Catchy Name Needed

I'm all excited because my caladiums are coming up. (See picture below.) It practically made my day, last night when I saw them - and for that matter my day rather needed making, because I woke up with a massive sinus headache yesterday morning. Ugh. I guess it's that time of year, and I should feel lucky my sinuses waited all the way til the first of April to remind me forcibly of their presence, but that (feeling lucky, I mean) is easier said than done.

I am trying to mail some jewelry in one of those cardboard Priority Mail boxes, and it really, really bothers me that the space for the stamp is on one side of the box and the space to write the address in is on the opposite side. That just seems wrong. But I guess that's how they want you to do it! (Silly post office.)

Meanwhile, I made a bunch of jewelry, including another watch. I got the scanner to work in color this time, so I'll post the picture of that below, too.

I heard something that really floored me on the radio this morning: apparently somebody-or-other (I didn't at all catch who) was criticizing Obama for being the most liberal Senator, and this was based mostly on the fact that he supported ethics reform. I mean, since when is ethics reform a liberal cause? (If the Republicans would like to concede that their ethics are crap, that's fine with me. However, I was not previously aware that they had done so.)

As I have said, I started making jewelry mostly so I could make it for myself, but I took this to a new height this morning - I actually made a pair of earrings to match my outfit. I put on a turquoise-colored shirt, and then I put on the bracelet that Rob gave me for Valentine's, which is turquoise enamel and silver, and then I thought, "I don't have any earrings that match!" I had already made one pair of turquoise-colored earrings, but they had antique-gold findings so they wouldn't do. But I had a couple more of the Czech glass beads that were the right color and in less than 10 minutes I had a silver pair, too. Luckily I was running early, for once.


In case anybody has been wondering why the heck I use this icon all the time - well, for one thing, I went, 'Hey look, I have a Tilda Swinton icon!' Monday morning after the Oscars, and have been trotting it out extra-often this week. (I think I have some more ofcleolinda's Narnia in 15 Minutes icons on the computer someplace, but this is the one I actually use.) I have always liked this icon anyway, just for sheer weirdness value - it's a Narnia joke and a Lost joke rolled into one, how can you beat that? I don't know if it amuses anybody else, but it amuses me.

Which reminds me, all I've ever heard anybody say about Tilda Swinton this week is how ugly her dress was, but I was more interested in her acceptance speech, which was (a) rather funny and (b) managed to mention her agent's buttocks and George Clooney's nipples in the space of sixty seconds or so. (Oh, and I've also heard something about her being in a polyamorous relationship. I'm surprised that one hasn't gotten more press, actually. Maybe I'm just not reading the right press. Or the wrong press.)


Weird "breaking news" e-mail for today:
Britain's Prince Harry has been serving on the front line in Afghanistan, CNN confirms.
Um, seriously, this is breaking news? I will never understand how they decide this stuff. I understand that it's fairly important in the grand scheme of things. But if he didn't just get there, then on what planet does that constitute "breaking"?

(I wrote this at lunchtime and I know more about this now, but I still am not much of the opinion that it really was breaking news. I'm cranky that way, apparently.)

We didn't do a lot this weekend. I keep saying these lazy weekends aren't going to last long and I should enjoy them while they do, but in fact they've lasted a while now. Saturday afternoon we went on a shopping-and-dinner expedition - Rob wanted shoes, so we went to the gigantic Marshall's in Clear Lake to see what they had - he ended up buying Pumas, I think, which he'd never had before in, what, 15 years now of running. He wasn't complaining about his legs the rest of the weekend so I guess they were ok. We looked at beads and such at Hobby Lobby - their selection really kinda sucks, which I guess I shouldn't be surprised about. And we went to eat at my favorite italian place - I finally tried the pesto sauce there, and it was very good.

Sunday we went to see The Spiderwick Chronicles. It was good, as kids' movies go. A bit twee for my taste off & on, but enjoyable. Other than that, GuildWars and beads. I won't bore you with the Guildwars (for once) but I will about the beads!


I made another little bracelet Friday night:



It looks better in person than in this small picture, particularly. These are some of the garnets from the beads-of-the-month package - there were some more, better-quality ones this same size but I'm saving the rest of them for later. The rest of it is just random spacers, but I think it looks nice and it fits my wrist perfectly and I really love it.





White Men Hold the Key - I was especially amused/annoyed by the part about how white men were having trouble identifying with either Clinton or Obama. Poor disenfranchised things - welcome to how the other half lives. I haven't identified with a presidential candidate much since - well, ever. Maybe Clinton (Bill, I mean) and Carter a bit - they were poor Southern white boys, originally, so at least I knew how they were brought up, more or less. But good lord - Reagan? Mondale? Anybody in the Bush family? Not hardly.