Whirlwind

Live can change so quickly. For a while there is no particular news, then good news, then great news, then... tears. 

A few weeks ago we learned that a new great grandchild was expected. It's the second from that couple, and we're still looking forward to meeting the first. We've just never been in the same state at the same time. The newest child was expected to arrive before we went to their state for the fancy wedding of another family couple, giving us even more joy to celebrate this fall.

Unknown to me, given how busy everything has been lately, yesterday the news came through to Steve that the pregnancy was twins! I would have loved to celebrate that. But this afternoon, after Steve had left the room for a few hours of sleep, I answered a call asking for our prayers. The mom-to-be had just been dropped off at the hospital with symptoms that screamed to me, "miscarriage." I still hadn't heard about the twins yet, but Steve filled me in later this afternoon when I filled him in on the call. A little while ago we got the unhappy confirmation.

We're sad, of course. Although, those two new family members hadn't gotten real for us yet. No hearing about morning sickness, no watching a tummy bulge, no feeling a foot kick, no shopping for the new little one(s). We imagine the grief and pain the parents are going through, each putting ourselves in their place. For them it was very real, every minute of it. I really can't compare my miscarriage to this, as I hadn't even known I was pregnant yet when mine happened, and never needed medical intervention. I loved and wanted the babies I did have, and would have been devastated to have known I was pregnant but I'd lost one. Not to mention two, even if only living with that possibility for a day.

They are young, just starting as a family, and have - depending on the reasons behind the miscarriage- likely many more chances to grow their family. Two babies at once along with a toddler would have been a lot of stress, not just during pregnancy with the possibility of required bed rest and premature births, but the extra sleep loss, childcare required, and financial burdens. Luckily the couple are near one set of grandparents for help with any children, but those are both still working and unable to be a constant help. So it's tempting to think it might have been a "blessing in disguise."

I'm sure right now all any of them see is the tragedy.

ADOT DMV

 It was time. Not by the numbers on our licenses. Not by the expiration date on Steve's handicap placard. Our driver's licenses don't expire till April, and the placard not until August, when we expect to be out of state and unable to renew it. But Steve wants to drive, and he can't on his old license.

Both his eyes had cataract surgery last year. That means he doesn't need glasses any more to see in the distance clearly. His license says otherwise, so if he's ever pulled over for anything, he'd be in violation of his license. He can't wear glasses because they would "correct" what no longer needs fixing, i.e.,  they would blur the world for him. So if he obeys the law he's no longer fit to drive safely. The solution is simple, of course: get a new license now and have his new vision checked. (He's got his reading glasses since that's the only correction he needs any more and wouldn't let anything get in the way of his reading.)

There have been roadblocks. Covid effectively closed the DMV buildings a long while ago. Every thing possible was done online. No eye checks that way. A couple buildings were left open but required both a long drive and (a pair of) appointments. With covid spreading all around like this is Arizona or something - which it is, second worst county in the whole country both for cases and deaths - we put off a public visit. I'm still available to drive anywhere needed after all. 

I frequently drive past the closest DMV and noted a couple months back that their parking lot was again full. They were open! Still, we put it off. Steve looked for locations on the internet and their info still says everything is closed unless we want a very long drive. So there was more discussion but no action. Till today. Steve finally decided it was time. As a bonus, while I was checking into locations to make extra sure (including a phone call) I discovered AZ has a new policy that the permanent handicap placards are now printed with no expiration dates.  Permanent now actually means no more doctor visits just to renew one after 4 or 5 years or whatever a particular state requires. While I qualified for one for enough years to renew mine once, I no longer need one. Steve has had the medical procedures that have shown to everybody's satisfaction that he will continue to need his. It was finally time. And luckily today was a day I wasn't needed in the club. However, I did have a visit with my doctor this morning first. This has the advantage - or not, depending on your point of view- of providing an accurate weight for things like deciding how truthful to be on your newest license.

There was a handicap spot open in their parking lot when we drove in. We couldn't use it. The placard to keep us from being ticketed while there had to be taken in as Steve's proof that he qualified for the truly permanent replacement. Luckily there was a regular parking spot close to it. 

