Little Odd Me

Not even out of my work clothes yet. I guess I should, I have a tendency to spill things on myself, and I have to work one more day in these clothes yet.

Done. Aaaaaaaaaah.

It's a loooong work day. I got off half an hour early today, and arrived home ten minutes short of twelve hours after I walked out the door this morning. I got to do Lead today, a bit more of a supervisory role. It was fine, I had someone to tag along after and show me the ropes. Not nearly as fun as spending the whole day with the animals.

I got to hang out a little with the seal and sealions at lunchtime, though. Got a couple of fun photos. Now if I only had the energy to do something with them and get them posted. I just had to post this photo I took today of of two females and one male cockatiel though. This one's for you, LaidOutInLavender! *giggles*

 

 

Ok, here are a couple of shots from lunchtime.  Stellar Sea Lion noses! hee!

 

 

 

Anyhow, that's about all for now. My top priority is study at the moment. Study my notes, study my presentations that I have written up. Get them typed up and onto cards to make it all easier for me to do a presentation. I'll probably do that whenever I wake up in the middle of the night tonight.

I don't think I've ever actually woken up excited to go to work before. Until today.

Last night I was pretty tired and went to bed early. Weeks ago I had made a promise to help a fellow Etsy CT Team member help put up her canopy at a fair. It was just over half an hour from home, and I must admit I was groaning a fair bit yesterday morning at the prospect of going... especially since the fair people had generously offered me my own space there, so I was staying all day, but the weather looked abysmal. I knew it was going to be a bit of a miserable day.

It was. A bit. It was cold, but managed to not rain! Cathleen McLain, who I was helping out with setup, was an absolute joy to spend the day with. Again, I wish she lived closer so we could spend more time together. Her jewelry is utterly incredible. Incredible, INCREDIBLE!!! Seriously, go and have a look at it. It's just amazing, and so well made. She's got wonderful necklaces with pendants that detach and become brooches. I loved those! Almost made me want to wear jewelry again. With Cathleen's company, the day was a joy and went really fast. I had about thirty people come by my photography despite the cold, and made enough sales to make the day worthwhile. I got some great feedback on my selling technique too.

I have wondered if after a while I might be bored with my new  job. After all, I'll be telling the same people about the same animals over and over. At the fair yesterday, I realized I do that with my photos all the time. I never ever tire of engaging people to be excited about nature. It's so wonderful.

So, after going to bed early, I was up at four am all excited. I went back to bed after a little while. I feel a little tired, but the rain outside is contributing to that.

Well, I had better get going. I am in my khakis with my work boots on. If I don't see y'all again it's probably because I have moved in to live with the beluga whales, and I'm pretty sure they don't have internet! :P 

 

We have so many cats around this place. At least six that I have seen, three that come around regularly. One comes and sits at the back door and begs for food. She will come in, but hates setting foot on the carpet. I was almost tempted to adopt her, I am pretty sure she's pregnant, and she was so dirty I thought she must be a stray. Last night she came over sparkly clean and smelling of shampoo and got no food from me. Poor thing. Another cat sits sentry duty on the compost heap. He can be seduced to the back door with a spoonful of tuna, but won't let me come near  him otherwise. Today my Love alerted me to the fact that this cat was trotting across the lawn with a snake in his mouth. Of course I grabbed my camera and walked carefully towards him, he dropped the snake on the lawn and took off.

The snake was pretty quiet at first. Traumatized. So I had a bit of time to work on getting shots. This is one of the last ones. He's starting to get alert, warmed up in the sun, and he's ready to get away from this big black shiny thing sticking right in his face. He started flicking his tongue rapidly, but unfortunately just as I was changing my camera settings for rapid shooting to try and catch it, he suddenly darted away from me and into the forsythia.

Isn't he gorgeous??? :D

Dagnabit, my create page is frozen half way through an entry. I think I have to accept that it is lost. Of course I can't cut and paste it (can't see any text right now) so I think I have to start this long winded entry again. I hate that.

