Blogger Blather

I recently had a free afternoon so I decided to work on something creative. I pulled out every scrap of paper I had with an in-progress idea on it.  I dabble in a lot of different things so the selection of work included:

• 2 feature length screenplays
• 2 short screenplays
• 2 novels  
• 3 ideas for (other) novels
• 2 short stories
• 2 humorous essays
• and several haikus that I want to turn into folk art

Whoa, look at me!   I’m so prolific, right!?

Wrong.

Remember, these are all works in progress — none are finished.  And I don’t know if any of them ever will be.

I spent that whole afternoon working on a new essay — it was just supposed to be a one or two page piece — and I couldn’t even write a first draft.

I’m discouraged, but I still think I’m going to get my creative writing groove back.

Until then, I guess I’ll just keep making arts & crap to satisfy my need to create something.  So, who wants a wire and bead bookmark or bottle cap magnet?

This week I discovered Clairol’s “Try it on studio.”  It’s an online application that let’s you “try on” different hairstyles and hair colors.  I amused myself for hours with this thing.  The hairstyles they offer are really lame, but that’s what makes it gold as far as entertainment goes.

I started with a photo I took of myself at 7am with no makeup.  Then I tried on every hairstyle (including the men’s styles) at least three times.  (It doesn’t take much to amuse me these days.)

Check out some of the highlights below.  I’ve included a number next to each so you can vote on which one you like the best.   The pics show my hair going from short, to medium, to long, to “up do” — or should I say butch, to mom, to age inappropriate, to prom.  Does anyone see a winner in this bunch?

I think my favorite is the mullet I’m sporting in #31.

.

In my last post when I said, “I miss living in a big city,” I wasn’t referring to missing the crime.  But somehow the karma gods heard me and I’ve had two police-related events happen in the last few days.

Friday afternoon, while I was in Houston,  my burglar alarm went off.  The alarm company called my cell phone and I let them know I was out of town and asked them to call the police.  Then, I called my friend, Tom, who was cat sitting for me.  I was hoping he had set the alarm off accidentally, but he was on his way to visit a friend and no where near my place.  So, I called my sister, Sharon, and asked her to meet the cops in case my house needed to be secured.  Sharon and her friend, Louie, race over to my house and discovered… nothing.  Not only was everything fine, but 40 minutes after they had been called the cops still hadn’t shown up.  I had the alarm company cancel the squad car and also asked them to come out to check that the system was functioning properly.

On Monday morning a guy from Custom Security showed up.  The diagnosis seemed to be that there was a power surge (my air conditioning was affected too) and that caused the alarm to malfunction.  So, okay, everything seemed to be all right.

Then Tuesday morning I leave my house around 7:40am to make an 8:00am meeting and what do I see?  My mailbox has been bashed in.  As I drive down the street I notice there are about 5 mailboxes in a row that have been vandalized.  Lovely.  Of course, mine was the worst.  The door won’t close and the flag won’t go up.  We’re having a ton of rain from Hurricane Dolly and all my mail is sitting in a shallow pool of water.

When I got back from my meeting I called the police to report the vandalism.  From living in Atlanta I know that you have to do this (no matter how small the crime) so that the incident is logged — this helps your area get the right distribution of patrols and officers.

Guess how long it took them to respond to a bashed in mailbox?  10 minutes.

I know there are many factors that go into how soon the police respond to a call, but I was pretty surprised that the vandalism of my mailbox was responded to so quickly and a potential burglary in progress was never responded to.

Regardless, the cop who wrote-up the report on my mailbox was pretty cool.  He patrols the area and I got his card, so next time I’m out of town maybe I’ll give him a call…

Meet Huey P. Long Hooper – my housemate over the weekend.

For anyone planning a trip to Houston, I recommend checking out the city’s new “Discovery Green” and dining at the park’s signature restaurant, The Grove.  In other dining recommendations, the made fresh at your table guacamole at Escalante’s is very tasty.

My non-eating related Houston activities included window shopping, cruising the ritzy neighborhoods to gawk at the huge houses, and getting a much-needed manicure.

I miss living in a big city.

I’m heading to Houston this weekend for a little vacation with my friend, Elizabeth.  The last time I was in Houston was for her wedding 3 years ago.  My time there centered around her nuptials, so I didn’t do anything touristy.  The last time I was in Houston as a tourist was about 15 years ago and all I can remember about the trip was driving by the beer can house.

Anyone have a suggestion for what I should put on my to-do list for Houston?

I want to check out Chloe Dao’s shop, Lot 8, but other than that I can’t think of anything.  That’s actually pretty sad that the only thing I want to do is visit the store belonging to the season 2 winner of Project Runway.

Tom has been getting bagfuls of bottle caps from a friend who works at a bar.  His goal is to make some type of intricate wall art with them.  I am also interested in working with bottle caps, but have simpler goals –  I just want to make some magnets.  So he graciously parted with several bagfuls of Budweiser bottle caps and gave them to me a few weeks ago; but, I’ve been procrastinating on actually doing anything with them.

Yesterday I finally got around to trying out a new craft.  Check out the fridge magnets I made:

The Hello Kitty collection is for my niece, Whitney, and the religious icons and misc. stuff are for Hollis.

I got the idea for the bottle cap magnets from a craft booth at the downtown Arts Market.  I bought one to use as a sample, and also typed “bottle cap magnets” in Google Images and got back tons of images to use as samples.  In fact, I discovered a flickr group for Bottle Cap artists called “Bottle Cap Creations” — check them out here.

Over the weekend I placed an order at Amazon.com’s grocery store.   Food items sometimes show up in Amazon’s search results, but it didn’t really register with me that the site had a full grocery store online.

You should check it out here. I was amazed at all the canned and packaged foods they have in-stock.  Plus, it’s free shipping and no sales tax.  You have to order items in bulk, which I’m not generally a fan of, but I didn’t mind since I was able to order a bunch of vegetarian food I can’t find in Baton Rouge.

Not sure where I’m going to store 24 cans of faux meat, though.  Mushed soy must have a super-long shelf life, don’t you think?

Don’t you all want to come over for dinner now?!

Louisiana is a class act.  I was just catching up on my newspaper reading and came across this gem in “Hints from Heloise” – a column of money-saving tips.

Hints from Heloise
printed Monday, June 30, 2008 in The Baton Rouge Advocate

Dear Heloise: Here’s a neat idea I use for organizing jewelry.  An 18-compartment plastic foam egg carton with the top cut off is perfect for storing jewelry.   Place a cotton ball or pad inside each compartment.  Place a pair of earrings in each compartment.  – Velma Lastrapes, Opelousas, LA.

Way to represent, Velma!  Thanks for making the residents of Louisiana look like a bunch of poor hillbillies who can’t afford a jewelry box.  (Or a lovely iron tree – see earlier blog post.)

I seem to be buying a lot of retail display looking items for my home.  Maybe this is my way of owning a little store without actually opening one.  Here are two cool things I recently purchased.

A greeting card carousel:

And an iron tree to display handmade jewelry, ornaments, basically anything that shows best when hanging: