MSNBC - The bizarre case of the bone-eating worms

MSNBC - The bizarre case of the bone-eating worms

Weird and kinda fascinating in a grossish way. And there's a branch of marine biology that JUST specializes in whale carcasses? Really? I used to want to be a marine biologisty when I was a kid (too many Jacques Cousteau movies I guess) but that's just...ew.

Just had to share a picture of Ryan - notice the stylish footwear! 

Television Without Pity

Television Without Pity

Yes, I'm webcrawling today...wanna make something of it? Anywho...LOVE this site for the humorous commentary on every show on TV. Look up your favorite show and see what they have to say about it!

MSN Encarta - 10 Words You Simply Must Know

MSN Encarta - 10 Words You Simply Must Know

Okay, so I LOVE words...and these are some good ones. This should be perfectly pellucid ;-)

Yee HA!

Got a repair order for a strand of pearls!  Not as exciting as doing a new creation, but hey, a job's a job. 

And I'll have plenty of time to work on it as it's not like there's anything important going on in the country this week...oh wait...the Democratic National Convention...SNNNNZZZZZ!  I mean, seriously people...Al Sharpton???  How does this man have the credibility to SPEAK AT A NATIONAL POLITICAL CONVENTION???  It's embarrassing.

And to add insult to injury, today CNN was broadcasting from the convention floor and who did they find to interview for his "take" on things?  P. Diddy.  Yeah, I know.

Yet another election where there's no candidate to represent ME.  My choices are brain dead, lying, anti-choice warmonger OR wishy-washy, inexperienced, pro-choice, certain-to-raise-my-taxes, hazy on national security liberal.  Yeah, I'm looking forward to the election and the next four years...sigh.

And by the way...does anyone remember a little ol' place called AFGHANISTAN???  Seems like it ceased to exist (at least as far as the media is concerned) when we set our sights on Iraq.  Where are the embedded reporters with the troops that are still in Afghanistan?  I'd like to know what's going on there!

What progress (or lack thereof) is being made in re-building the infrastructure and putting democracy in place?  Or did "we" just c0nveniently forget about that?  I know it's hard to remember things when you are busy crashing your bike into things on your ranch in Texas.

Alright...back to the beads.  See...this is why I shouldn't watch the news any more.

All Quiet on the Blogger Front

Well, this will be mondo-boring as I have nothing to report today.  The only thing that happened was that an e-mail list that I have belonged to for several years and that I very much enjoyed because it was so entertaining is kaput.  The list owner had some sort of hissy fit and decided not to keep running the list....but instead of abdicating so the rest of us could keep enjoying it...she shut it down entireley.  Crap.  Now I have to go back to watching "Real-life Trainwrecks" as a substitute...or maybe "Cops" has a Yahoo Group?  I need an electronic dysfunctional drama replacement drug!

Other than that...kidlet is still waking up at night and I haven't made any sales from my new website.  Hope I didn't go to all that effort for nothing...sigh.

Okay, enough downer-ness.  I will stop throwing this pity party for myself.  I do still have that custom order to work on although I'm getting nervous that some of the supplies I ordered will not arrive in time for me to meet the deadline (which the customer just shortened by a week).  Yikes!

Off to check the mail!

Another Day, Another Blog

I can see where a big portion of keeping this blog is just going to be coming up with entertaining titles for each day's entry (and yeah, I know, the above is hardly original, but it's the end of the day, kidlet was up for hours last night and when he did finally go to sleep then I was too wired to sleep so my brain is pretty fuzzy right now).

I cannot WAIT until this whole teething thing is done with.  I'm sooooo tired of this middle of the night stuff and yet I feel so sorry for the poor little guy...he just cries and cries and Tylenol or Motrin seem to be pretty useless in helping him.  So much for our baby who started sleeping through the night at 3 months and kept it up until about 14 months and then it's all been downhill from there.  At least he still goes to bed without a fuss...I'll take what I can get, but oh, it's so hard to hear that cry start at 1:30, 2:00, 2:30, 3:15, 4:00...ugh. 

