Just count to 10.....

before I go off like I did yesterday. Can you tell I have issues with certain things? But in all seriousness I guess that's why I try my best not to blog about work. Because it just becomes one big b*tch fest and I really don't need to go there.

OK....so one of my resolutions for this upcoming year is to leave work at work :) Yeah....let's see how long that lasts. What are your resolutions for this upcoming year?

My list:

1. Take more time off
2. Take a kick-ass glass class
3. Finish my indoor studio
4. Finish the stairs in my house (well, this is more for DH than myself!)
5. Do more spur of the moment fun stuff
6. Learn how to use boro
7. Eat less fried chicken...yeah...that's right. And you KNOW how hard that is living in the South!
8. Get outdoors more
9. Take a multi-vit each day

OK.....I think that's enough...gotta hit the sack so I can get up early for work tomorrow. Hope you have a good one watching the ball drop or doing whatever it is wherever you are!

Why I turn my ringer off....

Because I seriously do not want to get a phone call at 5:25am on a Sunday - one of the few days I just happen to have off this week - asking me if I want to work.

Trust me.

I work my regularly scheduled days. Heck....I even work extras because we're so bloody short staffed right now. When I'm working 4, sometimes 5 12-hour days out of a 7 day period I don't think it takes a brain surgeon to figure out that the likelihood of me 1. answering the phone when I know it's work calling or 2. saying yes if I should make the mistake of answering the phone is absolutely nil.

Why not try calling the person who likes to make calling out of their regularly scheduled shift just about predictable? I mean, heck....they have no problem screwing the rest of us who do show up for work. To them a schedule is nothing but a piece of paper with gobbledy-gook written on it. Nevermind that the rest of us are counting on you to show up because you actually, at one point, signed yourself up to work that day.

Sigh. I could go on and on but what's the point? Obviously there are those who live up to their obligations and those who do not. It just sucks when those who do not are allowed to with no ramifications while those who do suffer the inevitable fallout.

Ask me again why I decided to get back into the workforce????

How I love my days off!

My husband likes to make fun of me. Before I started this job I always used to be on his case on the weekends to get stuff done. You know...let's go do this. Let's work on the house. Let's go out and do.....stuff. I guess that was because I was so antsy from being at home all the time that when the weekend rolled around I was ready to get out and do stuff with him. Of course, he'd worked all week and just wanted to veg and I didn't really get that.

Fast forward to now. I work 4, sometimes 5 days a week. My shifts are 12 hours long which makes for a VERY long day. These days I can barely motivate myself to get out of bed on my days off let alone find the energy to clean or shop or anything else :D My husband thinks this is sweet payback. Now I finally understand why he never wanted to do anything on the weekends.

Ahhhhhh....the beauty of not doing anything at all. Now...that brings me to the question...if I'm working these crazy hours and not doing anything on my days off who exactly is doing all the cooking, cleaning, etc. etc. etc???? Hmmmmm, maybe that's why my house is starting to resemble the aftermath of a mini tornado and the dust monsters are getting larger and larger.

Oh well, it's my day off and maybe I'll spend it contemplating how to deal with this problem!

Happy Holidays!

How quickly time flies. The last post was me at the airport doing a crazy 12 hour round trip to get paperwork sorted out for work. It could have been an ordeal. Instead it went about as smoothly as it could have - for which I'm very thankful. Since then I've been busting my butt at work working extra to make up for our sad state of staffing. It's truly a blessing that I really enjoy my work and my coworkers. I don't know how I would get through each day if I didn't.

So, here we are. 3 days before Christmas. Personally I don't get into holidays. Nothing against them just that I'm not hung upon them. I find them a touch too commercialized. Sounds hokey but DH and I live each and every day the same - they're all special, all deserving of sharing and giving, all deserving of celebration.

Every day I am confronted with my own mortality and every day I am reminded of all my blessings. I am determined to live my life to the fullest with no regrets for life is far too short not to embrace each and every moment.

I wish you all a safe and happy holiday!

The beauty of technology

allows me to blog while sitting at BWI waiting for my connecting
flight. Hope you've all got your fingers crossed for good weather,
short lines at the Peace Bridge, and happy customs officers!

Monthly Thursday Social

Just a quick shout out to the gals who launched the first of hopefully many monthly Thursday lunches :) We all need some time to decompress from our jobs and it's just fun to see people in real clothes once in a while instead of the scrubs we live in.

I was pleasantly surprised at how many we had show up for this last minute lunch and even more suprised that we managed to get RNs, NAs and PAs all together at the same time! Next month I'm hoping for twice as many folks! This is going to become an institution I tell ya.

Thanks for coming out y'all. I had a really swell time.

Split personalities...

Sometimes I get stumped when it comes to blogging. I never know whether I should talk about my life in general, my work as an ER nurse, or my lampworking hobby. Most of the other blogs that I read tend to focus on one main area and I feel like I don't really have one main thing that I focus on hence the split personalities thing.

