Domestic Geek

I've always loved the look of real stained glass. Not the fake stuff I've made in the past with tissue paper and glue or Gallery Glass paints, but real stained glass. It's really expensive if you buy it from someone already made.

When I used to work at AutoZone, the wife of one of my coworkers made and sold stained glass for a living. She did really gorgeous, amazing work and displayed it at many of the area craft malls. Apparently, it's not that difficult if you have to right supplies and tools. As long as I wore heavy gloves and eye protection while cutting the glass, even an accident prone person such as myself wouldn't get hurt doing it. Anyway, she kept saying she would teach me how to do it (for a small fee), but I never got around to it. She and her husband divorced and she moved away.

I lost my chance at cheap lessons and the use of her stained glass cutters, but it's still an art that I would to try. I've been noticing that it's one of the hobbies that is beginning to make a resurgence lately. The craft stores are beginning to carry more stained glass supplies than they used to. I'll have to look into finding if there are other relatively inexpensive classes offered that I can take. It would be a shame to invest a lot of money into getting the necessary supplies only to find that I didn't like doing it.

Yay, I came home from work to diarrhea all over my carpet. Joy. The poor old dog walked back and forth through it, too. It is EVERYWHERE. I guess I get to spend the next couple of hours with a steam cleaner and a scrub brush. I am so not looking forward to this.

Last night he got confused and ended up stuck back here in my craft/computer room. He must've gotten pretty freaked out trying to find the way out because it looked like a tornado hit this place this morning. He pulled my Wacom off the desk, which brought my desk organizer full of tacks, paper clips and my earrings tumbling to the floor. I still haven't found a couple of the earrings, but I did manage to find a thumbtack with my bare foot. *sigh*

I found the coolest site today. It's called Wishbin. It's an online gift registry and it's purpose to to organize all those wishlists you have all over the Internet in one central location. You can create various lists for any occasion, whether Christmas, birthday, new baby, upcoming wedding, etc. and share those lists easily with friends and family. I imported my list from Amazon, plus it supports any retail site. They've partnered with many big names such as Target, Walmart, Toys R Us, Sears and even Think Geek! If you're on a Windows machine, you can even download a toolbar to make adding items you really want to your wishlist even easier. Here's My Wishbin Wishlist.

Am I the only one who gets a little sad when I have to throw out an old Christmas light set? I realize I've gotten many good years of use out of them and they probably hung in a lot longer than the manufacturer intended, but I still feel bad that the fate of the poor thing is the dump. At the same time, that one that shorted out fried 25 perfectly good bulbs that will need to be replaced one day. Oh, well. I'm just goofy that way.

One of the ways I increase my stock of light strings and bulbs is to hit the after Christmas sales. That won't be happening this year and not just because I don't have any money. The stores are practically bare right now. Either they didn't stock as much this year as in years past or people have more money to spend this year. I've got to get myself in a better financial situation by next Christmas. I can't get my Hallmark Star Trek ornaments again this year (I didn't get the Enterprise from last year yet, either). The classic Trek transporter ornament is already out of stock in the few Hallmark stores I've been into (not that I could buy them even if I had seen one). The price is skyrocketing on eBay already. I always try to get an ornament that depicts some achievement or milestone of the past year. I guess a lack of a new ornament is going to have to do. Seriously, what would an ornament depicting losing your job and collecting unemployment look like?

All right, since Colleen's post reminded me, I guess I'd better go check and make sure my DVR is set to record Medium. I keep forgetting that is on Wednesdays now, as well.

Over on the PPP boards today, Amy Jo pointed out a really cool holiday Firefox theme that's available called Tinseltown. I installed it and am loving it (except that I keep forgetting the reindeer head is refresh...that throws me a bit!). My browser is so festive:


If you haven't downloaded Firefox, you really should! It's my favorite browser ever!