On the up side...got a custom order that came in via e-mail that I'm really excited about.  Just hope I have enough time and energy to do a really good job on it.  I'm always a little nervous about custom jobs that I won't be able to get the piece exactly the way the customer wants (especially when I have to do the communication via e-mail).  Not that I'm a perfectionist or anything (perish the thought, right Sparkle?)  Hey, Sparkle knows who she is and if you're NOT Sparkle, then that comment wasn't meant for you anyway LOL!

On a final note, I did a check of the search engines today and looks like most of them are bringing up Silver Parrot except for Google so I re-submitted to them....only to discover that they got hit by the MyDoom virus today so not sure how that will go.  May have to re-submit again in the future.

Well, it's time to get back to beading.  Rose quartz and peridot and sterling silver here I come!

Up, up and AWAY!!!

It's up!  The new site is up!  Check it out at:  http://www.silverparrotdesigns.net

A few minor last minute glitches happened, but they've all been corrected and everything looks good as far as I can see.  I'm sure there are probably still some errors here and there that I haven't caught just because I've looked at the darn thing so much that I'm "looking past" them, but I'll keep fixing as I go.

In other news, we bought the kidlet his own little "couch" for use in the family room.  It's just a cheapy foam thing we got at Target, but it has SpongeBob Squarepants on it and it folds out so he can lay down on it, too, and he LOVES it.  He's spent most of today playing different games with it and he's learned to say "SpongeBob!"  Well, okay, it sounds like "PonBo" but hey, he's only 18 months old :-)

Now, I'm off for a well-deserved nap before we go to dinner later this evening.

Bye!

Another "find" from the inventory! 

ARRGGGH!

Well, no post last night because just when I thought the website was basically ready to go except for a few, minor, last minute changes...kerpow!  I totally screwed up a couple of major things and spent a lot of hours late last night fixing the mistakes.  Can you say "*&#(*&@(!!!!!"?

Then real life intervened today where hubby and I took the kidlet on an expedition to get a potty seat and a booster chair.  He's just started to let us know when he's going #2 by saying "poo-poo."  Okay, more than you really wanted to know, but hey, I get to live this exciting life and besides, you're wasting time here reading this stuff so your life can't be THAT much more interesting LOL!  We don't expect him to really start potty training for quite some time yet, but the pediatrician says now is a good time to at least get the potty seat and put it in the bathroom and let him get used to the idea of it being there and get used to sitting on it.  Now, if I could just get him to stop mis-pronouncing the word "truck" (he can't say the "tr" sound and says an "f" sound instead and...well, you get the idea).  Plus, it's his favorite word so he likes to say it a lot...and loudly...in public.  Whereupon whichever one of us is with him has to sheepishly explain the whole "truck" thing (not that anyone believes us, I'm sure).

But, back to the website.  Worked on it all afternoon after we got home and I think it's finally ready to go!  Hubby will help me upload it TONIGHT!  Yahoooooo!

Off to grab some dinner and play with the kidlet until it's time for the FTP party :-)

Gloriana Necklace - uncovered in the inventory stacks last night 

Scan Queen

Whew!  Scanning is WORK!  Well, okay, it's not if you're only doing a few things, but last night I re-scanned about 1/3 of the pictures on the site.  Somehow over the past few years of up- and downloading them to the server some of the files have gotten corrupted with weird shadows or strange glowing bars (or maybe it's just aliens in my scanner?)  Anyway, as part of the site re-build, they all had to be re-done.  Plus, I found a few items in inventory that dear hubby completely forgot to ever scan or load to the site to begin with.

Fortunately, it was hubby's night to watch the kidlet (we take turns being "primary parent" every other evening) so I was able to get all the scanning and photo editing done and all the new pic files loaded into the new site.  I'm really pushing hard to make my goal of getting the new site up by 7/25.  Only 3 more days!!

