Salutations and Welcome!
Let me know how you found me, where you're from, why you're here, a little about yourself, recommend a book, recommend a movie, tell me a secret, tell me something, ask me a question, etc. =)
Ad Astra,
The Bride of the First House.
bride (at) livejournal (dot) com
| weather | : |  | sunny |
| outside | : |  | 15.7°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
- to peter - to diminish gradually and come to an end
Peter is also a Greek name that belonged to an Apostle of Christ and, thus, fairly popular as a boy's given name.
One of our senior executives is named Peter. We have another senior executive named Rob.
When they came to our office to meet with our crew a while ago, Peter was joking about how he'd keep his talk short and finish before people started to peter out. He also muttered something out loud about it being unfair to be named "Peter".
I absently blurted, "I don't know... would you rather be petered or robbed? It's a tough choice."
There was a moment of silence before we all erupted in laughter.
Ordering a Strawberry Mocha from Café Artigiano.
I can only get it at the downtown café. They can't make it at the one close to home. I'll probably only have one, one Friday a month or only when I'm feeling really down because it's over $4.00 for a Medium.
But holy crap, they're so good. And they are not "The Evil That Ends In -Bucks".
Oak aged beer.
Huh. Interesting. Innis & Gunn. "Edinburgh ale aged in oak barrels traditionally used to mature malt whisky."
I like whisky, but it's a little too overwhelming for me because I don't have it often. So, this beer is very nice.
| weather | : |  | light rain |
| outside | : | | 11.8°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
Hi there! Welcome to my journal =) I thought I'd put this up at the top for you =)
The short story is: it would be really cool if it were, but I wouldn't get your hopes up. And you could have a very valuable violin there, even if it's not a real Stradivarius.
I'd be interested in what you find out. Do come back and let me know one way or another, if you're so inclined. =)
I'm no expert (to make an understatement =), but I do know that if this violin in your family has been played often and maintained properly in these last 100 years, it would be very very valuable anyway. If not in market value, then at least in sentimental value.
GET IT INSURED ANYWAY!! ... is my point. Make sure someone is making beautiful music with it regularly and taking good care of it. Don't let it sit idle.
As to whether it is a real Stradivarius, I'm almost certain it is not. Allowing for a little uncertainty, all real ones have been accounted for.
I don't know where you might get a proper appraisal. You could look for a violin repair shop in your area and ask to be referred to an antiques appraiser who specializes in stringed instruments. If you're in a big city, someone in your local symphony orchestra society might be able to help you out as well.
You really would want to know the market value for insurance purposes.
Good luck! =)
| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 8.0°C |
| mood | : |  | amused |
( Congratulations! - Ah, My Goddess )
( Swan Lake: Danse Russe, Moderato & Andante (Tchaikovsky) )
And the beautiful sadness of Vivaldi for my "Gallery of Sold" clip.
| weather | : |  | light rain |
| outside | : | | 5.7°C |
| mood | : | |
I was just pouting about how close I came to making my end-of-March goal of 60 sales by the end of February. Then I got another order on March 1... so that kinda counts as February, right?
Especially because February was a short month, technically, we should just let me have it, right? =D
Yeah, okay, whatever. I'm at 61 items sold now. =)
And I also now have more sales than items listed!
And it's a big ego boo to have something snapped up as soon as it's listed =D I listed the little smilie turtle and — bam! — it was gone. I thought I foof'ed up the listing XD
I have more smilie turtles to make and more of a buttload of other stuff that's arrived. But I'm waiting for a shipment of supplies to come in. *sigh* Any day now. =\
| weather | : |  | partly cloudy |
| outside | : | | 9.0°C |
| mood | : | | stoked |
I am so close to meeting my aggressive February goal! The aggressive goal was to have the same number of items sold as I have listed.
I had never thought that possible, but here I am, half way through February and only 8 sales left until my end of March goal of 60!!