Once inside the lines were long. We were directed to stop inside the door and take a ticket, pushing one of three different buttons. The first was us: no appointment. The second was if we had an appointment. Turns out that line was actually short, but obscured from sight by all in the drop-in line. The third? I can't remember but it wasn't us either. I grabbed a ticket, found three of the four chairs open for people needing them to sit on, and since nobody else was waiting, Steve and I sat together. I asked Steve his number, to verify his was the one after mine, but he thought I'd gotten two tickets. So I walked back to get him one, now about 8 numbers away from mine. 

Turned out it didn't matter. An employee walked by, noticed we were together in the chairs, Steve holding his placard, and went to the machine and got us - as a unit -a completely different number. We would be called in the order that came up in relation to the other people at the time she pulled it, but we could keep sitting and not have to shuffle through 45 minutes of moving line. She assured us their system kept track. And they did.

We watched about 15 people go through a door to our side. Their badges indicated they were employees and the brown bags or lunch boxes, in addition the the time, indicated it was their lunch break. The line didn't seem to slow. In fact, it kept getting shorter while we sat. I would have thought that lunchtime was a time when more people would file in. Hmmm. 

One person of note was an Air Force captain. Steve managed to get up long enough to go over and chat with him briefly, including his usual "Thanks for your service." His uniform gave extra meaning to "cargo pants", pockets running the full length of his trousers. The thing that really stood out in the line wasn't the size, the speed of movement, or the attire, uniform or not. (Except for one woman with verrrrry interesting leggings with fishnet cutouts. I checked, and yes, Steve definitely noticed those too!) What stood out was what they weren't wearing, other than maybe 10%of them. Masks.

I was wearing one, Steve was wearing one, about a fifth of the employees were wearing one. A casual glance would seem to indicate the pandemic was over.  That, or as previously noted, this was AZ. We had to take our masks off twice. Once was to demonstrate our vision by reading a card of random letters. The noise level was high, and the employee was working with reading our lips as much as hearing what we were saying. The second time was for our horrible pictures.

I do mean horrible! Steve's eyes were wide open with large black irises. Note: his eyes are hazel. We joked afterwards that he looked like a serial killer or maybe was on something. I thought mine would be better than the last time since my face was thinner. Some of the 30 pounds lost since the last lie for my weight had to come from the face, and I'd even checked in the mirror before heading out the door to verify it looked better. When they gave me the photocopy with my mug shot on it, I didn't recognize myself! My face was shorter and wider that it's ever been in my life! That didn't stop it from showing all kids of wrinkles, with the end result making me look line a 75-yer-old man!  Yes, a man! Even Steve agreed. On the drive home we speculated that distortion would prevent any facial recognition software from picking me out. Much of that - at least as far as I can follow how it works on TV - is features in relation to other features, and if I'm stretched sideways, who knows? Maybe I better hang on to the old license, just in case?

But we got everything done that needed to be, our old placard and licenses haven't expired yet so we can wait patiently for the new ones in the mail, and have the photocopies for any possible questions. Well other than is that really me? And is Steve a serial killer? (I've seen him kill off a bowl of cereal in short order, particularly Cheerios. Does that count?)

Speaking of waiting for things patiently to arrive in the mail, remember that concealed carry permit I was supposed to receive around Christmas time? Maybe New Years since they're kinda slow these days. It's still not here. A couple weeks ago I even called Shooter's World to find out what I needed to do to check on it or perhaps re-file the paperwork or whatever. The fairly brusk answer was just wait. Still. I must have been bothering them with my single question. The class is taught, the money paid, so Yawn. Bye. Click.

I'll definitely hang onto the paperwork from today.

My Grandmother's Hands

I have very few actual memories of my paternal grandmother. For most of the time we both walked this planet, we lived 200 miles apart. We'd meet briefly when our family came to the city for a visit with relatives, but neither had anything in common with the other, besides my father. I was, after all, the younger child of one of her youngest sons in a very big family. 

