Two New Demos for Dad's Website

I don't know if the people who bookmark Dad's website pay this much attention but we always do new demos at Thanksgiving. And this Thanksgiving was no exception. I did a little card weaving for the first time EVER...and we filmed it. Heh...weaving it isn't the trick though. Stringing it is. But the fun for the demos is the weaving--seeing the tool in action, you understand. We also went to an assisted living center to listen to Dad's neighbor, Jack the engineer, play in a Bluegrass band. I striped off the music for the card demo. So it's our first demo with music:

Card Weaving on The Roller Beam Loom @ Yahoo! Video

For the second one, Mandy and Beth need a bunch of straps for some bags they are making done. Dad and I brought another Nakadai to her place and I started a pattern Mandy has never done before on it. I made the demo super quick like, so that she could finish the project on her own.

It's another silent one and the pattern is pretty easy but turns out rather cool and strappy:

A Pattern Demo for the Takadai @ Yahoo! Video

So...what do you think?

Etsy

Well, I'm an internet seller consultant here in Pomeroy, WA. I just helped Anna, one of Dad's Neighbors, make an Esty Shop. See:



I made the banner for her (above), and walked her through posting items. The first two mini-boxes we did together.

If you feel so inclined, send Anna some feedback, okay?

Neck Less Army

Everyone, who is not a spelling genius, has a word that—no matter what—they always need the spell checker to get right. At least I hopes so. For me that word is necessary. Hmm…that’s a bit confusing way to put it. I know…quotes. For me that word is “Necessary”. I can’t begin to fathom all the ways I’ve misspelled that word and I swear I never get past it without that red zigzag line showing up under it. So I am determined to banish that word from my spelling handicap. It is nessissary..er…crucial to do!
But how to do it…nine letters…three squared. I could play the license game with it. We used to do this…WA state plates are three numbers and three letters and as we’re driving, Mandy and I would come up with words that use all three letters in order (they can be divided by other letters but not rearranged). For example, my license plate has SSR on it—therefore necessary would actually be a winning word for it. So since my word has nine letters that can be three license plates: NEC – ESS – ARY
That’s easy. NEC just needs a K to be ‘NECK’. ESS also just needs one letter to become ‘LESS’ and if you add an M to ARY, you’d get ARMY (Mary is a proper noun). So to spell NECESSARY you’d just think “Neck Less Army” and remember to drop the K, L, and M.
Hmm…kinda tricky. I think it’s neseccary…er…essential to try something else. Jimmy Cricket taught me to spell encyclopedia by singing it. Nine letters would necessessitate...er…call for a three note song. Not a lot of those out there that ends after three measures. I thought “Three Blind Mice” immediately but only 9 note sort of leaves you hanging: En-Ee-See, Ee-Es-Es, Aa-Ar-Why…Why am I caught up here on a high note…where’s the rest of the song? A longer word is nesscary…er…needed.
NEC-ESS-ARI-LY is 2 more with is eleven and a prime number…divisible by one and itself. Yuck! NEC-ESS-ITA-TED has four bars of three beats…easier. Still…not much further in the song. Alas! We’re losing focus here.
Another method is necceccary…er…required
Could always go with the old stand-by: the super long acronym. Just gotta come up with a title or better yet a sentence that starts with the letters of NECESSARY. N could be nice. That’s nice…lot’s of them use nice. Adjective. Very flexible. E followed by C…well I love cats so I know I want to use Cats for C so that means I need another adjective for E….hmm…Excited? Yes, cats can be excited…maybe…if they’re toying with their food before eating it. E equals eat. You should see Eve with a spider. Wait…I need an S! Spider! Two SS…silly spider? Not bad…okay. ARY…already got subject, verb and object…if I go with And for A I could add another object R Y…what’s some cat food that begins with Y? Difficult. I can think of an animal…a yak…Sesame Street Standby for Y limericks. But cats don’t eat Yaks…unless they were really small and we’re talking about a big cat like a lion. Small…R…Runty! Runty Yaks…but why would a lion bother with Silly Spiders.
Oh well…better not think too hard on it.
So we have: “Nice Excited Cats Eat Silly Spiders and Runty Yaks”.
Whoa…now that’s really REALLY dumb.
One begins to wonder if all this is neccessary…er…obligatory. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to spell it without the nesescary..er…indispensable spell check? Well…could always write it over and over again.
But if I’m going to do that, might as well not waste it. I should blog it! Yeah! What a good idea! Let’s try that…(continued at the top of page)

