If I ever decide to move....

This sign would be so totally, totally appropriate!

I have really, really bad neighbors.

And it's not just the fireworks.

It's the 3, count them THREE, times they have run over one of my sprinkler heads while mowing their lawn with their entirely too-big-for-their-lawn riding mower, and neglected to inform me that gallons and gallons of water were spewing like a frickin' geyser from said run-over sprinkler head.

And then not paid for repair of same. Same sprinkler head - 3 times -- learn the location, idiot.

How about the hoe-downs they throw in their driveway, right outside my bedroom window? Complete with full-volume country music on the CD player, and coolers of beer and wine-coolers, and everyone sprawled out in the driveway in lawn chairs.

And now that their girls are in high school - how 'bout those boyfriends, that leave their cars running in same driveway, with rap music playing at absolute top volume until the wee, wee hours of the morning on the weekends?

And the time one of those now-teenage girls was 8, and decided to practice her karate kicks on my privacy fence? She was actually quite good - kicked out about 15 slats before I caught the little princess. And chased her to her front door, through the damn hole she had created in MY fence. And her Mom tried to blame it on some innocent kid across the street. And once the little darling confessed - her Mom dragged her over to my house to "apologize" - but no one volunteered to pay for fixing the damn fence!

Love thy neighbor - pfffffffft!

Sweeps?

Hi, my name is Sweet Freedom, and I am Addicted to Television.


That wasn't so hard.


I absolutely love TV - I think there's a set in every room of my house (including the master bathroom - *hangs head in shame*), and one room even has 2 television sets (due to the incompatibility of TIVO and Wii!)



This is my friend Tubey, the Television Without Pity mascot. - he and I share a lot of the same interests. Really, a lot.





I'm such a TWoP fan, that I even have 2 stuffed Tubeys, which I won in charity auctions.

Bailey loves TV, and Tubey, too.

Here he is with Tubey - they're both doing their best Buck Nekkid imitations. Buck's a frequent visitor in the TWoP Pixel Challenges. Looks like Thong Tubey even made it into that challenge!

Anyway - all that stuff is just to get to THIS point - I thought February was "Sweeps Month" - one of those 4 months every year (February, May, July, and November) when every network puts up their best programming, hoping to win the Nielsen ratings, and thereby increase their advertising rates - or something like that.

But I have never lived through a February with this many damn reruns by the major networks.

And I am sick of it - give us some original programming! Or I will be forced to watch True Beauty, or The Bachelor, or some such. Good grief.

/Rant over.

Historical Deja Vu

Augusta opened its first dog park a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to take Bailey, so we loaded up and went in search of this elusive park last Sunday morning.

The dog park is located inside Historic Pendleton King Park, which I had never heard of, despite working in Augusta (although I live across the state line in Aiken, so maybe I can be forgiven for this.)

At any rate, Google AND the Park's Own Website gave the park's location as Wrightsboro and Troupe. I even looked up this corner on Google Maps, so I would have a vague notion of where we were headed. I knew that Troupe street was somewhere downtown, and I knew where Wrightsboro was, so I wasn't extremely concerned about getting there.

So then I proceeded to get lost THREE times trying to find this Park.

The first time was because I wanted to buy a soccer ball on my way to the park, because poor Bailey's soccer balls are in pitiful shape, so as I rounded a corner headed toward where I felt the park should be, I discovered I was right in front of the 15th street Kroger, so I ran in there hoping to find a soccer ball.

No soccer ball, and no balls of any sort ("those are seasonal items, Ma'am", according to the 3 Kroger employees clumped together in the toy aisle), so I asked decided to go ahead and ask these 3 folks for some directions to the park, and all 3 of them agreed that I was nowhere near the park (WRONG) and sent me off in a completely different direction.

So once I knew for sure I was way way way too far out of town to ever find the park, I started hunting for Wrightsboro, which I vaguely knew was off to my left somewhere - figuring that if I could find Wrightsboro, I could then take another left, heading back toward downtown, and I would eventually locate Troupe street, and voila - there would be the park.

