Sailing the Vivid Sea

Every time one of my items is featured in an Etsy treasury, it's a thrill and a compliment and a pat on the back all wrapped up in one. And when someone features my artwork in their blog, it's even more exciting. Lynne Davies of the Etsy shop skully and the blog Autonomous Artisans has featured my map of the Vivid Sea in a wonderful story in her post "Sailing the Seven Seas" with a bunch of other really fun piratey treasures, including the dangerously sweet Thomas Tillerman and a dress that I love (I already have the stein to go with it, you see...). Check it out!

On Elationism, Fogginess and Rainbows

Thank you all for the lovely birthday wishes! And what a place to spend a birthday. And it was a good and busy trip, if a bit tempered by under-the-weatherness. We swam with dolphins (I have always wanted to do that), hiked up Diamondhead Crater, learned about Polynesia, got a lot of sand in our shoes and chased rainbows.

Chasing rainbows is a lot of fun, especially when you don't realize that's what you're doing at first, but just start pointing and laughing and turning corners, going this way and that.

I am back now, about halfway through my second cold in three weeks. And this isn't the same old warmed-up leftovers of a cold, the one I dropped off in the Pacific Ocean somewhere. It's a brand-new shiny fresh cold. Did you know that was possible? Neither did I. My head feels like it weighs 400 pounds, my oxygen intake has been halved and my brain is fogged by cold medicine. Add substantial jet lag on top of that, and I really am able to process only about half of what is said to me and a quarter of what is happening around me. I hope you'll understand if I'm a bit quiet for the next few days.

In the meantime, I will try my hand at being an elationist and believing that "behind every calamity lies possibility"... (Via SARK's eLetter, which you can view here) I wouldn't say that a bad cold is a calamity, exactly, but it has sort of forced me to put all unnecessary activities on hold, leaving plenty of time to ponder possibilities while drinking hot chocolate.

Sweetness, Indeed.

The first time I had an Etsy order from someone I didn't know, I thought it was a mistake. Actually, what I thought was that someone had used MY Etsy and PayPal accounts to purchase something from someone else. (It seems so silly now, but at first glance, that's what I thought.) I was floored. And then, after reading the e-mails over and over again, and figuring out what had happened, I was still floored. Only much, much happier than I had been ten minutes earlier.

That customer, April Meeker, who sells her own wares on Etsy as secondsister, commissioned a second painting almost immediately after purchasing the first one, thereby doing wonders for my self esteem and my hope for my future as an artist.

And she has done that again by featuring my artwork this week on her blog, secondsister suaviloquy. (Suaviloquy is the coolest word, isn't it?) Many thanks, April. It's an honor.

Aloha, Or How I Spent My Birthday Morning

Good Stuff

A little bit of this:


Followed by a little bit of this:


That's right, folks, I'm hitting the road again. Except this time, I'm flying.

It's hard to drive to Hawaii.

My mother and I are going to Honolulu for a week, then it's back to Reno for a few days at Mom's house, and possibly a little skiing (if my poor battered immune system can handle it by then, but I'm sure a few days in Hawaii will perk me right back up again).

This handy MacBook (ah, glorious computer, how I loooooooove you) might make it possible for me to check in from time to time, and I'll be back in time to wish you a Happy Valentine's Day, but in the meantime, let me be the first to wish you the best and happiest of Groundhog Days.* It's my favorite day of the year. I'll be three times eleven.

Before I go, let me share with you two of my favoritest Internet discoveries of the week:

Goodreads, thanks to Jeannine of art*play*possibility, one of the nicest people I've met in Virginia. You can list the books you've read, are reading, or want to read; review books; look at other people's reading lists; and so on. It feels much more personal and less snarky than Amazon reviews can be. So far, it doesn't seem to have a "since you liked this, you might like that" recommendation system or a "neighbors" feature (like last.fm does), but I'm still quite pleased to be part of it.

Notes From the Universe, thanks to the marvelous iHanna. I've received two notes so far and I think they're pretty darn cool.

Also, before I wrap this up, I'd like to give a birthday shout-out to Corey of Tongue in Cheek Antiques, whose birthday is only two days after mine. If you've never been to her blog, go, go go. Corey is someone who really knows how to live. I hope it's a beautiful day for you, Corey.

All right, time for me to go tie up loose pre-vacation ends, like paying bills, and head out for a pre-birthday dinner with my husband. As always, I am wishing you my very best

* Groundhog Day is my father's favorite movie. He watches it every February 2nd, possibly before he even calls to wish me happy birthday, but I don't mind, because I have to admit that Punxutawney Phil IS pretty charming.