I officially need to swear off the Etsy Forums. I’ve been trying to be patient because it was a good place to meet new people, see new shops and help people out. But it is toxic in there.
| weather | : |  | flurries |
| outside | : | | -2°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
Business isn't exactly booming, but it's steady... well, it's not even really steady, it's just sputtering fairly regularly now. I'm averaging almost 10 sales a month. *shrug* Better than some, not as great as some and not nearly as well as I had hoped. But it's still something. =}
This has been such a delightful time as Chief Cook and Bottle Washer of my own little hobby business. Sales aren’t through the roof or anything, certainly not enough to quit the day job over. =) I’m doing much better than many, but not as great as others.
My cell phone charms are selling decently well. Everyone that has bought one has loved it so far. All 100% feedback! YEAH! =D
I average 10 sales a month, which is decent progress. I even made my Stretch Goal of 40 sales by the end of January 2008.
My next goal is to have as many sales as items listed (I currently have 63 items listed for sale). 60 sales by February 2008 is probably too aggressive. 60 by March 2008 might be more realistic.
The latest intrigue in my shop is apples!!
Those were the cutest apple beads. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t buy any more beads until some of my first bunch sold. Yeah, that didn’t last long.
But I’m really glad I did. The cute apples drew in buyers and, in turn, they bought all sorts of other stuff.
I have more ideas up my sleeve. Look for them later this Spring and into the Summer! =D =D
Everyone has loved what they've bought, so far. I actually had several items come right down to a race condition. Multiple people had had the exact same item of mine in their shopping carts and they were trying to check out at the exact same time.
It's such a bittersweet thing; I'm falling down thrilled that people were "fighting over my stuff" as it were, but it's sad that I only had one and they couldn't both have it. And I realize that I have lost the customer because most of the time, people only really have their eye on one thing.
Anyway, all I could do was apologize and thank them for their interest. Onwards. =)
* * *
I'm laughing my ass off at Work everyday. There's just so much that's so funny. The people are great. Everyone's just INTO it. Yes, there are still idiosyncracies. No, it's not perfect. But it's a part of us.
Most of it, I realize are situational and you just had to be there — and be too tired, as we all are — to really get it. So, as much as I would love to share the great fun that Work is, there's not much point in it.
I have been schooling some of the Developers on proper grammar though. Some of them kept saying "me and Bob fixed a bug." ... "Me and Moe figured out how to ..." ... "Me and Larry have to work on the database thing..."
It was driving me bat-shit and I actually started schooling them on it. =) It's "Bob and I...", "Moe and I...", "Larry and I..."
When you're listing a group of people, as a matter of courtesy, always list yourself last.
To determine whether you should use "me" or "I", remove the "and", split it into two sentences to see which one sounds right.
"Bob fixed a bug."
"Me fixed a bug?" No. "_I_ fixed a bug."
So, together, it's "Bob and I fixed a bug."
During the Stand-Up, I heard "me and Larry... and I... are going to move on to the next User Story." There was a sideways glance at me. XD
They're starting to get it. =)
| weather | : | | light rain |
| outside | : | | 5.6°C |
| mood | : | | gleeful |
I've opened an Etsy shop and I've started selling handmade thingies online. This holiday season, if you love me, don't buy anything for me. Buy something FROM me. Better yet, buy something from me and tell all your friends XD
I make lampwork bead cellphone/keychain/zipper charms. I have other handmade things planned, but so far, it's just these. I had to open it under my maiden name though. I can't go by my married name because it involves actual money transactions which needs the name that I use for banking. =P
It started out with just me wanting a cool new netsuke cellphone charm. And spiralled out of control from there. =) I fell for some really lovely handmade lampwork beads... and by "some", I mean "a boatload".
Yeah, well... they were PRETTY. It just HAPPENED. =D =D
I kept a few for myself and I'm always getting compliments on them. =)
It's been a fantastic experience. I've learned so much about things that I'd never given a second thought to before. Some things work exactly the way I envisioned. Some things are nothing like what I imagined. It's opened up a world of understanding.