When Mom was too sick to care for me, the year I attended kindergarten in Minneapolis, I wasn't "allowed" to bother Grandma. I was officially staying with my aunt, uncle, and my two much older adopted cousins in a huge house. The upper floor was rental apartments for proper young ladies attending school or working at very proper jobs before marriage. That's how it was back then. All I saw was the outside stairs I was never allowed to climb. The basement apartment where Grandma lived had its own street entrance,  the front room of which was all I was allowed in to see, and then only on rare instances when I visited Grandma with my aunt. In all that time, my memories are of the other people, the house, the very small yard, and a young neighbor boy I played outside with who soon died from leukemia. I hadn't known kids could die.

I was barely aware of the babies my aunt fostered briefly, one after another, until they died of spina bifida. Looking back I suppose she rather enjoyed an older child for a while who wasn't in the process of dying. She taught me to write my name, tie my shoes, set the table, and cross the street safely by minding the stoplights to walk to kindergarten. Smells made impressions, like the bars of Ivory soap throughout the house. Mom didn't buy that brand. My uncle, home on disability retirement from the police force with severe arthritis in his hands, smelled of the bowl of pennies which he let me play with, an aid to learning to count and add or just make patterns on the floor with, and of the cigars he smoked. My cousin Marilyn "let" me make her bed for her each morning so she had time to get ready to leave for high school. I was really proud of having learned how to do it well and loved the praise. I think we had a pact that in return for letting me do that for her, it was OK for me not to tell her mom that I was, since "I might get in trouble" if I did. Or something like that. We got along that way.

There is one exception to the dearth of memories. I was outside, playing with a doll and her buggy, when Grandma came out and soon noticed I hadn't put my doll's panties on under her dress in my hurry to get outside. Scandalized, she scolded me soundly, sending me back inside to correct the  situation immediately. I tried to argue that it didn't matter since she was only a doll and had nothing to really cover, which only made everybody angry with me. How dare I argue with Grandma! The unfairness of that has rankled through the decades, though I do understand where they all were coming from. In a conversation with that aunt when she was in a nursing home but still very lucid, she shared with me the tale of her being molested when she was very, very young by a neighbor and his son who were supposed to be babysitting her in an emergency. Instead they created an emergency and left my aunt unable to bear her own children. Of course as a 5 year old, nothing of that was allowed to filter into my awareness. Even my father never heard the real reason his sister needed to adopt her family. Those things just weren't discussed.

When I was older, somewhere between third and maybe 8th grade, this same grandmother came to our small house in a small town to stay with our family. It was "our turn" to take care of her. I believe she stayed about a year. My biggest awareness was of my brother having to give up his main floor bedroom and move into my enormous bedroom that covered most of the second floor. She couldn't handle the stairs to come join me.  It was an uncomfortable arrangement, but we were not allowed protest of course.

I cannot accurately place when the discussion about her hands took place. At some point I noticed that her hands had lots of brown spots on them, the skin was wrinkled all over, and blue veins stood up from the level of the rest of her hands. Being very young, I'd never noticed an old person's hands before this. Being clueless, as I was about so many things in my early years since nobody found the time to explain the world to me unless I was misbehaving in it, I asked her about why her hands looked like that.  Everybody laughed at me, and one of them - who knows which one? - informed me that mine were going to look just like that when I grew old. I looked at my hands, then back at hers. In my youthful arrogance and with a complete failure of imagination, I insisted I'd never have hands that looked like that! Of course this only garnered more ridicule.

I've been looking at my hands more these days. Brown spots are appearing. Wrinkles too, especially as there is now the same amount of skin covering a little less hand than recently before, and almost no elastin left to correct for that. I've been using them a fair amount these last couple years, working with metals in various forms along with tools and machines needed to make jewelry, so most recently I've noted some of the vessels popping up over the otherwise mostly flat geography of the back of my hands. They are quite blue, and don't even match, one of my hands to the other.

My hands? What am I saying? These are my grandmother's hands!

The Many Miracles Of Florida

If you've been following this blog since early covid days, you are aware I've been following the numbers. Mainly these are from Worldometer, but also from state health departments, Johns Hopkins, and general national news outlets and political commentaries.

A whole bunch of things stand out. Nearly everybody agrees on the shapes and timing of the numbers curves, increases, dips, new and higher increases in cases, the effects of immunizations, and the frustrations of EVERYBODY that the pandemic is ongoing for this long. 

