I'm Looking Around Me...

I'm looking around me at my room - my messy room with projects all over and my computer humming to my right. My computer is driving me crazy, it's so out of date and so growl-ey. I finally have the money together so I phoned my computer guru yesterday and got the ball rolling for him to build me a new machine. This will end up scraping my funds to the bottom, but I can't deal with this one any more.

This is very similar to my current desktop computer. The alien head at the
top and the wings at the bottom are lit in alien green (very pretty). My
DH had a similar computer with red lighting until it died last year and we had
Dale build him a new one. Now he doesn't have the lights, but he has a nice machine.

Talking with Dale is always an exercise in comprehension. Every other word is an acronym and brand names and model numbers are a serious part of the conversation. It's not only talk about solid state vs mechanical, gigabytes vs terrabytes and RAM with add-ons. It's "xxx is coming out with a new yyy in a few weeks that will increase zzz. But if you want it now, aaa has this thing kkkI and kkkII, the difference between them is such-and-such and ... well that's probably more than you'll need." After discussing the merits of X vs Y and A vs B I think we came to a consensus and he'll begin lining up components for me. Hopefully within the next two weeks I can take my old computer over to him and have him data dump my stuff over, coming back within a day with a new, beautiful and fast system (and an empty bank account). It's worth it.

My travel easel isn't quite this fancy and it's black, but for $20 it was a
great deal and it has served me well for many years. It traveled to
Bead & Button Show with me but, unfortunately, I didn't have any
time to set up and play with my pencils or watercolors this trip.

To my right, behind me, is my traveling easel, several sketchbooks, a necklace in process on a board, a bag of comic books that I picked up on Wednesday (yes, I read comic books - I actually love them), and electrical cables for the many devices I repower almost daily - my Nook and my phone.

The pearls waiting for me to restring them aren't this nice - in fact, they
are artificial. But my customer loves them and wears them every day. So
I accepted a boring repair. Hey! It'll help me pay for my new computer - LOL.

In front of me is an envelope with a pending repair (note to self, pull the silk and start it stretching) on top of a large pile of paperwork that is so high it is coming close to occluding the screen. About an inch down in the pile are two DVD's - the fabulous "The Adventures of Pricilla Queen of the Desert" and "Ghost Hunters, Season 8 Part 1". These are rather indicative of my mind set right now - weird...just plain weird - LOL.

I can't believe how much I truly love this movie...but I do!

To my left is a large book "The Many Metamorphoses of Lascaux", the catalog of the exhibit that I saw last week while I visited Chicago. It's got some scrumptious pictures in it - total drool. A bit more behind me is a custom order in a bag and another baggie with brass components in it. I bought the brass components to see if I can be successful with enamel on them. There are color things I want to do with some of them, other things just are crying out for play time. Play time is not easy for me to get, but at least I have the parts and I'm thinking about what I want to do with them all the time. Having them sit out the way I have pushes me to think of how I can use them. Fun stuff!

These are good people with fun metal. I want to play...

Behind me is the television, currently tuned to the business channel which I switch to at 5:00 am. My husband's computer desk is below the television. We need to replace this TV before Sharon comes in late August so we'll go back to Best Buy soon to look more carefully and figure out what may work for us. Ideally a wall mount would be excellent, but we have concrete blocks as our exterior walls here covered with paneling and getting a good, secure mount in this surface is harder to do. We know how and have the right tools, but nothing really comes easy in our lives these days - LOL.

We won't have to be quite this aggressive to get into the concrete walls.

Farther over are piles (organized...but piles) of more books and magazines. The books comprise a bunch of novels from when I was still buying paperbacks as well as technique books for jewelry making and enameling arrayed in order on the floor. It's my secondary library for crafting and jewelry materials, the primary library being in the craft room with some supplementary materials at my jewelers bench at the shop.

I want to declutter and this is only a single room. Hear me scream? AARRGGHHHHHHHH!