Faux Glass

My latest polymathic pursuit is making faux stain glass using Deco Art's Liquid Rainbow. How did I get started on this? Well I was wandering through the paint section of the Joann's and I saw this blank plastic sheet. I wondered what it was for. It didn't take much looking to find an instruction book explaining that this plastic sheet was for paint which would dry into a window cling. It starts with Leading Paint:

You wait a couple of hours for it to dry then you fill in with the color paint. It's cloudy to start and looks like this:

But it dries to a surface that mimics stained glass. The colors take a lot longer to dry and they'll tear if it's not thick enough so I often add another layer if I can. You then slowly peal it off the clear plastic and it's ready to go up on a window like this:

And Ta-Da! Elly has a new fad hobby which should keep her happy until Christmas at least.

Mom's Trip to the ER

Mom had muscle pains in the muscles attached to the top of her rib cage and collar bones. They were sharp piercing pains which were worse when she breathed in and out. They could be controlled by pain killers and moving slower. She’d been moving boxes from one storage stall to the other for the past two days and she’s more than a little stressed. They persisted for a few days so she was worried. Finally, she called the 800 Nurse on the back of her insurance card and asked what to do.
She heard: ‘chest pains’ out of that whole description, but she said it didn’t sound like a heart attack. However if someone has chest pains you send them to the hospital period, end of story. If you don’t and it is a heart attack, then you get sued big time. “Just in case,” she told Mom.
So we went down to the emergency room in Auburn.
In triage they heard ‘chest pains’ and also ‘good insurance’ but still we waited for 1.5 hours to get in to see a doctor. There was a long line, you see, and lots of ambulances coming and going which you couldn’t see from where we were.
The doctor said, “It doesn’t sound like anything more than pulled muscles, all the evidence suggests I should just give you pain medications and send you home, but this is the emergency room and here we must handle ‘chest pains’ by thoroughly checking that it is not your heart. So I will give you a blood test, an electrocardiogram, and a CT Scan before I release you.”
So we read our books for an hour then they came by and took her for one of the above. He came back and said “All clear on that one. Here have some morphine for the pain.”
So we read our books for an hour then they came by and took her for another one of the above. He came back and said “All clear on that one.”
So we read our books for an hour then they came by and took her for the last one of the above. He came back and said “All clear on that one. You can go home.”
It was now 2:15 am in the morning. We’d arrived at 6:45pm.
The next day Mom went to her primary care doctor who said, “Yep, muscle pain and stress. FYI that machine of yours you are walking around in has been running for over 60 years—go easy on it. No lifting. That’s what young people are for.”
Memo to Dr. Turner from this machine I’m walking around in: “Thanks a lot! Ouch!”
So let’s look back on this experience…they say:

Single payer will mean long lines

• long lines now, check

Single Payer will mean tons of bureaucracy

• Triage—scanned insurance card
• Second Triage—signed some papers
• While lying in room—paid $75 co-pay for emergency room visits
• Tons of just-in-case policy-says tests—there until 2:30am
• Need I say more?

Government will mess it up

• Someone with chest pains waits for 1.5 hours to be seen, I think we’re doing a fine job of messing it up already.

