Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing all of you, your families, friends, and other loved-ones a wonderful, turkey-filled holiday.

See you on the flip side!

Pastel clusters

Here is a cluster necklace consisting of yellow aventurine, blue amazonite, opal glass beads, and Swarovski crystals, on a 16" sterling silver chain.

I ordered a whole slew of boxes and organza bags yesterday, and also picked out my new business cards and gift box tags, in preparation for my store opening. I really like the style of the business cards - tomorrow I will post some pictures of what I picked.

Autumn colors

It's the weekend before Thanksgiving, and the trees around my house have finally - finally - turned. Only now do I feel like can I start enjoying hot apple cider, pumpkin pie, mulled wine, and butternut squash soup. Before the trees turned I felt like it was still too summery to enjoy those types of fall goodies.

I took one of our kitties to the vet today to have her sutures removed (long story short, a few weeks ago she had to have surgery done on her ear to remove a growth - but I'm happy to say that my brave little girl is doing fine now). Anyway, going to the vet makes me laugh because the staff refers to their patients by the pets' names, not by the owners' names, and so you hear the veterinarians calling them out loud in the waiting room.

Hearing the names people choose to give their cats is very entertaining.

For instance, there was a lady who named her cat "Tiramisu", and another, "Precious". As you can guess, Precious' owner is a frail, white-haired old lady, exactly the type of person you would think a cat who answers to the name Precious would belong to. I wonder if the veterinarians ever shake their heads and laugh at the names their poor patients are saddled with.

Now, the names of our cats - this is a story deserving of its own post for another day.

Boycott Cosi!

Today I went to get a sandwich at Cosi for lunch, and got in trouble with the cashier for allegedly skipping to the head of the line. The problem was that they have really confusing signage at this place - at the cashier stations they have a sign under one register that says "Pay Here", the same one at the second register, and then a sign that says "Order Your Barista Drink Here" in front of the third register. Because I was going to order a hot chocolate along with my sandwich (note: their hot chocolate SUCKS - it's the worst one I've ever had), I went to stand in front of the cashier under the sign that said "Order Your Barista Drink Here." I stood there and waited for my turn for a long time. Well, apparently I committed a grave mistake because the cashier, who was one of the most unpleasant people I've ever come across, told me in quite nasty accents that I was lined up at the wrong place, and in spite of the fact that I had been waiting for a long time and I was obviously the next customer "in line", she skipped over to the person who was waiting after me!

I was stunned at this blatant disregard of customer service. There were a million ways for her to have rectified the situation in a pleasant and friendly manner, but instead she chose to alienate a paying customer. I should have asked her name and then asked for the manager, but I was not up to a skerfuffle then (and boy do I regret not complaining now), so instead I'm just never going to patronize Cosi in general, and this Cosi in particular, ever again.

So, readers, join my call to arms! Boycott Cosi, because my experience tells me that they don't care about their customers at all. When I worked retail at The Gap many years ago, they told us that it takes just one bad experience to alienate a customer forever. Boy, they really knew what they were talking about!

Dresses and millionaire marriages

I bought this cute red dress from Old Navy. The sleeves are my favorite feature (Old Navy calls them "lantern" sleeves, whatever that means), and the color is so festive. I'm thinking of wearing this to Mr HD's holiday office party.

I've also been following the news about Google's co-founder Larry Paige, who is engaged to be married. His fiancee really scored big time! But at least she doesn't sound like a trophy wife - apparently she is a doctoral student at Stanford in...er...something called "biomedical informatics", which sounds like a very, very serious PhD indeed.

The other Google founder, Sergey Brins, also got married a while back, and I read that Google then invested $3 million to his new wife's start-up company. That's a great source of venture capital right there at her fingertips - I wonder if she had to make a "presentation", if you know what I mean. This guy is actually pretty cute - he sort of bears a faint resemblance to that actor Reid Scott from My Boys.

And that's all I have to say for today.

Experimenting

I saw these oversized metal chains and couldn't resist - I had to have them. My aim was to mix a sort of old-fashioned Victorian style with a modern-goth vibe, but I don't know if this experiment worked so well. I think I need to tweak this one some more.

The maroon ribbon is made of polyester with the ends sewn shut, and the charms include a black cameo and a white nugget pearl. It's a variation on the pink cameo piece.

Yeah, definitely needs some tweaking.

Marie Antoinette-ish?

I worked on this for a major portion of the day. I used amazonite beads on gold-filled wire, and the end result kind of reminds me of something from Marie Antoinette's era, especially with the gold and blue combination. The pendant is actually a pendant frame but I used it by itself for a different sort of look, and hung a white nugget pearl from a 14K gold-plated chain. The pendant is approximately 2" long and 1.5" wide, and the whole necklace is around 20" long, finished off with a gold toggle clasp at the back.

Here are a few more shots and close-ups.



I am having a pretty productive day off. I filled out my business license application and it's all set to be mailed (I hope I did this correctly), put gas in my car (was running on fumes) and cleaned the inside (it was filthy). I also purchased more supplies at the craft store, which of course was mobbed by people getting ready for the holidays. Christmas music was blaring from the speakers and decorations were crammed into every aisle. I'm not even mentally ready for Thanksgiving yet, let alone Christmas!

A couple of months ago when football season started I joined a fantasy football league for kicks with people from my old office, even though I know absolutely nothing about football. Each week we are supposed to set our lineup, except I never did this because 1) I was too lazy 2) I didn't know what I was doing 3) I don't know who the heck any of my players on my team are. Finally, sick of my abysmal 0-6 record (luckily I am not in last place - I am tied for last place, which is a big difference), I finally went on the league website and found out that I have, apparently, been competing for weeks with an injured quarterback, an injured running back, and an injured wide receiver. Ha! But I have now remedied this, so brace yourselves for my team's upcoming, unstoppable winning streak. (Or not).