lazy hazy days

I haven’t been posting as much lately as I used to. Probably because there really isn’t much going on in my life that would be of interest to anyone else. Everything in my life right now is good, pleasant, fun, creative, and normal. Life is just rolling merrily along. That’s a good thing because as much as I love drama on the stage, I hate drama in my life.

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I got a good start on several small projects this weekend, plus still had time to finish the first season of LOST and start the second season.

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My wonderful mother came over for dinner Sunday night. Pleasant company as always.

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My Guy found some dusty dinged-up snapshots of our wedding day. I’ve posted them on Flickr for your amusement. Just click on the Flickr badge in the right side column of the blog (if you are reading this imported post via Facebook, the photos are also available there). We’re so very 80’s – big shoulder pads and all.

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I’m happy that this will be a short work week. I do not have any big plans for Friday’s holiday. I will most likely stay close to home. Our neighborhood fireworks show is only a couple blocks from our house. We’ll probably walk over there with our lawn chairs like we did last year. Walking there makes much more sense than driving because it’s so difficult to find parking nearby.

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Bye for now. Hugs.

A day in the life...

If you’ve read my blog regularly, you’ll know that I’m the kind of girl that gets easily distracted. I suffer from self-diagnosed ADD. Now, don’t get your panties in a twist thinking that I’m not giving proper due to those folks who are actually diagnosed with it by a qualified physician. I have never discussed it with my doctor; I do not self-medicate for it; I’m not qualified to diagnose any one or even myself for that matter. I just KNOW that I have ADD. I cannot complete one thought before another is intruding. I cannot finish a sentence without stumbling over the words because my thoughts are far ahead. Or sometimes I can’t finish the last word of a sentence. The silence will hang there while my mind races to try to find the word I was going to say. I know the word; it just won’t come out of my mouth. (I’m so glad I have a husband who can finish my sentences for me or this could be a real problem at home!)

Mostly I find that I cannot focus when it comes to crafting and sewing. I’m so easily distracted that it’s a joke. Make a purse? Sure, but wouldn’t it be just as cute if it were pillow? No! I’ll make a silkscreen and paint it on the fabric instead of embroidering! Faster, yes, but more messy. Maybe I should just cut a stencil instead. Nah. Embroidery will be easier after all, even though it takes longer. I could add rhinestones! Glue them on. No. Glue doesn’t always hold. I’ll have to dig out the BeDazzler. Where are those settings? Do I really want to do the rhinestone thing? Is that too cute? How ‘bout spangles? I love spangles! I need to dig through my spangle bucket to see if I have any silver ones. Where’s that bucket? Oh! Look, there’s the Velcro I was looking for earlier. I’m going to go ahead and sew that on the purse now. Put a new needle in the machine first. Hey! I have those cool purse magnets I could use instead of Velcro. I’ll need the pliers for that. They’re in the kitchen drawer. I could sure use a cup of coffee while I’m in the kitchen. I’ll clean out the sink with Comet while I’m waiting on the coffee to brew. Ewww! Now I smell like cleanser! I need to really scrub my hands to get this stink off before I can touch any fabric in the sewing studio. Where’s that new scrubber? Hey, look! There are those dust wipes. I need to use them on the TV screen! God, that screen gets so nasty. It looks so much better now that it’s dusted. I didn’t watch the Daily Show last Thursday night. I’ll watch it now. That was funny! Wow. Even after drinking coffee I’m really sleepy. I’ll just take a short nap.

And that my friends, is how almost every Saturday and Sunday goes with me. I start a project, get distracted, and end up so mentally exhausted that I wind up taking a nap. The whole thing starts over again once I wake up. It’s a wonder I get anything finished to sell on my Etsy site. Etsy site? Damn! I need to take pictures and write a blurb about my item. No! I need to check my email first; then Facebook; then Twitter. Shit! Another hour has gone by and I haven’t even taken the pictures yet.

Forget it! I’ll just write a blog entry whining about how I never get anything done.

The surgery and the damage done

The Boy had 4 wisdom teeth removed yesterday. Poor baby. I can’t really say I know how he feels because… well… I don’t know. I never had wisdom teeth.

When we first arrived yesterday for the surgery, I got a chance to see his x-rays. Wisdom teeth are indeed odd things, aren’t they? It was so strange to see all his beautiful straight teeth, then these four that jutted out at weird angles.

The dentist explained that The Boy would be under general anesthesia and that it would all be over before he realized it had even been done. I believe that they called me in to the recovery area less than 45 minutes after the surgery began. Seems quick to me!

Once we were home I tended The Boy. Helped with gauze replacement; gave him his meds; convinced him to eat applesauce and pudding; strapped ice packs to his face. He seemed to do well for most of the day. There was a moment or two of discomfort when changing gauze, but for the most part he seemed quite well. He was still asleep when I left for work this morning so I don’t know how he is progressing today. I left the dentist’s list of instructions on the table for him so he’ll know how to proceed. Here’s hoping all is well.

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While The Boy napped yesterday, I was able to complete the messenger bag I had started over the weekend. I’m very happy with the result.

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Late last night I finished watching the final episode of the HBO mini-series John Adams. Amazing. I absolutely loved every minute of it. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Stunning sets, costumes, lighting, design. It all looks so dirty and messy and hot (or cold), and dusty, and painful, and just plain real. This isn’t some glammed up Hollywood movie version of the founding fathers. This made them seem very real. Very human. So real in fact that even though I know the outcome of the story, I was still anxious every step of the way rooting for them to succeed. What a tough, hard life most people led then. It made me realize how easy we have it in almost every way compared to the people who fought to give us our independence. I thank them for all the hard work.

