Claudia — Page 1335

A Bit of Cyber Housekeeping

October 26, 2013 at 9:36 am by Claudia

donandscout

Just had to share this photo of Scout that Don took with his iPhone. It cracks me up. You can see why the border collie rescue group temporarily named her Smiley.

Oh, I love that girl.

Autumn seems to be a time of cleaning and reorganizing. I’ve been doing my fair share of that here at the cottage and I’ve been doing a bit of that in my cyber world, as well. Just a little bit.

You may or may not have noticed that the links to my Etsy shop are missing from the blog. Meredith and I went into a sort of hiatus over the summer, the same as we did last year. Summer isn’t the best time to sell crocheted scarves and shawls. Or, for me, to work on them. Normally I would have re-opened the shop by now. But a few things are holding me back. I don’t seem to want to crochet or knit at the moment. I started a scarf and it sits on the desk where I left it 3 weeks ago – untouched and unfinished. More importantly, the shop’s success in the past has been wonderful but it also means I have to pay taxes on my sales – all well and good and as it should be. But most of my work income as a contractor (which is how theaters label me) is untaxed as well. As is my ad income for this blog. When you start to add it all up, it can become overwhelming at tax time. I keep receipts, of course, and deduct those out-of-pocket expenses necessary to make my inventory; yarn, packaging materials, etc. Nevertheless, it all adds up.

My gut tells me I need to cut back and since Meredith and I are both busy and neither of us seems to be motivated to create new inventory for the shop, I’m going to keep it on semi-permanent hiatus for the present. I’m not closing the shop – at least for now. But I’m also not linking to it. I’ve removed the link from the navigation bar.

I’ve replaced it with a link to my most recent book reviews. I’ve happily discovered that a lot of you really enjoy my book reviews and I started thinking that it would be handy to have the links in one place. So I went through the last year and a half of blog posts and made a list of all the books I have reviewed and added links to the review posts. (I was surprised at how many of them there were!) These aren’t all of the reviews, as I’ve been writing them for about three years, but they are the most current. I hope you enjoy them. I sure enjoy writing them. I have another one coming up next Wednesday and I think you’ll like it.

Speaking of book reviews, the winner of a copy of Killer Image is Christy. Congratulations, Christy!

I’ve also decided to discontinue A Favorite Thing.. I loved our little party and I enjoyed hosting it for you each week. I post daily, as you know, and it’s all original content. Adding the weekly meme and the visits to everyone taking part in the party took a lot of additional time. I hope you understand and I thank all of you who participated from the bottom of my heart.

Last but not least, why is it that light bulbs seem to burn out in clusters? Does that happen to you? We have recessed lighting in the kitchen ceiling that uses floodlight bulbs. One died about five days ago and I went to the store to replace it. No sooner had I returned home with my $7.00 bulb when another burned out. I hadn’t had a chance to get a replacement bulb yet which turns out to have been a good thing, because when I got up this morning and turned on the lights, another bulb burned out.

Are my light bulbs messing with me? Are they getting together at night to plot the timing of the next demise? Are they laughing behind my back?

Hmmm.

Happy Saturday.

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Life is an Adventure

October 25, 2013 at 9:48 am by Claudia

adventurecard

Don gave me this card on our anniversary.

Along with the fabulous scenery and Adirondack chairs (still dreaming of a pair for the cottage) and the lovely font, it is the message that resonates so strongly with us.

Life is an adventure and our life together is an adventure. We use that word all of the time.

Adventure.

As with any adventure, risks are involved. The unknown lies ahead. There may be sadness or fear or heartbreak. But there may be incredible rewards and joy and happiness. Who knows? You can do all your research, gather all your supplies, plot your course and set out on your journey. But what lies ahead is a mystery.

Maybe we’re crazy and maybe ‘adventure’ is our way of describing the stress we often feel. Certainly, two people with careers in the arts who deal with the accompanying insecurity and lowish pay might do well to call their life together an adventure. It’s a roller coaster ride, that’s for sure.

But adventure implies so much more. It speaks of possibilities, of new experiences, of discoveries, of the unknown. It speaks of surprise and joy.