One particular graphic making the rounds made that point very clearly, stating self congratulations that the writer survived January because January was a very long year. Time has become so distorted, subjectively, that I hear people talk about this lasting three years when it's been just over two. I get confused myself some times, falling back on looking at my own vaccination record to verify it took a year to get them out, another part year of feeling freedom, marred at the end by the Omicron variant which makes us all susceptible to covid again. Just, this time, hopefully, less likely to get really sick and/or die if we're fully vaccinated. Vaxxed for short. And now, Omicron itself has a newly emerging variant, effects yet to be known. We want it to be OVER! We grow increasingly frustrated with the willfully unvaccinated who keep dragging this out, and all the political nonsense swirling around, muddying the mix of what should be a straightforward public health issue, and fearful of the newly revealed deep racial and political divisions in this country and their ties to Russian propaganda.

Oh yes, if you've missed that last part, you haven't been paying attention. For a while!

But back to numbers. While the graph patterns are agreed to, the numbers underlying them aren't. Each source of numbers has their own set of sources, some going or not going the extra mile to fact check who reports and how. The numbers themselves have become political. The motivations to change those numbers often become more important than the actual numbers. More on that later, but a new opportunity to lose track of the numbers recently presented itself: at home testing.

I'm sitting right this minute next to our set of four test kits which arrived yesterday in the mail. Should any of us start to feel "like it's a cold", we can whip one of these out and test ourselves for covid. These were free, part of the governmental project to send four kits to every address in the country which requested their set. The kits have also been made widely available through pharmacies & insurance companies, a way of allowing folks to test without waiting in long lines which may actually backfire by exposing those in the lines to the highly contagious Omicron. The issue with home testing is the unreliable reporting of the results. This is above and beyond the known variability in accuracy of the results of various kits and how those even vary depending on which day into symptoms- or before/after symptoms - the tests are taken. Positive results from several people I've spoken to, since they mostly do not get dangerously ill, simply mean they stay home for a while until they feel better, thus are likely less contagious. But report the results? Only if necessary. (Oops.)

But Florida really stands out as an anomaly. One could easily be led to thinking that Ponce De Leon's fabled Fountain of Youth is located there, for real. Now we know Governor DeSantis (DeSatan, DeathSantis, pick your nickname) is way out there on the right wingnut end of the spectrum. He's been trying to out-Trump Trump in craziness, manipulations, obstruction of covid protocols and safety, outright denial of its existence as much as possible. He's obviously running already for the 2024 Presidency.

Early in the pandemic he fired the woman who had been reporting accurate counts of covid case and death numbers. She still had contacts within the system and for at least a while more accurate numbers were being "leaked". The federal government has had to crack down and demand better reporting, and for a bit you could see it improve, aka case numbers reported were increasing. That's not to be mistaken for real improvement in covid handling or anything, of course. But word also went out that death certificates were to obstruct knowledge of covid death counts by any means possible. All those blood clots that severe covid produces that do so much damage to various organs, killing people, meant a rewrite on the death certificate to cause of death being the organ that failed without mention of its connection to covid. Clots in the lungs became pneumonia, in the brain became strokes, in the heart became heart failure, in the kidneys became kidney failure. If a clot in a limb killed off tissue then death was caused by gangrene. And on and on. Real opportunities for creative writing here. Covid isn't killing people there, nuh uh. All this other crap is. Covid becomes the comorbidity rather than the proximate cause.

If you can't tell any other way, just go into the charts of state reports and note two things. First, see how many new covid cases are reported each day. They are a little harder to fudge. Follow those for a few weeks, since we know deaths lag behind cases. You don't die the day you get sick, like you might the same day, say, you had a car accident or got shot. Then check other states with similar case-per-day rates, and see what their death counts are. Florida has been very high in cases, and tends to run about 3rd highest in the nation. But deaths? Similar states report deaths in the hundreds most days lately. Florida reports none or single digits most days.

It must be a miracle! Right? 

Yep, the miracle of what the abuse of power can let you think you're getting away with.

About That Canada Thing

Unless you went back to sleep with the groundhog, who is still grumpy, by the way, from being so rudely awakened on the 2nd, you are aware of the truckers swarming Ottowa, grinding everything to a halt in what the call a "protest" of covid vaccination requirements for truckers crossing the international border. Many of these are US truckers, because of course they are. 