There are a lot of interesting people in the community as well. There are some wonderful and very talented, amazing artisans - Binary Soul, for instance, who makes chainmail jewellery and cool stuff. There are fantastically helpful folks who are willing to help a n00btard like me. There are ones, to whom you just want to say: you're in the business of selling stuff that people don't need, it behooves you to cut the attitude.
You see all kinds.
I thought photography would be my downfall because I'm a First Class Photography Idiot Extraordinaire™, but I have been complimented on my pics, so I guess they haven't turned out too badly. Those are all my own photos on the Cuteable.com feature and in the shop.
But no. Promoting or advertising (a.k.a pimping my wares) is my weakest point. I would have guessed this next after Photography =)
I'm a geek by nature and by profession, so I've never been one for marketing strategies. I buy the DVDs for TV shows specifically because I don't want to see commercials. I'm hardcore about blocking ads and spam - I redirect advertisement domains to 127.0.0.1 in my /etc/hosts and I run a tiny web server that serves me up a 1 pixel transparent image in the place of all the ad images.
Promoting my Etsy Shop has been a big struggle for me. I feel all ooky about it. I had to really try to get over myself and acknowledge that it has to be done.
And I tried to be very careful about it, only spamming places that allowed that kind of spamming, so to speak. =) Read all rules, follow instructions very carefully. I know how much I hate people promoting in places that they're not supposed to.
But when I got that sale, it felt so worth it!! =D =D =D
So, yeah... come check me out! =)
| weather | : | | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 11.8°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
I saw Christoffel Robertus double malt beer while I was wandering through the Liquor Store today. It's a Dutch beer. I didn't know anything about it, other than, it has a REALLY COOL flip-top. XD At $3.00 a bottle (330ml; a little over half a pint), it was a bit insane. Our local beers are usually just over $1.00 a bottle and are pretty good.
But the flip-top got me, so I got one to try. =)
Wow, that's a fantastic beer. =O
I don't drink often, so the $3.00 isn't so bad when you average it over time. There is also a Christoffel Blond, but I generally prefer dark beers. The only exception I can think of is a light, apricot beer that I had with lunch at a pub/restaurant near Pike Place Market in Seattle, WA. But that felt more like a fruity soda-like drink to me.
I actually didn't really like it, at first. See, this is strange. With regular alcoholic beers, if I like it, I will know and admit that I like it. And I'll have as much as I can handle. If I don't like it, I just won't have any more.
But this rye drink was like a weird addiction. For some bizarre reason, even though I consciously didn't like it, I kept reaching for another one, and another one. I'm not like this towards other alcoholic beers (thank goodness!).
* 黑麥汁 sounds like "black Chinese calligraphy ink" to me because in Cantonese, "墨" ("ink") and "麥" (general term for "wheat") are exactly homophonous. XD XD XD
| weather | : | | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 11.9°C |
| mood | : |  | gobsmacked |
I know I've been hearing about this happening for a year or more now. And I've also been watching it go down.
But still... it made me look... O_O
That, and I love that "gobsmacked" mood icon =D
| weather | : |  | partially cloudy |
| outside | : | | 18.4°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
If my guess is wrong, I'll get jumped on and usually that means I get the right answer in the process. =) In fact, the more ridiculously wrong I am, the faster I get a response XD To a point, of course. I try to make sure that my guess is a good one that's backed up by at least common sense and some Google-fu if I can manage it. It would be pretty easy to end up looking incompetent.
I'm taking advantage of peoples' innate urge to rectify and redress anything in their domain of knowledge that someone else has bungled, perhaps badly. =)
| weather | : | | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 17.9°C |
| mood | : |  | content |
I so wish this were my pen, but it's not. So, it's the next best thing; it's my desktop wallpaper. =)
I got it from here: Honey Bees maki-e artwork on a Mont Blanc fountain pen. Pip is tiny enough that cropping those pics and just setting it as wallpaper actually works out okay. It's not ideal, but it'll work. =)
I tried it on my Work machine with a much bigger display and it was unbearably humongous and fuzzy. I thought I was going to go blind.
| weather | : |  | sunny |
| outside | : | | 13.0°C |
| mood | : | | cheerful |
I generally don't like flowers. Usual bouquet flowers are nice to look at, but not my cuppa. I like interesting flowers. =)
- Strelitzia Reginae (Bird of Paradise flower). I saw these in Capetown, South Africa, when we went to Vivian and Stephen's wedding and met the M's for the first time =)
- Antirrhinum Majus (Snapdragons). It's cool that you can squeeze and let go of the body of the flower to make the petals open and close like the jaw of a dragon.