I woke up with the dawn this morning. Just as my Love was going to bed. He can't work on rainy days, so he knew he would have a holiday today. I went back for a bit of a cuddle until he fell asleep, and woke up just before the alarm -  got dressed in my job interview clothes, met my new boss (job #2) to get some paperwork for the job. Came home and finished getting ready for my job interview today (job #3).

I feel like I have had a lazy time of it lately (hence the 0 mph of the title) but when I look at it, I have done a ton this month: applied for a lot of jobs, interviewed for three, moved 2000 miles and set up house in a new place, learned my way around a new state, prepared and sold photographs at a sale, turned an overgrown bamboo patch into a garden, got a chicken coop partly ready for some chooks,

I left home with an hour and forty minutes to spare, got lost briefly, arrived twenty five minutes early for my interview at the aquarium. The salt air of the ocean and the brief glimpse of the Atlantic I got while crossing the Thames made my heart sing. I lovelovelove the sea!

The interview went wonderfully. I loved the staff, and they loved me. Only two things bothered me. The pay was several dollars less an hour than I had it in my head that it was (and the ad is gone off of their website, so I can't verify it) and "part time" equals three or four full days a week. I was allowed to choose to only do three, but that means three full days and three half days of work every week. I came home deciding that I didn't think I could do it. At current gas prices and using our jeep I would pay my first two hours of work for gas. Combined with travel time, my day would be an eleven hour working day. I started thinking about volunteering instead, and combining it with job #2 - get Patty an internship there and supervise her.

Then I got home and downloaded my photos. And I felt again that feeling I have when I stand outside that Beluga whale enclosure. Home. Heaven. Just... wow. Look at the whale. Ohmy. I think I must have been a Beluga in a past life.

 Still, I wrote an entire vox entry when I got home about how I felt torn,  but it just wasn't practical to do this job. I never finished the entry. It was finished, but somehow I felt terribly tired when it came to the end, and never pressed send. I went and laid down on the bed and had a nap. I woke up dreaming about the job, and in my dream I was enjoying it so much!

 

Then the phone rang. It was Chris from the aquarium. They loved me. They are willing to work around my other work needs. At this point I still have to do three days a week, but after a month or so I can perhaps ask to switch to being on call for up to two days a week instead. I actually like the lottery of being on call.

 

My Love is very happy about all of this. He's already looking for another car for me to drive down there. That will cut the gas a lot from the jeep. It also means we don't have to juggle car usage for our respective jobs anymore. Good! 

So - I start on Sunday. My other job might start next week also, but more likely it will be a week later. I am so glad I really got in and got things done around here. Life is about to start really moving!

I can't pass up this opportunity. Chances sometimes only come around once in life.

Carpe carp-um, I say: sieze the fish!!!

... would be no fun with an explanation.

 

One of my fondest memories of childhood was the birthday cakes my mother used to make for me.One year she made an igloo cake with marshmellows as all the individual ice blocks of the igloo, and a little penguin sitting out the front. I loved it so much. It was always exciting to see what she would be coming up with every year.

Yesterday I made a chocolate vanilla marbled cake in a raccoon design.

I think birthday cakes are meant to have pretty pastel colors for their frosting, right? Still, our birthday gal ate the whole nose section, so I think it still went down just fine. Even with black frosting. lol.

The trees are still mostly bare, but the lawn and flowers and bushes are going crazy here. The trees have lots of little nubbins that seem to teeter on the brink of exploding into leaves, so I suspect it isn't going to be long. It's so not what I am used to.

I got my next garden bed up and going yesterday. Lettuce and red cabbage. I don't know how I am going to manage the bamboo. I dig up as much as I can, but still there is already a shoot poking through in my peas. I guess the best I can do is to put some roundup on it with a paint brush and hope for the best. I did a really thorough job with that garden bed, this garden is going to take forever if I keep on going at this rate. I was going to put carrots in in a third bed yesterday afternoon, but I discovered a huge rock slab right under that garden bed, so this morning my aim is to dig the next garden bed instead for the carrots and hope I dig off of the edge of this bit of rock (it's over two feet across so far, and about eight inches deep). If I don't, I guess building up the garden bed will do.