Which means of course...that I better get back to work!  See ya!

Oh P.S.  I'm trying to use the new Hello BloggerBot to add a picture of one of the "lost" pieces I found and scanned last night so check it out to see if I was successful...or not.

Let's Get It Started!

I'm more than fashionably late to the blogger party, but then again, better late than never.  I'm really doing this as part of my business website - I own a small jewelry company and am in the process of re-designing and re-launching our website and thought it might be fun to have a blog link as part of the new site.

So, here's a bit of info about me.  I'm 39, married, have an 18-month-old son and live in Southern California.  In addition to my jewelry business, I have a full time job at a large technology company.

I've always been involved with various crafts over the years (ceramic painting, cross stitch, embroidery, needlepoint, rubber stamping, etc.) but was always frustrated that there was nothing to really "do" with the finished products.  I'd already filled most of the appropriate wall spaces in the house with framed needlework and found that most people don't appreciate it as a gift - it's too "old world" or something. 

My job at the time was incredibly stressful and I finally decided a career change was in order.  So, I quit my job.  Brilliant maneuver.  Took me 6 months to find another one and I had a LOT of time on my hands during that period.  That's when I got hooked on a couple of craft shows on TV - Aleene's Creative Living and the Carol Duvall show.  THAT got me started with rubber stamping.  FINALLY...a craft where you could do something with the end product!  I had people wanting to buy cards from me and even referring other friends to me as customers.  It was so much fun!

Then it happened.  I started using a few beads here and there as embellishments on my cards and other stamping projects.  Then a few fellow stampers and I decided to get together at the Pasadena Bead Company and try to bead some simple bracelets based on some instructions from the internet.

And that was it...a bead obsession was born.  I started subscribing to bead magazines, researching techniques on the internet, attending bead and gem shows and making jewelry.  And people PAID me for it (and a heck of a lot more than for my cards!).  At the same time, my husband was trying to learn website design and offered to make me a website for my jewelry as part of his learning process.  Eh voila!  Silver Parrot Designs was born.

Things went relatively well with it until we had a problem with our domain name and had to change it to a .net instead of a .com due to hacker attacks on the original site.  Unfortunately, a lot of the business I had drummed up for the original site was lost when this change was made.  Then came a very difficult pregnancy with lots of complications, hospital visits and eventually surgery three months after my son was born.  So poor Silver Parrot Designs languished while I recovered from surgery, dealt with being a new mom and going back to work full-time at my "real" job.

But things finally calmed down (well, as calm as you can get with an 18-month-old boy LOL!) and I started getting a bit of time here and there to work on beading.  I re-organized and moved my entire workshop to a different part of the house to keep it away from prying baby fingers and that was a HUGE chore.  Then I went to work on new finished pieces to add to the website.

I presented them to hubby (aka the web guru) to be put up on the site only to be told that he'd lost interest in web guru'ing and would like me to take over managing the site.  Oh, and by the way, I'd have to learn Dreamweaver, Fireworks and something called "FTP" in the process.  WHAAAAAATTTTT????!!!!

After I recovered from my seizure, I dutifully loaded Dreamweaver and all that other crap on my computer and started to play with it and learn.  I did it grudgingly, but I did it. 

And now, the new Silver Parrot Designs website is just about ready to go live.  My goal is to get it up on the server this weekend.  I've been working off-line so that the old site could stay up during this time.  Adding this blog and link is one of the last pieces remaining to be done along with some re-scanning of of some of the inventory.

Even though running the website has taken time away from what I REALLY love (the beadwork!), I'm glad I did it.  I learned some new programs and I was able to fix a lot of little things that always bugged me about the old site but which I figured I couldn't complain about since I was getting all that webwork done for free :-)

That's it for now.  I'm off to lunch and some more work on the new site.  Stay tuned!