So, today I'm blogging about the fact that I'm having difficulty blogging :) Every now and then I think maybe I'll write about work but then I'm afraid that I'm going to scare people off with my frustrations and my jaded cynicism so I stay off that topic. My life....well, that's not the most interesting topic at all....no kids, no funny fluff-ball pets, no real news on that front. As for lampworking that's kind of a non-topic right now with the weather being so cold and my new indoor studio space getting worked on. No good beady news to share.

Sigh.

Let's see....ok...how about this. I'm on a search for some parts. Here is a pic that I purloined so that I could show an example of what I'm looking for.

I need the inserts that you see in the pic (or at least something similar). The closest I could find was stainless steel standoffs but those are open on the end that doesn't screw onto the mandrel and I was hoping for something with one closed end. Anyone out there in cyberspace reading this know of a good substitute of these parts? I'm offering bead rewards!

Tomorrow is a day off so maybe I'll come up with something good to write about. In the meantime....have you ever read The Pioneer Woman's blog? I love it!

Happy Turkey Day!!

Today I am thankful for many things.....thankful that my hot water heater is in the garage and not in the house. Thankful that it decided to finally let go when we were here rather than away for a week. Thankful that there isn't much to ruin with a cement floor.

'Nuf said. I'm off to work and I'm hoping that all the not-really-sick people decide to stay home to enjoy their tofurkey or turducken or just regular turkey and stay out of the ER!!!!

The Melting Room....

Interestingly enough the latest Flaming Hot blog topic asks us to talk about our studios...something I've been consumed with lately.

My studio is.....really driving me nuts. My studio used to be out in the garage. It actually is still in the garage but I can't get to it because my DH has managed to pile all of his HUGE woodworking equipment in front of and all around it.

Now, I really can't complain because we have a plan to convert our pantry into a new studio pour moi. Yes! This is totally exciting because it will be indoors and climate controlled. My desire to melt glass will no longer be dictated by the temperature outside. So far we've torn up the flooring and stripped the walls of the built in shelving that was there. The plan is to put down some kind of non-flammable surface - most likely tile of some sort. Concrete backer board will go up behind the torching area. There is a plan for exhaust as well as bringing in make-up air. We'll tee off the existing gas line that resides just on the other side of the pantry wall. I think this space is really going to rock! The only problem I foresee is figuring out how to accommodate all the power that the appliances are going to draw. I hope to get pics up of the progress as we start working on it in more earnest (probably after the in-laws are gone) so you can always check back for progress.

Up until this point I worked out in the garage on a table purloined from my DH. It's made out of a solid core door. I simply laid out 12 x 12 tile all over the surface and insta-unflammable tabletop! I have a creation station which I love. Use a Minor torch with 2 oxycons hooked up. My kiln is a Mike Crowley creation with I can't say enough good things about. I have to say the one really neat accessory that I have is an old dental tool cabinet. It has casters so it can roll around and I love the shallow drawers that house all my picks and tools. It also has deeper drawers that I use to store all of my frit jars. The top shelf is for all of my presses. The best part of it is that I got it for $7 locally from some dude selling it on Ebay. My best buy by far!

I'm looking forward to re-organizing all of my glass when I move indoors. I've got so much I'm really going to have to think carefully about my storage strategy.

Not sure what else I can tell you about my studio except that I long for the day when I have my own, standalone building dedicated to melting glass. Yeah....gimme another couple of years. Once all the renos on this house are done it'll be time to find some land somewhere a little further out where there's no such thing as a HOA to veto me putting up a studio.

Getting into the blogging spirit....

So, really my life is pretty boring and there isn't much to write about all the time. Luckily for me today I discovered Flaming Hot! which I hope will help get me over my sometimes blogging humps.

Today's topic is: The Witching Hour? Do you list auctions at a certain time faithfully every week? Are you all over the time zone map? Does it even matter? What is your listing time philosophy?

To tell the truth it's been a long time since I had anything listed on Ebay or any other auction style site. Part of it is that I've just been super busy with other things. The other part is that the market was becoming saturated with new lampworkers and not many buyers were buying anymore (at least they weren't buying my beads!). However, when I was still listing I found that the ideal time for me to end auctions was:

1 - Sometime in the evening after work and supper - so usually around 7pm PST. This covered both east and west coast buyers without being too late for the east coast.

2 - Usually on a Sunday or Monday night. Never on a Friday or Saturday. People have other things to be doing on those nights and are usually not sitting in front of their computers participating in a bidding war.

3 - I'd try to have things up continuously. This is the most important thing I found - consistency in listing times/intervals. Eventually I started listing everything as a 3-day auction and just tried to have things end not on Friday or Saturday. This, for me, was the hardest part. Having enough time to torch to be putting things up consistently. I guess that's why I haven't had anything up for auction in a long time.

I think most of these things are kinda common sense each seller has their own selling mojo, you know? Like if you've developed a cult bead following I don't think it matters when you list something....it's going to sell no matter what.

Frustrated...

There've been a whole bunch of things that I've contemplated writing about in the last 2 weeks but somehow everytime I sat down to type nothing seemed to flow coherently.