So I finally found Wrightsboro, and turned left, and started looking for Troupe street.

About 8 miles later, I found it - and no park.

So I decided I had 2 options - turn right or left on Troupe, and hope for the best. I chose to turn right, and drove, and drove, and Troupe turned into Kissingbower, and I got concerned again.

At this point, a cyclist was approaching from the other direction, and I wildly waved my left arm out the window, and he stopped, and I asked where this mysterious park was, and he said it was right down the road - pointing in the direction I was already headed.

I rounded the curve, and sure enough, I was in fact so close to the park entrance that I was going too fast to make the Left turn into the entrance, and had to drive about 50 more feet, turn right onto Woodland, and turn around to go back to the park.

And this is when I had my big deja vu moment.

There was a cute little, extremely familiar looking, brick house on the corner of Woodland and Kissingbower.

Kissingbower is not exactly the kind of street name you forget -

and one of my great aunts and uncles had lived in a brick house on Kissingbower many years ago, and as I child my family had visited and stayed out their house many, many times.

But I didn't remember any park being across the street from the house - all I remembered was the brick house, and that it was on a corner, and that it had a brick wall on the corner of it, that we parked behind.

I was absolutely convinced that this house was, in fact, my great aunt and uncle's (Ola and Hodges Herndon) house - so of course, I parked the car inside the park, and dragged Bailey and the camera out of the park, and started stalkerishly photographing this house from all different angles - to send the pics to my parents for confirmation.

It took a week, but my folks finally confirmed that this was indeed my great aunt and uncle's house. My Mother said that back when we visited there, the front yard was huge, and filled with many large pine trees - and she suspects these were all lost for the sake of road-widening, because Kissingbower used to be quite the quiet little avenue. Which it certainly isn't anymore.

My Mom remembers that when she was growing up, and also when they took us there when I was a child, there was a huge plot of undeveloped land across the street from the house.

My Dad did a little research, and found this site which talks more about the Pendletons and the park. Seems the Park dedication sign is dated 1955, but development of the park didn't even begin 'til 1966 - so that is why none of us remember the park being there. I will not even begin to tell you how old I was when we last visited that house - but it was probably around 1966 or 1967.

That driveway at the bottom of this pic is the entrance to Pendleton King Park - literally right across the street from the house where I spent lots of happy time growing up.

Ola was my maternal grandmother's sister - and Hodges was her husband, but we all called him Unk. Lots of great memories of playing in that house!

Bailey talks about his visit to the doggie park here. He's looking for some friends, and he'd also love some votes in his poll. He evidently believes that if "Pizza" wins, things will drastically be changing around here, as far as his current diet is concerned.

Hmmmm. Or maybe they will - I enjoy a good pizza as much as the dog currently lying against my right side....

And I bought Bailey a brand new soccer ball last night, and we will be heading back to the park soon.

How NOT to make Bead Soup

Bead Soup - it's a great thing - there's a lot of fun things you can do with bead soup.

You know what bead soup is, right? - It's all those leftover beads, different sizes, shapes, colors; leftover from previous projects, waiting to make themselves useful in some way.

Beadweavers, especially, have a unique type of bead soup, because it tends to be chock full of those teeny-tiny little beads - you know, the 11s, the 15's, the delicas, the Charlottes.

And people manage their bead soup in different ways - some just dump it all into a big tub, or bag, and use it randomly.

I, with my advanced OCD (that's AOCD, to you lay folk), have to organize my bead soup - both by color, and by size.

So I had (HAD) about 10 little tubs, each separated compulsively by color, made up of the beads generally smaller than 4 mm.

And about 10 large tubs, again separated by color, containing all those extra beads over 4-6 mm.

This was working SO well for me, until about 11:45 this morning.


When the shelf, in my BRAND NEW cabinet, where I had carefully,. compulsively stowed these tubs, decided to collapse while I had the cabinet open -

And this is the result.

Thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands of beads, spilled all over my back room.

And quite a few naughty words shrieked when those beads dumped on my feet.

