Ouch!

I have totally and completely screwed up my neck and shoulders and I don't even know how I did it (although I suspect it's got something to do with the orientation of my desk at work). It's been an on-again/off-again issue since February, but it's gotten particularly bad in the last few weeks.


Last night I was in so much pain that I was almost in tears and I had to take an extra dose of Advil to get it under control so I could sleep.


This is NOT a good thing.


I'm sure that stress is playing a big part as well. I desperately need to loll on a tropical beach somewhere with a frou frou drink for about 2 weeks and not do ANYTHING.


But, since that doesn't look likely to happen any time soon, maybe I'll just buy stock in the company that makes Advil.


In the meantime, here's some beady goodness to cheer us all up:

My dear friend, Julie, went to Portland Bead Fest last weekend and brought me back this gorgeous pair of Kathy Perras lampwork beads. Insanely beautiful colors! Can't wait to make something great with them.

She also brought me this wonderful porcelain pendant from Raven's Journey International. My poor photgraphy skills don't really capture it, but there's some amazing iridescent pink, lavender and green coloring around the tips of the dragonfly's wings. This is truly beautiful!

If you can't get to a bead show in person, it's really awesome to have a great friend who will go for you AND who has excellent taste in all things beady!

Just a random pair of earrings that I made at lunch yesterday, but I had fun playing around with different photo backgrounds. This is a glass vase.

I'm really liking this wood background with the almost-eye-level angle. It's not quite so great for showing the dangliness of the earrings, though.

Then I remembered I had this rolled-up sheet of cork from my old rubber-stamping days and I thought it might make an interesting background, too. It really shows off the color in the beads very well.

Unfortunately, after I took all the pictures, I realized that one of the earring hooks was a mutant and didn't have the right number of coils around it so I had to switch it out, but that was no biggie and took only a minute to do. But still - how come I couldn't have noticed it BEFORE I took all the pictures? No, that would've been too easy.

Oh, and I'm happy to report that I visited the grocery store last night and even GASP! went to the dreaded deli counter without spontaneously combusting. Of course, I did have to wait 20 minutes to get my order which, despite my having repeated it 3 times, was wrong and had to be re-done. However, by the time I waited through all of that, I was so tired and in so much pain that we left without getting half the stuff I needed.

Then again, knowing that store, they were probably out of it or had moved it somewhere where I couldn't find it anyway.

KJ