Everywhere they drive in the good ol' US of A  has some right wingnut radio station they can listen to all day and all night. There's no fairness doctrine where both actual sides of whatever must be presented fairly. There are no truth checks on what gets broadcast. The most virulent poison gets spewed nonstop on many stations, even with Rush gone to his reward - which I have an opinion about but that's another post. The rabble is being roused, and the issue of the year is whatever conspiracy is even crazier than the last one with no regard to science, logic, or reason. Because why would it be?

"Vaccine is just a way to get us all microchipped so (insert name here) can follow us wherever we go." Nevermind the needles are too small, microchips need a close detector to identify the 16 digit number that offers an identity, and have no power source to broadcast anything. Got a cell phone you take everywhere? There's your microchip, buddy. Got a vehicle with computerized features? There's  your microchips. Both have power sources and broadcast your  locations. And NOBODY CARES! (Well except maybe - shhhhh- insert-name-here.)

"The government can't tell us what to do." Really? Did you need to get a driver's license, a nice special one that certifies you are qualified to drive that big rig? Wear a seatbelt? Follow a speed limit? Drive on certain roads in certain lanes, take a number of hours off from driving, supposedly for sleep so you can be alert for the next leg? If you're an American in Canada, didn't you have to cross an international border?  American laws stopped applying to you, but Canadian laws certainly now do. You don't have your bill of rights any longer. Canada can do whatever it says it can do. Period.

And a lot of us wish they would.

There are a bazillion other stupid conspiracy theories and bits of misinformation out there, but that could take a book. So let's just accept that your protest is out of line. You don't have 18 wheels to stand on. You are violating their laws by deliberately blocking their traffic and causing havoc in their capitol. Some of you are shoving people to the ground simply for sensibly wearing a mask while they are in the presence of others. Who knows what else you've been up to - besides no good.

So here's a suggestion, heartfelt from an American who's totally embarrassed and fed up with their misbehavior, to any Canadian in charge who wants to put a firm end to this chaos and criminality. Throw the book at them all. Heck, not just the book, throw the whole damn encyclopedia, the dictionary, the thesaurus, and the whole rest of the library at them. Be sure what you're throwing is the hardcover version. It lands much more resoundingly.

Start by arresting them all. No room in jails? Open air cages are good enough for the people they don't like in this country, particularly illegal immigrants, and go ahead and crowd them together with just a sheet of mylar to protect them from the elements. Give them a teensy taste of reality, eh? Charge them with assault and everything adjacent you can pile on. Pile on al lthe fines you can: illegal parking, obstruction of traffic, impediments to businesses, commerce, government business, even obstruction of anybody needing to get to a hospital and all the damages caused by the delays, including expected payments from lawsuits. Still have anti-profanity in public laws on the books, maybe from a hundred years ago that nobody's looked at? Did they spit on the sidewalk? Toss out pee bottles? Drop a used tissue? Littering carries fines.

Then physically remove those trucks. It's reported that the towing companies refuse to get involved for fears of retaliation. Fine, how about military vehicles? And armed accompaniment. Get out those tanks and force the rigs off the road and into some parking area where fees for parking are mandated, and charge for the costs of getting the vehicles there. Any assault on your military personnel becomes their crime by extension of causing and promoting the problem, aka aiding and abetting,  so charge that too.

For all those drivers you've incarcerated, charge them for the privilege like we do with some jails where they must pay (by work) for their meals, bed, guards. (Didn't know we did that? Be poor and get arrested for non payment of fines and watch it add up.) With all the charges and fines, the truckers will likely be your "guests" for a while, and the pile of fines only increases at time goes on. Many will likely lose their jobs for non delivery of their loads, even lose their trucks for non payment of their truck loans. Tsk tsk. Can't pay their mortgage? Awwwww, crocodile tears. Actions have consequences.

