Stepping outside of the box...

Something completely different today. I am at the Verb Art Collective for the day, as part of the Porque Burque craft show. It's the finale to the art exhibition of the same name, being put on by Duke City Fix, a webgroup I'm involved in.
I didn't have enough money to make dream pillows (HR messed up our paychecks!), so I have my hand-painted tiles for sale, and have set out the Tarot Reader shingle, too.



Okay, I think I've remembered how to put pics in here...
I've made more tiles since I took these pics this morning, and have even made one sale! I'll make sure to get shots of the other tiles, too, don't worry.
My main accomplishment today is to be here doing this. I'm sleep deprived, in over my head, outside my comfort zone, but darn it, I'm here! I guess if I believe that I'm an artist, then I am. I would have been more comfortable having the pillows to sell, too, but the universe had other ideas. Anyway, back to the painting!

Mulberries, munchies and monsters, oh my!

Had a fun-filled day today. It started very early, with me getting up at about 7 a.m. to clean out the truck and meet the rest of the FreeForAllFruit group for mulberry picking. Believe me, after getting home from work around 1 a.m., and to bed later than that, it was an accomplishment to get up after only a few hours of sleep! Five of us met up and headed over to the UNM campus, where we’d earmarked five trees to harvest. We had a couple of ladders, and a couple of us were even up in the trees themselves gathering berries. I haven’t climbed a tree in way too long! Our total haul after about two hours was a good 9 pints of berries, and there are plenty of unripe ones left to go back for. Back to the house, then, and we started sorting and cleaning the fruit. Some fresh to munch on, some to freeze, some to dry and the rest for jam. We had enough to make about 6 pints of jam, so after a quick store run for more sugar and a box of pectin, we did just that. By 12:30, the jam was cooling, the lids were sealing, and we called it a morning.

Next on my agenda were a nap and a shower. Got back up around 5, and Roslee and I went to get a bit of dinner before heading over to Craig’s to watch movies. There were 6 of us for movies, and we watched National Treasure: Book of Secrets (fun) and Tremors (wonderfully cheesy fun!). We had thought about watching the original Indiana Jones movie, but since National Treasure had come in, we went with that one. So now it’s about 1:30 a.m., and I’m back home. Bedtime as soon as I wind down, I think. But I wanted to blog about the berry-picking, at the very least.

Tomorrow, I’ll try to make some bread to go under my mulberry jam! I also need to get supplies for my projects for next weekend's craft fair and get started on those. Whee!

Yeah, I'm here.

Finally getting some of my energy back. Between the weather, my allergies (who knew?), stress, and a lovely little 'black-dog-depression', it's been a tough couple of weeks. I think the planets are beginning to get back in line, though, and I'm feeling better.
The late training shift I've been on for the last couple of weeks hasn't helped, either. 4 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. is a crappy shift in many ways, and by the end of the night, most of the class is pretty brain-dead! Luckily, we're ahead of schedule overall as far as getting through the curriculum for the Consumer Data Services dept. Yeah, CDS...tech support for PDAs and Smartphones, like Blackberry, Palm and such. I have a geek job. Wow.
To top it off, we *do* have to work Monday, Memorial Day. If I'd been there for 6 months, I'd get double time and a half. As it is, I'll be getting time and a half, since I'm working. If I wasn't working, I'd get nothing at all! So, yeah, I'll work...no problem... It'll probably be an easy day, anyway, as many of us will be tired from the weekend.
So, tomorrow's payday. We're doing a potluck at work, that'll be cool. There's a gas grill out back that we can use, and a cookout sounds like fun. We had thought of just getting food from a local BBQ joint, but that was going to be too much food and money. I'm the only vegetarian in the class, but there will be enough side dishes to keep me happy, and I may pick up a pack of Boca Burgers or Veggie Dogs for myself. My contribution is some sodas and a bucket of ice cream for Root Beer Floats. Yum!
Today, I've made some yummy Pad Thai for dinner (packing for later), a batch of Molasses Crybaby cookies for work, and am watching a couple of good shows on the History Channel in between things. One on "The Dark Ages", which kinda annoyed me in its biased view (anti-viking), and a better one on Chinggis Khan. Yay, Mongols!
So there's the latest glimpse into my bi-polar life (I'm not bi-polar, just my life).