August

August 30 Today is my Birthday , that's almost a line from a bad beatles song, don't remember what the next line is though... you can email me if you know though, so that I can fix the broken record..... Emmy didn't even get a ribbon put on this morning..., my son phoned this morning , not to wish me happy birthday but to ask what his address was so he could get a phone put in! My gallery manager Mr Huck L Berry told me (via the WM) that he is buying me a flat screen monitor for the gallery for my birthday, He thinks he should have been getting wages for the last 10 years that will more than cover the cost of the monitor.... Don't know where he will sit though if 'he buys me' a new monitor.....

Have some beads that I will stick on my home page later I'm calling them Alice Beads... they remind me of the 'trees' in the Red Queens garden, from Alice in Wonderland, they're hollow..... That's aboput all I'm doing for excitement at the momment, making beads, turning them into jewellery, answering emails, fighting with computers, retyping posts that get eaten by cyber creatures..... What did I ever waste my time doing before the internet! There is a malicious rumour going round that the tower that NB tel put in last week is a high speed internet tower.... no more no speed connections....., I won't be able to read entire chapters of books, nuk coffee, load the washing machine etc... while pictures load. I'll have to come up with an entirely new time managment plan!

August 26 Friday evening already! Spent yesterday driving..... I never realized how boring trees are until I cut through Northern Maine yesterday to come home! 100 km of nothing but trees! Actually planned to finish the day shopping in Calais, but decided that supper had more class than shopping so decided to aim for the 6:30 ferry, which means being in the line by 6:05.... Most of the time you can basically drive onto the ferry but 6:00 is the first ferry that's missed when they go from ferries every half hour to hourly so the lineup builds quickly! Guess I won't get supper tonight until 8 though as Stuart and Gord went to Saint John today and Gord's truck quit (think he should quit going to Saint John this is the second time in two months that it has quit in Saint John!) The Battery light has been on for the last week or so, but since the truck still seemed to work..... Anyway the battery was dead and the alternator burned out trying to continually charge the dead battery $750. later the truck works again! They are aiming for the 7:30 ferry, but have a truck full of junk food, so probably aren't suffering greatly!

Duddley and Emmy spent two hours in the house today unsupervised, (I was making beads). When I came in I couldn't find either one of them, they both appeared when I finally gave up looking and called them but I have no clue where they where hiding. Not sure how an 18 pound cat can disappear! Actually as long as Duddley can't see Emmy life is OK, a couple of days ago I flipped a wicker garbage can on top of Emmy when Duddley was walking through the room, the garbage can was bouncing around like a flea but eveerything was OK because Duddley couldn't actually see the little vermin!

I did clean up my glass and my silver on Saturday, actually what provoked the clean up was loosing all my silver head pins, they where actually in the couch so the clean up was for naught! Hope my glass stays neat for awhile it is so much easier to find rods when they are all laid out in a neat rainbow... but so uncharacteristic! Today started out foggy but got clear and sunny by mid morning but obviously the fog didn't burn off very far as the fog horn blared away all day.

Corina mentioned buying a bear a couple of days ago to be her mascott, I have had a large 'grizzly' bear called Mr Huck L. Berry acting as my manager for the last 8 years, he lives on top of my computer monitor, and whenever telephone solicitors phone and ask to speak to my manager/boss... whatever, I just tell them he's busy on the computer and can't come to the phone..... Should be someway of claiming him as a dependant on income tax... don't you think?

I was sitting in the gallery a couple of days ago and noticed an elderly woman at the door. She actually lives next door but is suppose to be looked after, anyway her 'keeper' went out for coffee and she escaped. Her line to me was that her keeper had fed her her medication 4 times already today and was trying to kill her, and I had to get her out of Lord's Cove NOW! At the time she showed up I was reading Agatha Christie's 'Why Didn't They Ask Evans' which is a typical Agatha Christie, lots of bodies, but the Dr's wife claims he is trying to poison her.... Any way I closed the gallery and took my neighbour for her car ride and left her where she wanted to be left. I believe they returned her home. Now the general consensus is that she is totally batty, however, she seemed fairly with it to me, although very hard to understand! (Whenever I run out of something to read, old mysteries ger recycled)

August 19 Sunny today cooler though, makes sleeping temps a bit better especially with a furry flea in bed! Speaking of the furry flea he is currently out cold on the bed, guess he spent too much of the night playing and is now making up for lost time!