But what's even cooler than the snapdragons themselves, is their SEED PODS. =) They look like little skulls of the tortured souls of Jonathan Swift's Lilliputians who had dealt nothing but evil through ignorance in their corporeal lives. Creepy and nifty at the same time. =D
- Not "flowers" per se, but I like Dionaea Muscipula (Venus Flytrap) and Mimosa Pudica (Sensitive Plant). Because it says that plants do have a nervous system of some sort. They are living organisms, capable of movement and reaction just like animals.
- Other than that, probably the most "normal" flower I like is the Rhododendron (Azaleas). I love all types and all colours.
| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 4.6°C |
| mood | : |  | cheerful |
I got extra apartment keys cut on designer painted keys in the Canadian Flag design and small flowers on blue for the three of us. They're more expensive than regular keys, but not too bad. And we don't get keys cut often, so I thought this would be funky-cool. =)
We've signed the rental agreement, handed in our security deposit and I just got our parking contract signed today.
Oh well. The earlier, the better, for us. =)
Telus (phone company) is automatically switching our phone service over to the apartment sometime at noon on February 28. The house will be forwarded to someone's cell until we're completely moved in.
Shaw (cable/internet) will send someone out on March 3. They don't have our buzzer number, so they'll be calling one of us on our cells. The box/panel that they need is outside the door of one of our neighbours, so I hope that won't be too much of a problem.
We have to pack... we have to pack... We. HAVE. T0. Pack.
I think we'll just move over the stuff we want, then sell the big things we don't want, donate the smaller things that aren't worth selling and can't give away.
| weather | : | | light rain |
| outside | : |  | 4.6°C |
| mood | : | | cheerful |
Husband Guy and I have also wanted a pair of matching rings. Our wedding rings don't match. Not that they have to, but it's just kinda nice if they do.
For a few years now, I've been looking around for a pair of matching rings, for travel purposes. This way, I don't have to haul around a photocopy of the papers for the diamond so that Canada Customs doesn't hassle me for importing (I'm surprised that I didn't get questions about it coming back from South Africa). And, this way, I also wouldn't have to spend my vacations fretting about losing my ring =P A more plain wedding band would mean my clothes don't get shredded by the prongs and I won't have to worry as much about hurting 甜蜜蜜, my Ex-Co-Worker's baby girl, when I go over to play D&D with The Ex-Co-Worker Buddies and inevitably play with the baby. =)
But all the rings I saw were either expensive, too girly, too ugly, too blah or some combination of negativeness that I didn't want. I wanted something simple and elegant, so that the husband could wear it without looking too frilly. But I wanted it to be interesting and cool at the same time. All the simpler designs I saw that were appropriate for men were just blah and nothing on women.
It looks like this, except ours are entirely 18K white gold, not a combination yellow/white gold like the one in the picture. From far away, they look like plain wedding bands. It's not until you get closer that you see and understand them... just like the two of us. And up close, if you're not looking carefully, it kinda looks like The One Ring... which makes it all that much cooler =)
Our Om Mani Padme Hom rings are now consecrated and bound to us. They weren't expensive, they're tasteful, simple, elegant, yet very interesting and deeply meaningful to us.
Now we're trying to decide when to wear them. We were originally only wanting them as a travel set, but now we want to wear them regularly as well. But the rings we were originally married with are also special =]
| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 19°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
I was talking to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
marnanel about it the other evening.