Monday I had an enormously productive day on my webpage. I now have two of the smaller pages left to do. I was bent on getting them done yesterday, but I didn't get anything done, really. I don't know how that happens. I really hate writing this webpage text stuff. I am going to try to be disciplined about it today and get it up this evening.

First, though, I am off to check that nothing ate my seedlings last night and then off to get some chicken wire so that nothing can eat them. Then off to the grocery store - we have a birthday party for three to run tonight. :D

Since I haven't posted pictures in a while, here are some for you. The first is a mouse we caught in a have-a-heart trap yesterday. I took him down across the river and released him.

 

 

The second is a leaf on the bottom of the stream, with reflections of sky and the dark bands of trees allowing me to see through to the bottom of the water:

I'm not managing to keep up with reading other people right now, please forgive me. I still care about my neighborhood, I just need to focus on my own stuff for a bit. I will try to catch up with one person at a time, probably.

I had what could be called a lousy day yesterday at the sidewalk sale. Only nine people came around to actually look at my photography. I won't call it a lousy day, though, because seven out of those nine people bought, and three of them bought reasonably big! So I came home with some $$ despite the poor turnout! I shelled out $ for gas to my carpooling buddy (we actually drove two hours to get to this place) and split the rest evenly between funds-for-furthering-business and my BUY-MY-dSLR fund!!!

The day was also great for getting to meet some of my fellow Etsy street-team members! I got to carpool with Kaboogie, who makes the most amazing baby shoes. I also got to meet Goose on the Loose! - and see her knitting jewellery - I always wondered how that was done. It was fascinating. I think I have some photos somewhere, but I am just feeling a bit too busy to process them today. I'm really sad Jen (goose) lives so far away. :(

I also got to meet fenrislorsrai - who generously provided me with the opportunity to be there. I got some great panorama shots of the inside of her used bookstore as well - but they are also going to have to wait until this webpage is done. Best of all I got to meet Bill from Redding Roasters. He does great coffee, but he also has this awesome printer!!! I would much rather print locally, though he's over the other side of the state, so I am still probably going to have to rely on having printed stuff posted. I think I already mentioned that the prints I got from PF&C weren't much good. Well that's not true, about half of them were fantastic, and the other half were mediocre. Funnily enough, I sold more of the ones I consider mediocre yesterday than the ones I thought were great! Still, I may not print with them again, or I might just print my black and whites.

I'm finally feeling motivated to work on my website, so I am doing that this afternoon. I have the aim of having three pages finished the way I want them today. I'll try and do the rest tomorrow.  

Anyhow, taking my nose back to the grindstone now.

This (standard post card background with address space and postage space, as well as my information):

Or this? (just my information, leaving the back of the post card mostly blank for whatever purpose):

I am putting in my print order today for post cards. I have my first sidewalk sale coming up in eight days. It's a new print company for me, I am hoping that everything goes well. I can't find any bad reviews of them online, though. I'll let you know when I receive the product.

In case anyone is wondering - this is the two alternative fronts of this particular card. I am going to print some of both (with the quote and without). I need to put my order in in a few hours, so any opinions are especially welcome before then.

 

This (standard post card background with address space and postage space, as well as my information):

Or this? (just my information, leaving the back of the post card mostly blank for whatever purpose):

I am putting in my print order today for post cards. I have my first sidewalk sale coming up in eight days. It's a new print company for me, I am hoping that everything goes well. I can't find any bad reviews of them online, though. I'll let you know when I receive the product.

In case anyone is wondering - this is the two alternative fronts of this particular card. I am going to print some of both (with the quote and without). I need to put my order in in a few hours, so any opinions are especially welcome before then.