There's a lot of stuff going on right now at work - lots of crazy politics, we're horribly understaffed, some silly people doing all sorts of silly things. It makes for a frustrating day and I've been feeling tired. Mentally, physically, emotionally.

After we got back from our trip I made a personal vow to myself to be more tolerant. Try to let the small things slide and focus on the big picture. So far I think I'm doing a pretty good job of that. There have been brief lapses, of course, but overall I'm feeling less tense and stressed out overall. Believe me...that's a real improvement for me!

Nothing much new to say. I mean, there's tons to say but I think I'll just stay away from that can of worms. Life is still good. How 'bout you? Have you recently promised to do something good for yourself? Have you been able to follow through?

Surprise!

We don't celebrate special days like birthdays or specific holidays. Instead we choose to celebrate each and every day :)

What a nice sweet surprise on our first day back from a somewhat harrowing vacation.

Home sweet home

There's nothing like sleeping in your own bed after being away. Somehow the sheets feel softer, pillows fluffier, mattress firmer. Sigh. It's all good. I definitely had a restful sleep especially after another automobile almost-fiasco at the park and ride last night.

So, we get off the plane, our luggage is among the first on the carousel and we're off to the park and ride! Woohoooo....that much closer to home and even a couple of minutes early!! Get off the bus and get to the car, settle into the seat and............the engine won't turn over. I mean, not even the sad sputter of the starter trying. Absolutely nothing. Nada. Not a peep.

Picture Kev behind the wheel of the car, one leg out the rest of him mostly inside to steer and me pushing from the front to back the car out of the spot. Yup. We got it out. Then imagine me pushing from behind to try to get enough of a rolling start hoping for the starter to catch. No cigar. Fortunately there are still people out there who carry jumper cables in their trunks and after some time the car finally started. I'm just glad it started before the tow truck arrived 'cuz they would have charged us $55 just for a jump. What a ripoff.

So, from beginning to end it was an ill-fated car trip. I'm tempted to never leave the house again =) Today the sun is shining and I'm just piddling around getting caught up on chores and errands. Chat with y'all later.

Leaving.....on a jetplane

Indeed....our brief vacation is drawing to a close and we're heading back State-side this afternoon. Having time off was nice but I'm looking forward to getting back to my comfort zone.

We may be leaving today but not before we stuff our faces with dim sum. What I wouldn't give for some good dim sum in our neck of the woods but, sadly, NC isn't really known for its ethnic diversity and consequently it lacks in food choices. So, we're taking the in-laws for a last food hoorah before getting back to the land of fried chicken and biscuits =)

Speaking of food....one of my favourite posts on LE is the one about bubble tea and I have to say that if you're ever in Toronto you simply must go to Destiny Tea House at the intersection of Midland and Steeles. The bubble tea combinations are to die for!

Catching up....

I can see how this blogging thing has the potential to be somewhat disjointed - i.e. not all my thoughts necessarily come in chronological order in one blogging session so the writing follows my convoluted stream of consciousness.

My goal with this post is to catch up on all that's happened in the last couple of days. It was particularly eventful so this could be long.

Let's see.....this particular adventure started last Wednesday when we flew from Raleigh to Buffalo. There we rented a car and drove across the border into Canada and up to Barrie, ON to stay with the in-laws. After a fairly uneventful 2 days we were rudely awakened on Friday morning by the sound of a big crash. Long story short - our rental car got rear-ended by someone who, I suppose, was in a rush and not paying attention to the road. The good news? That no one was injured - after all, we were still in bed! The bad news? The driver was uninsured, driving on a suspended license in a car that wasn't titled in her name with illegal plates. Could it get any worse?

That, of course, was a rhetorical question. It DID get worse. Turns out that Budget in Buffalo is an independent Budget franchise which means that we could not simply to to a local Budget to get a replacement vehicle. We would have to go all the way back to Buffalo to pick up another car. Yeah, right. They had to send up a flatbed to pick up the car and have it towed all the way back to Buffalo. How much do you want to bet that charge shows up on our bill somewhere?

So, that really stank. There's more but those were the highlights.

On a totally happier note one of my favorite pals from highschool got married on Saturday. I couldn't be more pleased for him. Seeing him so positively happy - there never was a more deserving person. And, I got to catch up with some folks I hadn't seen in close to, if not over, a decade so it was a renewal of old friendships. I hope that we'll all continue to stay in touch now that we've gotten back in touch!

We head back State-side on Tuesday. While I enjoyed having some time off I'm also looking forward to getting back to my life. What can I say? I'm a Virgo. I need structure and schedules :)

Etsy is my friend.....

Check out my mini Etsy S&T!

My first ever blog post!

Yup...I finally caved and decided to join the world of blogging. Now, who knows how long this will last but I sorta like the idea of being able to put down my thoughts and maybe even sometimes use this as a form of catharsis.

I have to admit being inspired to try this by one of my favorite bloggers out there - Kerry Bogert - who has some of the most interesting, introspective blog posts that I've read. I'm sure that in time this particular blogspace will evolve as I get the hang of it but for now I'm just typing and hitting the "post" button to get send my ramblings into internet ether.