to the fact that he didn't seem all that steady on them.  I just wanted to go up to him and tell him he's ruining it for all the guys who CAN walk steady in their 6" stilettos.  I was hoping he wouldn't trip and fall, although my inner 5 year old thought that might be one of the more fun incident reports to write.  It probably wouldn't have been my favorite, though: that title continues to strongly sit with the incident report about the guy who accidentally handcuffed himself to a rail at a children's holiday pageant.  

Rent was followed by a performing group that protested Communist China but was fearful of protests from people.  That was very odd, to say the least.  Their security guy was convinced that Communist spies lurked around every corner.  I felt bad that I picked that day to wear that red sweater, but it does such a good job of covering my hammer and sickle tattoo.  (disclaimer: I don't think communism is funny, but this guy's paranoia was).  And I don't know what he was doing to his "security" staff, but he was short-handed the first show, just as short plus an additional 4 shorter for the second performance, and so short by the last performance that he didn't have enough people to man the lobby.  After all his over-the-radio freak outs at me, I enjoyed the moment when he informed me of such (well after lobbies were open) and I informed him that I had noticed and already posted people in those spots!  I also enjoyed telling him later that I didn't think much of his observational skills when I'd been introduced to him as Virginia, wore a name tag with my name printed on it, responded to every radio call identifying myself, yet he persisted on calling me Victoria.  No wonder they've had such disasters at other venues!  I was pleased that there were none here.  Why?  Because my staff is amazing and competent!  Another amusing note from this event: many of them thought I was from Canada because of my accent.  I said y'all enough times that I can only presume they meant southern Canada.  :)

  I love a lot of things about my job and one of those things is staff meetings.  Yes, sometimes (even most of the time) we all sit in a room and put on a serious face and talk about budgets and upcoming shows and problems, but sometimes we get to go someplace and have fun!  That was the case with our last staff meeting.  We went to the botanical garden where they had glass works by Chihully. I by no means consider myself a photographer, but I was happy I brought my camera and gave it a go anyway.  I won't barrage this post with every picture, or even all of my favorite pictures.  I'll conveniently litter them among the next few posts.  It was such a great experience to go to this.  To be honest, due to this job, I rarely go out anyway, and when I do, going to something like this would not have been my first pick, but I loved it!  Perhaps I should make trying new things more often a New Year's resolution.  It's not too late to add that one on, right?  It will look great under "No more procrastinating!"

Still, as great as this staff meeting was, I can't beat the one where Garry Marshall sang Happy Birthday to me!