There are different levels of "Friend" over on Vox. You can be "Family", a "Friend", or a "Neighbour". Y'know, for that added complexity of drama =) "WHUDDYU MEAN I'M JUST A NEIGHBOUR?!?! I SHOULD BE FAMILY!! one eleventy one..."
But it might all depend on what group of people find their way onto Vox first. If there's an established age group/culture/demographic, we might not have hatty little shits running around, at least not for the first little while.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I have journals and blogs and accounts almost everywhere just because of the curiosity factor, but I don't use any of them regularly. I just posted an introduction as an introduction for now. It's an exerpt from an English translation of Dream of the Red Chamber.
Since I started off with a literary exerpt, I thought maybe this could be the journal where I never actually explicitly say anything, but I'd post only literary exerpts to express whatever is on my mind. I could talk about what's bothering me completely in subtext. It would be like Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel. =)
Or not. I dunno.
Anyway, I have two Vox Invites. Anyone want one?
[Update]
2 Invites available. 1 Invite available.
[Update]
3 Invites available.
| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : | | 19°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
They just looked way too nifty to pass up. I picked one each of the Strawberry, Peach and Wild Berry for Jessica and Heather (two ladies at Work), both of whom smoke.
There was Vanilla, Rum, Cinnamon, Chocolate Mint and some other ones. I wanted to get the Chocolate one, but chocolate flavoured things can go both ways; they can be good, but they can also be really gross. I also imagine tobacco having a herbal-ish kind of taste... kinda like tea, so I thought fruits and berries would go well with it as a flavouring.
I KNOW I'M SUPPOSED TO BE ENCOURAGING THEM TO QUIT as opposed to making them smoke more, but these things sounded really cool.
See, this is the way I shop. I see cool/cute/nifty little things and I'll just buy one or two whether I need it or not. Then if I can't use it, I figure out who I can give it to. I don't do this as much anymore and it's smaller, less expensive stuff now. Ask the Husband, I used to be much worse. XD
Anyway, I don't smoke, myself, so I have no idea if these things are good or not. It's not like I could try it first. And I figured they've been smoking for so long that three extra sticks won't kill them.
Er... or would it?
I was curious as to the difference between a cigarette and a cigarillo, so I decided to look it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarillo:
"A cigarillo is a short, narrow cigar. Unlike cigarettes, however, cigarillos are wrapped not in paper but in whole-leaf tobacco. ... ... ... A cigarillo usually contains about 3 grams of tobacco (a cigarette contains less than 1 gram of tobacco [1]). Consequently, a cigarillo contains more nicotine than a cigarette."
Aaaagh... X{ *sigh* Yeah, here's me: I see "Strawberry Flavoured Such&Such" and I'm all over it. =\ I wrote to them giving them the heads-up and basically said, "um, so like, don't die, mkthxbye."
Heather's husband is into cigars, so she said she'll give them to him if she didn't like them =D
| weather | : |  | drizzling |
| outside | : | | 14.7°C |
| mood | : |  | ... |
Nest Architecture of the Florida Harvester Ant
They poured molten metal down the entrance to the abandoned nest — I would HOPE it was empty ... O_o — of the Florida harvester ant and dug it up.
Way way way cool pictures!! =)
| weather | : |  | sunny |
| outside | : | | 8.8°C |
| mood | : |  | amazed |
http://www.2loop.com/3drooms.html
http://www.2loop.com/3doutdoor.html
http://haha.nu/creative/perspective-art-a
I've put in the request with my Big Boss for one in our office. He said he'd think about it. I have the coolest Big Boss. =D
| weather | : | | sunny |
| outside | : | | 12.2°C |
| mood | : | | ... |
I did a double-take as I got closer and realized that the little boy looked exactly like me (pic) when I was his age. Well, I don't actually know that it was a little boy. I was constantly mistaken for a boy before I started school. =) But the resemblance was amazing and uncanny.
Weird spooky feeling — check.
Like I'm looking into a mirror — check.
Dizzying time-warp feeling — check.
Dream-like state — check.
I didn't stop to chat or anything. I've changed a lot and they probably would have thought I was a loony bin escapee or something.