Spent over an hour playing with the Bullseye glass again today, actually I bought it originally to make components for fusing, made one piece for a show, it sold, so I guess I quit while I was ahead! I like the stiffer texture, more time to play with shape. Think I will spend the afternoon cleaning up my glass rods and then move onto my silver, the problem with the later is storage, and the small grey flea that wants to help, when I got my fine silver I had to promise not to boil it and then drink the boiled water, fortunately I didn't promise not to use it for teething my cat. He seems to think that chewing on silver wire is wonderful! He won't listen when I say no..... Hopefully will get a new picture of sleeping beauty posted later today!

August 18 Another warm sunny day with the island breezes coming off of the water, all I need now is a few palm trees outside the window, anybody know if there is a variety of palm trees that are hardy in zone 5? There where some growing at one of the Imperial Villas in Kyoto, but I think Kyoto is probably a zone or two warmer than us, and I bet those ones get tucked in every winter! I

M is offically Emmy, no it doesn't start with the letter M but the letter M is spelt em in the dictionary .... I really like Slate but couldn't see standing at the door yelling for Slate, one of yesterdays suggestions was Fireball, cute but can't picture myself yelling where are you Balls at the the top of my longs.... No comments neccesary from the peanut gallery! Duddley still prefers to be the marter, he comes to the door looks in growls and stalks off!

Off to Saint John this afternoon, although I may have to start buying my coffee closer to home with gas at 1.16 a litre! My hearts are all done, scans of the finished peices will be posted next week after the pieces have been delivered! The Bullseye Rhubarb shift heart was so pretty outside, but my kitchen has florescent lights and it turned muddy grey.brown, uck. I'm trying to think up a reason why I need to order the 34 new colours of glass from Bullseye, (maybe I need to take a trip to the factory and hand pick my rods.....?) However since I've had the glass I've got for three years, and this is only the second time I've used it....! Portland is nice in the spring though!

August 16 M is the official gallery greeter... He hears the doorbell and goes thundering through the house, a new bunch of suckers to spoil me and cuddle me... YES! Today has started off bright and sunny, M slept under the covers, down by my feet of course I had to kick him every hour or so to make sure he hadn't smothered! So then it was play time...., latest names, Mouth, Sterling, Slate, Martian, Mr Jeeves, the M theme seems to be slipping. So far his eyes are staying grey (Slate grey) hope they stay that colour! Duddley still won't come in the house, but he's quit hissing at me when he sees me outside.....

Had a customer at 8:15 this morning, problem of having a gallery attached to the house! I was elegantly attired in my Yukata (it's very nice I bought it with my left over Yen at the Osaka airport) Cobalt Blue floor length with cranes..... They spent 45 minutes picking pendants, the woman was trying to buy one for her sister..... (The two for herself took no time at all!) M was covorting round the gallery the entire time, should have two new pictures of him up later today!

August 14 'M' spent the morning in the gallery selling work! More like getting underfoot and trying to trip people up. He slept until 6:15 this morning, not sure where, then arrived on Gord's side of the bed, 2 plaintive little yowls and he was gathered up and tucked into our bed, this by the' cats don't belong in the house' and 'no cat will every sleep on my bed person'! He claims that M will accept his place is on the floor when he gets bigger!....? Proposed names, Mine, Moe, Mega Machine (after the in my opinion worst program on TV, actually I am sure there are a lot that are much worse they just don't get watched by other members of this household!), Munchkin, Mighty Mouse, Mega Munch... Duddley my wanna be Jaguar, is devastated, he comes in the house and as soon as M bounces accross his line of vision he starts hissing and growling and the leaves again! Can't handle the competition after being an only 'child for the last 16 months!