Did I ever tell you this little story? Two years ago I had to have two procedures done. The first was an emergency procedure as I had a blocked bile duct that was making me very sick and turning my skin yellow. The second was the removal of my gall bladder. The only other surgery I had ever had was the removal of my tonsils when I was eight. Facing the first procedure, I was especially nervous about the anesthesia and everyone assured me I would be fine. In fact, as they were assuring me, I was going under and didn’t know it. Don was out in the hallway as they wheeled me out of the prep room and into the operating room. As I passed him, I thrust my arm in the air and shouted out, “Let the adventure begin!”

Needless to say I have no remembrance of this whatsoever. Don, on the other hand, laughed out loud. The nurses and staff were even chuckling.

We still talk about it and laugh. But the point is, even under anesthesia, the idea of life being an adventure stuck. Frankly, sometimes the adventure is a little too crazy and scary and it keeps me awake at nights and I’d like it to settle down for a long while. At other times, it is amazing and serendipitous and wondrous and beautiful. I think that your perspective changes when you think of life as an adventure. So I try to remember that. In the midst of worry or pain, I remind myself that life is an adventure.

I’m grateful I’m sharing this adventure with my husband. But adventures are not dependent on that. Adventures are there for all of us.

Here’s to adventures.

Happy Friday.

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Slice of Life

October 24, 2013 at 9:35 am by Claudia

thursskylight

thursjeeves

thursbakelite

birdsandacorns

thursswaglight

thursmonty

acornspinecones

thursbowl

A sleepy Thursday morning. I stayed up late watching the World Series but woke up at my usual time. So far so good with the World Series, but make no mistake, it’s going to be a tough competition. Don and I wish the baseball season lasted all year long. What are we going to do in the winter?? I used to love basketball, but try as I might, I just can’t get into it anymore. It’s baseball for me. That always surprises my dad because I thought baseball was the second most boring thing to watch in the world when I was younger. The first was golf. Golf has retained that title, by the way.

The photos are snippets of life in the cottage: what my eyes light on during the course of a day, the little things that make this cottage a home.

Yesterday was a day of phone conversations. I had a wonderful conversation with a dear friend who is an actor and a neighbor and is currently in the Rep at Hartford Stage. He and his lovely wife have become good friends of mine. Then I had a long conversation with a former student who is a talented actress and is just starting to do what I do: coaching speech and dialects. She had some questions about a production she is currently coaching and it gave us the excuse to catch up with each other.

Then I discovered a message on our voice mail from the monitoring system my dad uses. It’s a life alert kind of thing. They had received an alarm from his alert device and they couldn’t reach him by phone so they dispatched an EMS vehicle to Dad’s address. By the time I got the message it was twenty minutes after the fact, so I called my dad. No answer. The I called the monitoring company, but they didn’t have any updates. Then I called my sister, who was working, so her phone was turned off. Then I tried my dad again. No answer. I looked at the clock and realized that it was about the time my dad visits my mom every day, so I called the Nursing Home and mentioned who I was and that I was looking for my dad and the receptionist cheerily responded “Oh, I just saw him! Do you want me to get him?” Just as I had suspected, Dad triggered the wrist alarm he wears by bumping into something. This has happened before. So all is well, but for a few minutes I was in a bit of a panic.

I want to share a link with you. It is a post by artist Lisa Congdon which tells an all-too-common tale of her art being stolen by a major company and sold for profit. This company is Cody Foster, maker of lots of Christmas decor, among other things. You might have some Cody Foster items in your own home. I might. Allegedly, they have been copying the original work of independent artists for years. They do not compensate the artists or attempt to get a licensing agreement. They just steal. Correct me if I’m off base here, but isn’t stealing wrong?

I cannot begin to imagine how painful it must be for an artist to see her work copied and sold for profit by a company – to realize that companies can steal and seemingly get away with it.

If you Google Cody Foster, you will find a long list of links to articles and posts that concern this very thing. They’ve been called design pirates and ripoff artists. Shameful, don’t you think? Here’s a very informative article about the whole thing.

I will not be buying anything from Cody Foster.

Happy Thursday.

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A Bit of Cyber Housekeeping

Life is an Adventure

Slice of Life

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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