And On The Fifth Day She If Not Rested, Relaxed--A Lot!

Coffee--with Ghirardelli sweet and dark chocolate in it--in the Chicago skyline mug, "Rockin' In the Free World" by Neil Young on iTunes. I am back on my game!! Ernie and I celebrated with a little Mafia Wars on Facebook after I took Jessie to school and now I'm ready to move on with my day. And a beautiful day it looks to be , indeed. Dave gets home from Austin tonight (whoo hoo!), J has a sleepover at a friend's, (whoo hoo!), and the house is CLEAN.

But this blog is supposed to be about GLASS so let's get back to there. The new postcard is on the presses as I type and should be shipped out this afternoon. A hint for all you artists who do postcards through one of the online places: Begin the order process, get as far as the "upload your images" step, and then put the project on hold and wait. Very likely your phone will ring within an hour and it'll be someone from the printing company who wants to know if you need any help. When you tell them that you're under the gun and need your postcards quickly, and in order to get them quickly the shipping will cost more than the printing so you're trying to decide whether to do them at all, they'll likely offer you all kinds of perks like one day turn-around at no charge and personally moving your proofs through the process as quickly as possible so you can use ground shipping instead of UPS' outrageously expensive one or two day service. Just my (frequent) experience. If you're one of those people who plans their printing weeks or months in advance, ignore it as we have NOTHING in common!

Today in the studio sees the completion of all those pesky little tasks (like pay the IRS last year's taxes... oops) that have been accumulating since, well, since June when life accelerated to warp speedier than usual. My inbox will be--if not empty--seriously depleted, papers will be appropriately sorted and filed, and I will begin the end of the year fresh. I can't believe December comes in a week and a half. Not only are the days in December some of the shortest of the year, it's also the shortest month because of all that we try to cram into it. Well not me folks! Not this year! Sure, my parents are coming from Montana to visit over Christmas with their bird and their dog, and my sis-in-law is coming the weekend before to make a gingerbread house with the J, and we have Siyeh Sleigh Ride, the Sequel the weekend before that, and Taylor Kinzel's annual Glass Trunk show the weekend before that, and Thanksgiving the weekend before that, and that's NEXT weekend... Heck, I guess I better enjoy the quiet of this weekend, hadn't I?

Seriously, it feels good not to have ANY work scheduled for the rest of the year. My orders are done, and I get to play and make gifts and fun things for the rest of the year (blown glass tumblers anyone?). Maybe the most exciting thing on the end-of-the-year horizon is that MY BOOKS WILL BE DONE AND UP TO DATE thanks to V the bookkeeper extraordinaire. For once I won't have to spend the weeks after Christmas sorting through little bitty slips of paper and trying to remember what all I spent money on (and what money all came in) during the past year. Whoo hoo!

The last pic in this post is from Lori and is me being crowned Queen of the Sleigh Ride at the first Siyeh Sleigh Ride. Around my neck is one of Todd's new, gorgeous wreaths (the blue "ice" wreath), and he is crowning me with a, um, wire tree... More fun and frivolity sure to occur at the next Sleigh Ride too so I expect to see More Of You There!