While you've got them there, just vaccinate them all. Charge them for it of course, despite your wonderful medical system. Figure out how to do the same for any medical expenses they incur, particularly if they contract covid. More so for everybody to whom they've spread it. I hear a typical covid hospitalization down south of your border costs an average of $50k a day. Of course if they have recently clogged your hospital system by spreading covid all over, well, I guess you can triage by citizens first, eh? I mean, prisons have their own medical facilities, right even if they don't necessarily include ventilators and those revolving beds to facilitate easier breathing and avoid bedsores, right?

I suppose you eventually you have to send these yahoos back to us. Sigh. But hey, no hurry. Drive them to the border and let them walk. By this time those trucks will have been sold to cover their costs, eh? And the exercise will do them some good. And hey, it may even have stopped snowing by then.

Success! (Almost) OK, Good Enough.

I finally figured it out. Not just exactly how I first imagined it looking, nor even how I imagined the second or even third times. But it's workable, And simple. Easily reproducible. And ready for the store.

There's no bow. I figured out how to configure that, but the weight was already just over the limit without adding that, so after cutting back on wire lengths so I could keep the beads I wanted in the grouping to indicate "bouquet" and not just a bunch of beads hanging, there was less space to put one, besides the obvious addition of disqualifying weight added. And since sterling, to be sold as sterling, must have all metals be sterling, a pretty red wire bow tying up the bouquet would have just defeated the purpose.

But let's go back to the beginning. It started with discovering Etsy. Yes, I know, they've been around for ages. I just never shopped there before, except the one time I needed just the right buttons for my silk tunic for our 2012 Valentine's Day commitment ceremony. A Czech glass set of rose-designed buttons in iridescent fuschia matching the silk were just the thing. I'm reminded of that every time I go through my purchases history (to give feedback) because 10 years latter it still sits there. It's finally got company now.

I don't remember quite why I went back to Etsy. Had I been looking for flower beads? Or stumbled on them looking for millifiori beads that came anywhere close to the quality of the ones I'd gotten in a garage sale bulk sort-it-all-out-later purchase at a former club member's home? Somewhere in there, however, the idea popped into my head of making a hanging bouquet themed set (sets) of earrings with wire and flower shaped beads. Valentine's day was coming around again, and a non-wilting bouquet might catch on. Particularly if I could do it in reds and pinks.

There's been a learning curve - with everything - but especially with buying beads. Sizes are not always given, sometimes you have to hunt only to find out those beads you liked aren't glass after all, what looks 3 dimensional is flat, and colors depend on the photographer and not the actual bead. As they started coming in through the mail, I ordered more and more, either to get better color blends, size and shape blends, and finally to get exquisite beads that really looked like flowers with layers of different glass colors per bead. Those are the ones which are priced, not by string, but by individual bead. Yikes! And yet.... Those are the ones that a new design was made for, with a single bead per earring, and will be selling - only on sterling! - for $45 a pair. I believe they will be the most expensive ones in the store. I also know they will be unique and customers will walk in and fall in love and absolutely have to buy them!  

 Did I mention those are only made to order and have to be shipped from Russia? I followed their progress, sweating that they'd be here in time to go in the store for Valentine's day. They took two weeks to make, got shipped to London, then to Los Angeles, and finally brought a week ago by the mailman. Selection day is this Wednesday, so they'll be for sale around noon, giving them 3 1/2 open store days to attract attention. Only two pairs are going in of those this time, not only to avoid flooding the market so people think they can dither about buying them, but because I have other Valentine's themed items to submit and the club limit per selection per member is 10 items. Twice a month. Possibly 240 per year, and a few of our members come close to that many.

But I have 2 sets of bouquet earrings going in, some copper hearts that have been colored (torched - aka annealed), textured, punched in shapes, rough edges buffed, polished, etc. Much more work, and maybe $10 a pair. But... copper. Finally there's an inexpensive set of necklaces reconfigured from previous failed sales.

Now that we've detoured all around, back to those bouquets. Collecting the wires in a bunch that wouldn't fall apart due to glue didn't work. Binding the ends and looping wire ends over the restraining wire in addition to the glue didn't work either. Soldering pairs of wires together worked but failed as soon as two became four, nevermind the 6 I wanted for the concept of "bouquet" to come across. I noticed another club member who'd designed earrings with multiple loops handing from a single other one, each the same shape but a larger size than the last, and thought I could try that. I have a preliminary "proof of concept" set staring at me with a totally different bead, accidentally ordered without noting they were drilled sideways rather than longitudinally, and more work will refine those. Just not for a bouquet. 