Even if you’re not a history film fan, see this anyway for the amazing performances! I could not take my eyes off Paul Giamatti. A mesmerizing performance throughout.

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I’ve got a couple theatre shows to see this week. I look forward to telling you about them afterwards.

Until then…

St. Louis Shakespeare Podcasts!

Hello, Friends!

Please take a few minutes to listen to one, several, or all of the St. Louis Shakespeare podcasts I've uploaded. There are 17 tracks in all. All scenes are performed by working professional actors in the St. Louis area.

These tracks were originally recorded in My-Guy's recording studio in 2004 as a fund-raising project that was sold in the St. Louis Shakespeare gift shop. He and I produced the cd and all the scenes were directed by St. Louis Shakespeare's Artistic Director Donna Northcott. Original cd artwork was designed by The Eleven.

Now, four years later, it's time to make them available (free) to a wider audience. You can listen to them by clicking on any of the tracks in the below embedded player, or in a few days they will be available for download through iTunes. (In iTunes, search for St. Louis Shakespeare podcast.)

Creating this cd (and now the podcasts) has been one of my favorite projects with St. Louis Shakespeare. It was lots of fun putting together the tracks; recording the actors; choosing sound effects; hanging out in the studio. I serve on the Board of Directors of the theatre company and My-Guy might as well be considered a member, too, as he has been with me every step of the way, doing whatever it takes to make my projects come to life. Besides recording the cd/podcasts, he has also built props, designed fund-raising event pamphlets, and this year he designed and created the 2008 season brochure for the company.

I hope you'll take some time to listen. Please let me know what you think. I look forward to your comments!

Podcast! Podcast!

Hey all! I promise I'll give you plenty more detail about this podcast project, but it's too late tonight for me to think clearly. Check back tomorrow for a bit of the story behind why I did this.

KC

Hi everyone, I thought you might enjoy my podcast: St. Louis Shakespeares Podcast

- - St. Louis Shakespeare

the one I forgot to title when I first posted it

As you know from my previous blog post, the plan for the weekend was to do a back-up on my cantankerous computer and then do repair work. Well, that didn’t go quite as planned. My-Guy bought an external hard-drive to back-up to, but even after disabling as many processes as “Kill All” could manage, the back-up was still interrupted numerous times by Norton. Yes, we had disabled Norton, or so we thought, but it would come up over night to do its quick clean, thus crippling the back-up program. All in all, a complete back-up of my computer took from Saturday morning until Monday morning, believe it or not!

Now that the back-up is complete, My-Guy will start on the repair work of removing the new video card and checking the G drive connectors. After that, things may go back to normal. If not, he’ll do more investigating.

I really, really miss my computer! I had plans this weekend for doing embroidery work. Nope. No can do without my computer. I had hoped to start an online project (that I’m not ready to tell you about yet), but nope. No can do without my computer. At least I was able to access my email over the weekend via my iPod. I’d have really gone crazy if I couldn’t even check my email!

I’m writing this post today from my work computer as, of course, I’m not yet able to use my home computer. Keep your fingers crossed that all goes well. Cross your toes, too, if you think that will help. ;-)

A wary glance toward my computer

I have a Compaq desktop that’s about 5 or 6 years old. It runs Windows XP Service Pack 2 and for the most part it’s been good to me. But lately odd things have been happening. Several weeks ago, my auxiliary hard-drive (labeled G) disappeared from my list of available storage drives. Poof. There one day, gone the next morning. No warning. No funny sounds indicating an upcoming crash.

I use the G drive to store large files like movies, video projects, electronic scrapbook elements, recorded tv shows, etc. It wasn’t even half full, so it wasn’t a question of overloading. I need those files and hope that I’ll be able to access it somehow to retrieve them.

What might I have done to my computer to cause this problem? Well, I know absolutely nothing about how computers work, but the problems did start after making these changes: installing two new memory cards to upgrade from 512mg RAM (with 64 mg allocated to video) to the maximum allowed 1 gig. At the same time as upgrading the memory, I also installed a new video card. So, this weekend My-Guy is going to put the computer up on blocks and check under its hood, so to speak. He’s thinking that perhaps the new video card is causing some problems. He’ll remove it. Also, he’ll check the G drive connections to make sure they are secure.

Not only am I having G drive problems, but in the last couple weeks the computer has decided it does not like to restart or shut-down. It won’t even control-alt-delete to reboot. I have to press and hold the power button to shut down, then repress to turn it on again. Even then, it sometimes fails to come up completely. I can see the green power button is lighted, but nothing happens. Nothing on the monitor. No sounds.

So, as you can imagine, I’m very wary of my computer right now. I need to back up my hard-drive (C drive) because I’m afraid it’s going to fail. The back-up drive we have is not large enough to hold my C drive info, so we’ll need to get a larger back-up drive.

We briefly discussed getting a new computer for me, but my first choice (a Mac desktop) is out of financial range right now. That leaves possibly buying another PC, but I’m wary of Vista since I’ve only heard bad things about it. There’s also the concern that my embroidery software is Windows-only and there are issues running it on Vista (from what I’ve read in the online embroidery groups I frequent). If I ended up buying a Mac, then I’d have to also buy Windows OS software and load it on the Mac in order to use the embroidery software (there is no Mac version of the software available and I absolutely cannot do without this specific software).

Keep your fingers crossed for me that removing the video card and checking the G drive connectors is all that is necessary to get my computer running right again.

Isn’t it amazing how dependent we become on our computers? I don’t know how I’d do without one. I certainly wouldn’t be able to do any embroidery design or even embroidery stitching since my sewing machine depends on input from my computer. Ahhh, what a tangled web we weave!