CupTeaLuv?

recent (like half an hour ago) conversation here in the house…
K: Try this — (hands A a spoonful of a delicious concoction she made yesterday)
A: Mmm it’s nice. It tastes like something I’ve had recently….
K: Yeah — it’s the stuff from the restaurant on Tuesday, only I didn’t make mine green.
A: You sure this is the same stuff?
K: Yeah.
A: It’s nice but the pineapple is a bit…………fibrous.
K: That’s because it’s coconut.

was fantastic…. he didn’t give me too many clues (although by the time I got the “don’t wear open-toed shoes or hairspray” I was pretty sure it was something sort of “industrial” in nature — metalwork, woodwork… Beth had guess glass blowing)… we got there at 6pm (after a nice lil dinner at Jimmy John’s a sub place nearby) and once we got to the right part of the building we were shown a demonstration…
We were going to make heart-shaped paperweights!! The gal (I think her name was Kami?) was super sweet and a very good teacher and obviously loved what she does — she walked us through the steps of taking a long-handled pipe and getting some molten glass (called doing the first “gather”) then rolling it in shards of broken colored glass — tiny tiny pieces of it — some of the colors were more of a powder… then melting that in the “glory hole” (kid u not — that’s what it was called!!) then doing the second “gather” — getting another coat of clear molten glass — rolling it in another color — melting that all down, then getting the final “gather” and sitting at a special bench with a bucket of water beside us — with what looked like an old fashioned drinking cup — it had a long handle and was made of wood — it was a big slimy because they keep it 100% of the time in the water bucket and they mix a tiny bit of bleach into the water, so it stays sanitary but it also breaks down the wood (hence the slimy). Once we rounded the end, we had to use a tool that looked like a spatula (metal) to make a dent in the glass (the top part of the heart) and then she would turn it slowly and then we would take a large pair of metal tweezer-type things and “pull” the top of the glass to make the pointed bottom part of the heart… then she would use the spatula to flatten our heart a bit on the front and then we put it back into the “glory hole” (called “flashing”) to heat it up for the next task… which we used a pair of metal tongs to kind of slide the glass heart further away from the pipe — until it was about an inch off the pipe (held on by a kind of tail — still attached to the pipe) and then we flashed it a few more times because your outer layers cool faster than the inner ones and if they cool too much faster than the inner ones, there is a high chance of the glass cracking as it cools — then we took the pipe over to another section where she tapped on the pipe and the heart dropped off into some sand or silicone or something (it didn’t stick to the heart at all) and she used a blow torch to heat the back of the heart and kind of file off any remains of the tail. That part was cool!!! Then she used these special tongs to put the hearts in this big kiln where they would spend the night and part of the next day cooling down from 875degrees to room temp.
We took bunches of pics — so soon as Andy has these on flickr or whatever — I’ll pop some of them in here!!
We get to pick up our hearts any time after 4pm today — can’t wait to see how they turn out!!
Well done love!! Great idea!!

as a side note — I’m not entirely sure yet because I haven’t had the “official word” from DaCommish — but I think I actually won the big money ($25 whohooo) on our Fantasy Football League’s Playoff round… I sucked during the actual season, and I wasn’t even going to pick a playoffs team — but Dad wouldn’t let me not, so he picked some guys and I picked some guys and it looks like they pulled it off!
***UPDATED*** I WON!!!! *happy dancing* so $25 will be mine soon as the other guys pay up!! Can you say “yarn monies”???? whohoohooooooooooooooo!!

yeah so no antibiotics will help this nasty thing that has a really good grip on me — it hurts to cough, it hurts to move, it hurts to breathe….
when i was at the doctor, she sent me away with a coupon for Mucinex (over the counter) and the fun task of finding “Buckwheat Honey” because apparently it has some anti-viral properties to it??? So I stopped at WholeFoods (her first recommendation when my response to her advice was “Buckwheat Honey?? Where do I find that???”) no dice…. called Trader Joes… nope… was wondering where in the heck I was going to locate this magical elixir… and called Giant Eagle (just on a fluke) and sure enough they carry it.
So last night after having dinner with J. Bryan and Cathy and Jeannie and Darin we had to stop off at Giant Eagle so I could pick up the honey. It is very dark in color (looks really gross when you squirt it out onto the spoon!) so when I was ready to swallow it, I took a deep breath and thought “it’s honey — pure sugar… how bad can it really taste….” and swallowed it — it was actually really nice!! The coating was all too temporary though, I was back to coughing up a lung within a few minutes…
It was a rough night. To say the least.

In conversation last night with one of my golfing buddies, I mentioned that I am sick (YET AGAIN) — and his reply was “what?? I thought 2008 was going to be your year??!” (b/c 2007 sucked so badly) and I was like “I KNOW!!!” — being sick 9 days out of 24 so far isn’t very good odds, ladies and gents…
I have this bronchitis thing, that apparently is viral and therefore antibiotics won’t help it… and forgive me if this is tmi but i have cramps from pms as well …. can’t just be miserable with one thing at a time, me, no — has to be me lying in bed wishing for death…
sheesh.

I had to get up reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaallly early this morning (it felt like I had only just fallen asleep!!) because I had to let my parent’s dog Alpine out (they’re out of town visiting grandbabies) before the window of the furniture delivery… and the whole time I was bleary-eyed and thinking pessimistically “they won’t even be there until like 4pm this afternoon — all this is for nothing and i will end up sitting in the house all day waiting for them…” (past experiences have burned me thus)
So imagine my surprise (and delight) when I hear the sound of a diesel engine coming up my road (and it’s not a schoolbus!!) and then I see the name of the furniture store I’m expecting — my delight turns to joy… and they reverse into the driveway and i’m freezing my tukus off standing in the open doorway…
They brought the chair in and maneuvered it very cleverly through the narrow hallway and around the bend of the living room into an even more narrow hallway, and then came the real test — would it fit through the doorway of the craft room (and would it fit in the spot I cleared within this not-entirely-huge room….) — they had to unscrew two of the feet on the one side (thank God for whoever invented those removable feet on large furniture — and I even said this out loud and the two guys (in their early to mid twenties I’d guess) both laughed and said that not all furniture has that and that it’s a real lifesaver sometimes. Once the feet were off, the chair slid right through the door with not an inch to spare… and then they screwed the feet back on, we popped the cushions on, and the pillow and VIOLA!!!
I signed the papers and off they went and I collapsed into my lovely chair to ponder life… ok yeah I didn’t do that… how cheesy do you think i am!!?!??! and NO i didn’t fall asleep….. i just sighed happily and then txted andy to let him know the chair was here…

My Christmas present arrives tomorrow morning sometime between 8:30 and noon (which means they will probably roll up sometime around 4:30pm….)
My room is not quite as tidy as I had hoped to get it but I haven’t been feeling right since pretty much the new year began. I started off with this heinous cold and then it went away and now I have been having dizzy spells — I’m not sure if it’s because of all the moving around/lifting/turning/bending down etc. from cleaning up this room or what, but it’s annoying because it’s hindering my progress!!!! grrr.
My biggest worry now is that the chair will be too big to fit through the door of my craft room… that would just be the cherry on the top of the cake, let me tell you. I would be soooo upset.
Just not having the best time lately. Feeling really blue and lonely and pretty worthless. Not to mention still feeling kind of abandoned by God (Please note — do not send me sweet lovely encouraging emails about this because they only hurt, they don’t help — I know you mean well, but they just are like salt in a wound right now)…

I was thinking this morning that I was doing really well considering that I didn’t get very much sleep at all….
until I went into the bathroom and realized that my shirt was on inside out.
nuff. said.