I started getting closer when I though I could loop two jump rings to another, the one hanging from the ear wire, the other two holding a few of the flower wires so they have a front and a back layer, looking more three dimensional. They just tangled. So I simply cut all the wires a bit shorter, gave each a simple loop tiny enough to just slide over the single jump ring and line up close together, because where else would they go?

The idea worked, but needed a few more adjustments. First, it needed to look like a flower arrangement and not a curtain of beads. I'd already done the first part by mixing kinds and subtle differences in colors of beads. Some were flowers, others more teardrop to suggest buds about to open. Most live bouquets have some blossoms fully open and some buds about to pop so they last longer. Then I made some wires shorter so different lengths gave a better grouping of flowers and buds. Then I worked on which order they went on the jump ring until I was satisfied they spread out in a way that I found pleasing. No wire bending needed. Some moved forward, some back, and the curve of the ring itself kept the stems together so the beads splayed out. Everything swung loosely. A little shake was occasionally needed to set them back in position, but that's all. It became organic.

The bouquets are not, after all, in reds and pinks. Seems more beads have to be ordered before I can put together a pleasing combination. So there's a set in blue/purple mix, and one in aqua/teal/green mix. Steve proclaimed he liked them with enough enthusiasm in his voice that I trust it goes beyond simple spousal support.  

But... no bow. Sigh.

A Chicken-And-Egg question

A few months back, Dish, our current TV satellite company, informed us that due to some contract dispute, we would no longer receive the local NBC channel from them. It didn't matter that we pay for, and our contract states that we get, all the local broadcast TV channels. No more NBC.

Boo hoo hoo? Naw. We record only one show on NBC, "Chicago Fire." CBS is our main go-to and has been for a lot of years. We've been discovering a lot of interesting options on the upper channels: cooking shows, fishing tournaments,  game warden shows like Northwoods Law, zoo shows, old episodes of M*A*S*H, and on and on.  Chicago Fire is widely available on at least two other channels as reruns, so Steve set the DVR to record both of them ansd we've been going through the first 9 seasons... over and over and over...

Occasionally we like to follow the large ice skating competitions on NBC, but it turns out that in season, those too are available on the upper channels. So we've been watching them there.

The other night we discovered a channel that was showing the Olympics. We'd thought we might miss those, but we watched an hour of curling before bed and set a bunch of timers on that channel. The next morning, we discovered that NBC was back on good old local channel 12 again! Somehow they had settled their contract dispute. Which was kinda funny since we'd just gone through a whole bunch of channel outtages when AT&T, the parent company, tried cutting Dish off from nearly everything we watched for a couple days. We heard - again on upper channels - that Dish/AT&T lost a lot of customers that first day. We were even looking at our options of cancelling our contract since they weren't delivering and seeing if COX network could offer a decent price. COX is our Wi-Fi provider. Rich though we should get a box like Hulu or one of the others, but we put a hard pause on the discussion before bed because there were just too damn many choices out there and we didn't really want to spend a month getting ourselves acquainted with them all in order to make the "right" decision.

Just over a day later we had our regular programming back anyway. Except for NBC. Of course.

But the Olympics were just barely a day into being broadcast when suddenly NBC was back on our TV. We've got our timers in place, have watched some skiing and some figure skating... and NBC On Demand is letting us binge watch the last season to date of Chicago Fire. We have to put up with commercials, but there is a mute button after all. Besides, it's almost nice to have time set aside for raiding the fridge or taking the dog out or a quick walk down the hall, or.... Not that nice, really, since we always could just hit "pause" and "FF".

But here's my question. Who caved? Did NBC knuckle under because a huge chunk of it's customer base would not be watching the Olympics and Super Bowl,  thus helping pay the exorbitant price they shell out for the exclusive rights to them? Or did AT&T knuckle under because they were loosing too many customers after both their dismally successful attempts to piss off its customer base? Which came first?

I wonder if we'll ever know. For that matter, if we'll ever actually care. Just a question for those quiet moments when seven other things aren't grabbing your attention.