August 13 If you haven't already checked out the new pictures on my home page you should! M for ???? is depicted in the bottom two pictures, email me with your choice of name, winner unless he stays as Miney Monster will get two hearts! M is my birthday present 17 days early, he has already done one netscape search sitting on the keyboard he got an entire row of [[[[ haven't checked to see what the search generated but there were pages of results!

We were suppose to have a power outage yesterday morning at 9 am for 15 minutes, so I turned off all the computers didn't start my beads, my concentrator and my kiln both need electricity, twiddled my thumbs until 10:30 decided it ain't going to happen today, so started work. Just after we started cooking supper last night, the phone rang and I got the Bilingual message again telling us that power would be out from 6:30 pm until 7:00 pm, I guess because they were doing the repairs on afterhours on overtime it takes twice as long!

I'm doing a charm bracelet for a woman in Fredericton, (that's where some of my heart bouquet is headed) I told her to measure her wrist with a piece of string and send me the measurement, she sent me the peice of string it was 9.25 inches... Add 3/4 of an inch for the bracelet that's 10 inches, I've met Carol, she doesn't have Elephant wrists, so I asked her to measurre whatever bracelet she was wearing, it was on elastic though so that didn't work, after numerous emails we finally decided 7 inches plus clasp was right! Not sure what she would have done with the extra 3 inches!

We had a big dump of rain last night, and it was still cloudy and drizzly this morning, I had lots of customers... so obviously the magic solution to customers is, that it must be sunny enough to lure tourists onto the island followed by a drizzly day, so all they can do is shop!

August 12 Nearly a Friday the 13th! Spent yesterday on the mainland and thought I was going to come home on the 6:30 ferry but I was the first car left behind, so actually got home at 8 pm! The fog never really did burn off in Saint John.

Before I sit down to type this, I have all sorts of ideas on what I am going to type then by the time my dial up no speed connection has got me into this site I've forgotten everything! Keep thinking I need to stick a note book and a pen in my pocket, so I don't loose all my great ideas!

I got an interesting piece of mail yesterday a bill from a credit card company, it was a charge for my monthly minimum for the privledge of having a Merchant Visa account, problem is the account was closed last September, the bank account that they usually accessed for fees was also closed, but that didn't stop them as the one where my Master Card deposits had been made is still open, so they helped themselves to 'their' fees from that account, and yes, they say, they will give them back, but they were quite ademant that some person must have phoned in to have the account activated....(anotherwords there is someone out there who didn't have their account activated!) The other problem is.that somehow the bank charges always seem to get lost in the refunds!

Another gorgeous day here, a lot of the American kids are already back in school or going back next week, seems way to early for that, but then summer didn't start here until the middle of July and I figure it should last about 10 weeks.... I made a comment yesterday that once the families are gone it will depleat my already depleated customer base, Gord figures that once the kids are back in school the retired couples and "D*I*N*K*S" will show up {(double income no kids) not my acronym, came from a friend in SK}. There are all the East Coast Leaf lookers that show up in the fall, but not sure if they make it onto Deer Island as by then we are a dead end destination. Gord actually went to St Stephen today to pick up my screen door for the gallery!

August 9 Well my internet connection seems to be operating in snail mode now, which is an improvement over the not working at all that I was getting an hour ago! The computer did inform me that this document contained no data, and who said computers didn't have a sense of humour!

The fearless mariners are on their way to the Bangor airport, too bad the Challenger didn't get diverted to it's third choice airport, that would have been a real bonus! Russell has to go back to work, and maybe I can get Captain Bligh back hammering nails.

Their trip to Grand Manan was a success except the Restaurant they ate dinner at wasn't licenced so they didn't get any Beer, so they missed out on the third leg of their triathalon, plunder.... pilage and DRINK! Coming home they supposidly had wonderful winds and the sailing was --------- you can fill in the blank!

Albert is still on the disabled list, so Captain B has been searching ebay for a replacement, Russell pointed out that you could get anything on ebay.... If you type in 'Virgins' it supposidly comes back and asks you' if you want new or used!' You may be able to get anything but so far not Albert's circuit board!