Quiet, you. XD
| weather | : |  | cloudy |
| outside | : |  | 15.0°C |
| mood | : | | giddy |
We finally opened that box in July and took pictures. They're in the Wasp Hive Gallery.
The hive was all over the box flaps and wedged in between the stuff inside. It was wrapped around the handle of a bottle of Windex.
It felt like it was made out of coarse, but delicate tissue paper. Delicate enough that I though it would melt from the heat of my hands. The chambers are made in haphazard circular blobs that are built up in layers, far from the perfect hexagonal honeycomb pattern that we most popularly associate with beehives. It was cool to see the layers of white to brown and all the different shades in between.
We didn't slice it open to look at a cross-section.
They were going to throw it away, but I thought it would be nice to give it to one of the local elementary schools so that the kids could see it. We haven't had the time to deliver it to the school yet. They're only open between 9am - 3pm. I'd either have to take time off to do it or get my Mother-In-Law to.
[Update]
So, now that I Googled for pictures, this is probably a wasp hive. I just saw yellow and black striped things, so I called that "a bee", but I don't know my insects without Google =} That might make more sense, but it's funnier to think that the bees were just baked or high on crystal meth. Hey, this IS Vancouver, there could be a grow op or lab in a neighbourhood near you.
I'm also imagining this stupid conversation:
Drones: *chewchewchew* *spit* *buildbuildbuild*
One drone, the big one named "Moose" [to the others]: "Duh, hey guys? Aren't we supposed to be doing hexagons?"
Queen: "SCREW the hexagons! Winter is coming! Hurry UP!"
XD XD
| weather | : |  | snowfall warning |
| outside | : | | 1°C |
| mood | : |  | loopy/excited |
I would expect a brand new German violin to be about (USD)$200/(CAD)$250-300 (possibly more) and that one doesn't look brand new. For those who may not know, stringed instruments should generally appreciate in value as it gets used because playing it will condition the wood and make it sound better over time. All other things being equal, the preference should _always_ be to take the used one over a brand new one. That particular eBay violin is a good value for $100... even if they took a brand new one, threw it down a flight of stairs, worked it back into a playable condition and called it "antique". It's just not a real Strad.
But I immediately thought of Mark Simonson when I looked at the label in the ( f-hole shots. )
So I wrote to him asking about it. =) If you don't know who Mark Simonson is, well... *remove glove* *slap you across the face with it*. You need to read this — Typecasting: The Use (and Misuse) of Period Typography in Movies. The SHEER NIFTINESS of that just blows me away. =)
Antonio Stradivari lived from 1644-1737, which IS after the invention of the metal type printing press. I WAS smart enough to try that first XD I was thinking the printed label looked way too "neat" to be from that time period. I would have expected older printing presses to be messier and more higgledy-piggledy.
Anyway, he wrote back to me saying:
I don't know about the violin, but the label is definitely
a more recent vintage. The face used is Halbfette Lateinisch
(Latin Bold) produced by H. Berthold in Germany starting
around 1903. In the number "1735" on the label, the 3 and
5 have been written in. It seems a bit odd to me that "Made
in Germany" is in English, but I don't know if it actually is odd
for such things. The label does appear to have been printed
with metal type at any rate, but no earlier than about 1903.
... and I have his permission to post that.
The part about the font was what I wanted to hear =) I think that's so so so cool.
And, of course, it says "Made in Germany" in English (it doesn't say "Deutschland"). After 1891, the United States required all imports to bear a "Made in" designation.
There's a lot of information scattered around the internet about the real instruments that are known to sell for millions. All of them left are accounted for. The fact is, almost all violins today are modelled after The Master's instruments to begin with. Those labels were really meant to indicate which Strad the violin was MODELLED AFTER and not to indicate that it ACTUALLY IS. I guess profiteers capitalize on this kind of misunderstanding... who knew, eh?
Pointing And Laughing At The Bad Latin In The Labels™ seems to also be a favorite pastime with the Strings crowd as well. =)
Syndicate