It took about an hour to scoop all these up - we used a dustpan, and just dumped them into a big box, and I'll undoubtedly be bringing that box home with me tomorrow night to sort, because it is driving me insane that they are now comingling.

I WOULD have brought them home tonight, except that tonight I have to do the monthly sales tax report AND price out all the new beads I bought yesterday from the traveling bead vendor.

What a fantastic way to spend Valentine's Day!



This is a nice shot of the gorgeous sun-catcher/ornaments that are displayed on the door to my shop - they are all made by the extremely talented Mike, of GimmeBeads.

Here's a set they have displayed in their Etsy shop.

Nice, nice work -

Happy Valentine's Day - I hope you are having more fun than I am!

Call me a Lemming...

And not in the sense of "Call me a cab" - but what I'm saying here is, I have been known to follow a fad or 2 or 10, and now I have a Wii, complete with Wii Fit. Yes, I have jumped on the Wii Bus.

I only wanted the Wii Fit, but being completely gaming-impaired, I did not realize that Wii Fit does not function without Wii.

And naturally, because of their HUGE popularity, I had to order both on the Internet, since none were available locally.

But I have them now, and after much technical difficulty (not the setting-up part - I am actually a wiz at all that wiring, etc - and none, count them, NONE of the VCRs, DVRs, etc in my house blink "12:00" - I can program and set any of that stuff) --- the problem was, none of the TVs in my house were new enough to have the orange, yellow, and white connections required for Wii compatibility.

So now I also have a new TV in my bonus room. A "Bonus TV", as it were.

So Day 1 with Wii Fit I learned, among other things, that my Wii Fit age was 66.

As Ellen Degeneres would say, "How Dare You?!?!"

On Day 2, after having done Wii step aerobics for a whopping 6 minutes the previous day, and a few of the balance games, Wii Fit pronounced my Wii Fit age to be 55.

Today (Day 3), after again having done 6 whole minutes of step aerobics yesterday, and nothing else, the thing announced my Wii Fit age is now 34.

I figure at this rate, I should be in utero by Valentine's Day!

This Wii Fit is actually a WABAC Machine! I may re-name my Mii "Sherman", and start calling Bailey "Mr. Peabody".

Ooh - look Sherman even has red hair, just like me. The haircut looks oddly familiar, too.

Do0 do0 do0 do0, do0 do0 do0 do0 - I hear that Twilight Zone theme in my head again....

So What Type of Blog IS this, you've probably been wondering....

I found this fun little site, which purports to analyze one's blog, and provide a mini-psychoanalysis of the author.

So, I jumped in with both feet - having little else to do except put out inventory at the store....


The site, which I believe is Swedish, translated back to English, is quick to disclaim:



Note: writing style on a blog may have little or nothing to do with a person´s self-perceived personality.



The Typealyzer indicates that I am of the type:


ESFP - The Performers

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves. The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

Please recall the disclaimer above - I'd like to re-write it as:
Note: writing style on a blog may have little or nothing to do with a person´s self-perceived personality or actual, in fact, personality.

'Cause man, that analysis is way, way off. As 5 out of the last 5 people I started arguments with will attest. Including the oh-so-helpful customer service manager at my local Cable company, just this morning. Yeah, Lou - I'm talking about you.

The site further gives a little analysis of the brain parts the author uses while writing the blog:

Analysis

This show what parts of the brain that were dominant during writing.

Interesting, but I don't really know what to think about all this, except -

Whatever.

Can't wait for Bailey to give it a whirl!

So Long, Sea Urchin

This gorgeous necklace sold this week from my Etsy Shop.

It features a stunning lampwork bead by Lori Lochner - and I'm so glad it went to a good home!


Lori makes incredible beads - so check her out some time!

This necklace had been a perennial favorite in Etsy Treasuries, but it recently came to my attention that it even made the Etsy Front Page once - my first and only FP appearance, to my knowledge -

I learned this through the Flickr Front Page Group - so if anyone else has ever seen me on the FP, please clue me in!

And thanks to glasfaden for including me in her gorgeous treasury!