My Bucket List

No, I don’t have terminal cancer like in the movie, but Mom encouraged me to do this the other day because, right now, I’m feeling adrift in the waters of life. It’s time to get my boat pointed in a direction and go.
The nice thing about a healthy person’s bucket list I find is that they can be filled with single experiences like the movie as well as life-long goals.
Without further ado, here are the things I’d like to do before I kick the bucket:
1. Own someplace to make and perform with puppets
2. Pass the Level 3 Japanese proficiency test
3. Go to an international puppetry festival
4. See the Great Wall of China
5. Visit Australia
6. Write a novel
7. Make a self-published book online
8. Build a Punch and Judy set of puppets
9. Enter a puppetry competition for an award
10. Go back to Japan
11. Visit Outer Space (why not?)
12. Find & Frequent my own Harmonia Gardens or Cheers bar
13. Make a Victorian Costume
14. Go on a Kayak overnight trip
15. Perform in another Shakespearian Play
16. Make a YouTube Web Show
17. Live in a really big city for a while

Ms. Leaverton goes to 915 2nd Ave. Rm 2988 Seattle

These Organizing for America emails I’ve been getting lately really sort of pull you into the notion that you matter in this whole thing, don’t they? I’m just one person…just one voter…but if I call my senator or send her an email or post to her Facebook page or visit her office, I could make a difference in how she votes. What are my odds, huh? Sort of like playing the lottery…accept there’s some skill and effort involved. What skill? Well, I think to be heard you’d better have something unique to say and be able to say it with style. Then add a little luck…that what you wrote or said has enough style to catch the eye or appeal to one of her staff. That staff person might then have the power to bring it to the attention of another staff person a little closer to Her Senatorialness who can show it to her. And if what you said has true impact and sound-byte quality perhaps she might remember it…use it in a speech if it jives with how she wants to vote. If it doesn’t jive, well it won’t make it past the first staff person, let alone influence her vote.
These are the things you tell yourself when you get those emails. It’s the way you justify sweeping it into your trash folder. But sooner or later, they’ll get to you. You see, we all want to believe that our opinion matters. So if someone keeps telling us it does enough times…we might be tempted to go forth and take some sort of action—as I did when the Chief (hale to him) asked me (and a million others) to visit my Senator’s office.
I had one more road block to overcome…that being the classic “Who has the time to go all the way over to their senator’s office?” especially in Seattle, where going anywhere is a chore, I mean…how dare they ask me to take some of my valuable time and go…how far? I don’t know. Better google it…um…let’s see, a click here and a link there and…TWO WHOLE BLOCKS! So much for that road block. *grumble grumble* All right, all right all ready! I’ll go. So today, on my way to get my mail from the UPS store, I detoured to the office of Senator Patty Murray.
There’s a metal detector you’ve got to go through…yep…show some ID. Then you gotta ride the world’s fastest elevator (be sure to pop your ears) up to the 29th floor (not quite the highest room in the tallest tower but still)! And then there you are, facing two lovely receptionists…who have by this time collected quite a stack of fliers Organizing for America asked you to fill out and bring with you. With a little prompting & some friendly banter, you can get them to tell you all about the other yahoos that Organizing for America sent in. They’ll even show you the stack of fliers. Some people signed up on the website thinking that they would get a meeting with the Senator…walked right in and announced “I have an appointment.” Some expected to meet with a staff person! At this, I had to ask the young lady who she thought she was if not a staff person of Senator Murray? She smiled and said the others wanted to talk to a Senatorial Staff Person (with a capital SS&P). I told her that once again, I was pretty sure she counted for that too.
I then asked the question that all probably do at some point, “Does it matter more that I showed up at the office with this flier filled out and handed it in in-person than if I say…mailed it or called it or emailed it in?”
She smiled again and replied, “Oh yes, I’ll tell Senator Murray that every one of these fliers was brought in. She’ll enjoy reading them.”
See? I knew I was talking to the right person. Who wants to talk to some inflated ego SSP? They’d bungle the job no doubt, they have no paper skills and they’re busy writing clever speeches on their High-Powered Laptops anyhow. It’s the front desk lady you want. She’s the master of paper…and she’s the one the Senator smiles and greets every single morning she’s in town because she’s the only guaranteed one to have a desk that the Senator has to walk by to get to her own. She’s the gatekeeper for the masses. Diss on her to your own detriment—this woman is the true conduit to power for the little people. She’s really nice to you too, if you are really nice to her. I even found out that her mom’s an engineer too.