August 6 Think the forecast is for sun so Captain Bligh and Fearless will no doubt take off, the tragic news is that their helmsman Albert (Einstein) blew his circuit board so they will actually have to steer! They went to Eastport yesterday to see if Albert could be brought back to life... the verdict is still up in the air! Think the plan for today is to sail to Grand Manan overnight there and 'sail' back tomorrow. Duddley the cat is already eyeing Gord's pillow!

I now have 7 bracelets that fit my ankle, will post some of them on my home page later today (Promises, promises!) Lost my USB cable that goes from my camera to the computer, I only need it for the camera's internal memory , ie when I screw up and forget to put the card back into the camera... think you can buy a new one, no, you have to order them from the camera manufacturer!!! I'll find it somewhere, unless Duddley thought it was a snake a spirited it off to his lair! Actually since my other cat died, Duddley seems to have lost his interest in snakes, he used to catch them and chase her round the yard, then abandon them on the driveway, then the seagulls would step in and we'd have snake sushi all over, yum yum!

Was playing on the stats page for this site last night and Brazil is 4th right under , US, Canada, and Unknown.... I spent a month in Brazil (Rio) during carnival 24 years ago, all night partying, dancing in the street, parades, you could wander the streets wearing bikinis or less, then its OVER and everything becomes serious again, showing skin is taboo, I've never seen such a big contrast overnight, unless it's fall in SK, 70 above one day and 20 inches of snow on the ground the next, that has pretty much the same effect as far as clothes go!

August 5 Overcast today so I got to sleep in, no lazer beam at 7:15! The crew of the good ship Money-Pit have been told that they have to mow the lawn before they head off in search of treasure today! I guess they spent yesterday playing with whales and swatting down buzzing Zodiacs (whale watching boats). While I slaved over a hot torch making a bunch of striking Red and Yellow beads, should have enough now to do a couple of bracelets, I'm having a really hard time with bracelet length.... I think I should start making them to fit my ankle (LOL) then they might fit my customers wrists!

Yesterday I sold a coffee mug and was looking around for something to fill in the hole and noticed a smaller mug, same artist sitting in front of a bowl, didn't look very good, actually wondered why I would put something like that at the front of a shelf..... so, when I went to move it I discovered that it was MY mug that I misplaced 2 weeks ago! Fortnately it didn't have an inch of green slimey mold in the bottom, just some brown dust, Gord figured that any customer that noticed would have just thought it was a strange glaze.

Just got an email from someone who was at the gathering, may have to go next year, hire someone to run the gallery next year for the summer, (so I can escape....) allthough I'm getting really good at stuffing beads in the kiln and running barefoot accross the crushed rock then full tilt through the house when the doorbell rings, I've discovered that hollow beads don't park in the kiln really well, but if you rip all the decoration off you can heal the cracks and redecorate..... (didn't collapse!) Probably easier to start over though!

Stuart was back on Deer Island Wednesday morning, so he spent the day sleeping, sounds like Air Canada is refunding all the money for the ticket too, or would that be their insurance carrier doing that...???? No wonder insurance is so high!

August 3 It's sunny today so the good ship Money-Pit will take to the high seas to plunder & pilage loot abandonned on beaches..... Or should I say they are of f in search of buried treasure(?). Stuart got to Halifax yesterday not sure how much further he got as almost all Canadian planes route through Toronto, not sure why they couldn't have rescheduled everyone through Montreal and bused people who actually wanted to go to Tronto to Toronto! Anyway he should get to Saskatoon in time to turn around and come home! Halifax is one of those airports that is out in the middle of nowhere too so he can't even leave.........

Gas here jumped 5 or 6 cents while I was in Saint John yesteerday, when I left St George it was 98.9 came back and it was $104.9! As I was driving home in a total deluge, I notice an ESSO station that was still at 99.9 I stepped out of the car into water over my ankles, before I finished every other pump was full too, of course it had quit raining by then!

August 2 Foggy today, rained yesterday, the Pirates are getting depressed, actually they have to gallery sit today anyway as I have to deliver my son to the airport in Saint John today. The Pirates have decided that I have too much stock and are going to sell everything for $5.00.... If I get my standard number of customers, I don't have much to worry about! Breakfast time!