Two reasons why I have not blogged lately, one of which is a decent excuse.
First, I have not blogged lately because when I had that swell idea to write an Artisan story to go along with jewelry, well, writing is HARD WORK.

Second, I had a deviated septum (that’s the bone in your nose) and had surgery for it about a week-and-a-couple-of-days-ago. It was “pretty miserable” (but no one wants to hear how gross nose surgery is so I won’t go into details. Suffice to say I survived it, and if you also need this fairly routine surgery, you also will survive it.) but now I am doing better and should continue to see improvement over the next several weeks. Someone told me she would rather give birth to twins than have that packing in her nose. I don’t think it was THAT bad, but it did make me feel so sure that I was unable to breathe, that I went to the ER – where they explained to me that no, I was breathing fine, and I was in fact hyperventilating.

Thirdly – bonus reason – I have been trying to clean out and “destash” a lot of craft supplies (and even, gasp, books) that I will likely never use (check it out – some are up for grabs at http://glimmerville.etsy.com).

I will post more art/craft/jewelry, but I don’t guarantee a story like I wish I could. It still seems like it would be a good writing exercise for me, but it is kind of onerous to say “post an actual story with each piece of art, or else” - I’ll do what I can.

Well: the cold I had in the end of November has finally run its course. I know, that was an insane amount of time, but it turned into a sinus infection. Then, somehow I got vertigo, which I at first assumed was from the sinus infection, except it didn’t clear up. So I got a CT scan, which showed nothing (this is good) and I finally saw a neurologist this week, who said it was Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (and actually, I had decided that must be it, via the art of Intense And Precise Googling, but you don’t tell a neurologist that). Basically the otoconial debris was floating around telling my inner ear I was in the wrong position, and it made me dizzy.  He performed The Epley Maneuver which I am sure I heard Captain Kirk command numerous times on Star Trek.

So the neurologist moved my head all around in this maneuver and said “Ok, the chips in your ear are moved back where they belong, don’t move your head for 48 hours!” To which I cleverly replied, “Huh?” He went on to tell me to get a cervical collar, and sleep sitting up, and was pretty cheerful about it. But I had a dentist appointment in the morning, which had been postponed since about October so I was definitely going to be moving my head in the morning. He gave me instructions on how to do the maneuver again later since I was about to go foolishly get the ear stones all out of place again before they had time to stick where they belong. Anyway… that’s that, and thank God the dizziness was nothing serious.

PS. I am actually going to post AGAIN this week. No, really! Stay Tuned!

I’ve been busy lately!
I have been sculpting a lot, and even trying to sketch a bit.
I promise to show you soon. Er, maybe I shouldn’t promise.
But I will definitely try.

Amazingly, the Mech Dragons are starting to catch on! I really planned to have a pile done to take to OddMall this fall, but I have to start figuring out how to make them more quickly, because I am not doing a good job keeping up at the moment. If you are interested in commissioning one, please let me know!  {Email glimmer @ glimmerville.com is a good way}

Mech Dragon No. 3

Worserly, I am not keeping up with the Ladies Bible Study at church. But I AM keeping up with the “read through the Bible in a year” program – which I highly encourage you all to try. I have discovered some really interesting things, and it’s really helpful to read through the sweep of scripture and not just take it a verse at a time. It all fits together better this way.

• Finishing a brass-filigree-enhanced necklace that I am 5/6 finished with
• Finishing a necklace of blue buttons
• Finishing the Mech Dragon No. 3
• Finishing a small clay robot I started a long time ago
• Painting several clay pieces that I did not yet paint
• Finishing a logo for Tore
• Starting a logo for JD
• Working on a logo for myself (Glimmerville)
• Finishing 3 or 4 half-started drawings of a character of mine
• Finishing a sketch of a new character
• Figuring out charcters for that webcomic idea I had
• Drawing a Dolphin for Laura
• Drawing a Minotaur for Gus
• Journaling for my part of the game night group story
• Modding my pair of goggles
• Praying about whether I can go on the missions trip in 2010 due to time constraints
• Walking on the treadmill more
• Praying & read the Bible more
• Watching what I eat
• Cleaning out the attic
• Throwing away the clothes I do not wear even if I think I will fit into them again someday (ha)
• Organizing my craft supplies (but I cannot function without clutter!)
• Finishing a half-finished short story that I actually liked writing so far (been on hold for years, though)
• Finishing the “Candlelight” drawing I started several years ago and still like

Feel free to add things you ought to be doing too!

Feel free to add things I ought to be doing that I forgot to list, while we’re at it.

Now I just read two completely contradictory articles - by prominent tech folks who know what they are talking about - on how to “manage your friends” on Twitter.

TechCrunch (Michael Arrington) states here that “there is an unwritten Golden Mean that shows ‘more people follow you, than you follow, therefore you are interesting and I should follow you’.” So if you auto-followback and follow people in the “vague hope they will follow you” you would not look like an interesting person and interesting people won’t care about you.

Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) states here that “you need to follow everyone, because you learn from the people you follow.”  So if you follow everyone all the time, you will enjoy having a huge user base of people to interact with.

(Paraphrases mine.)

I think I fall somewhere in between, when it comes to “Twitter philosophy”.

Do you have an opinion?

Warning: navel gazing.

Sometimes I don’t think I am growing.

When I work with the youth on Wednesday nights, the youth pastor always asks for testimonies, answers to prayer, and what the Lord is doing in your life. I have a testimony, and I see answers to prayer, and blessings every day! But I never “feel a way the Lord is working in my life”.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter; feelings are just feelings. But often I wonder about it. I hear so many people say “you should be able to look look back on your life a decade/year/month/etc. ago and see that you are holier/closer to Christ now” and I never seem to.

Right now I’m reading through Jeremiah. Back in college we had a class in which reading through the entire Bible was required – so I did it as fast as humanly possible. So this time I’m trying to read Jeremiah with “actual thought and understanding”. I read it through in KJV, and now I am reading it through with a Wycliffe Bible Commentary. Seeing each phrase of Jeremiah with an explanation makes it easier to understand (although reading it in “anything other than KJV” would also make it easier to understand – duly noted). Next I will read it again with my NIV Life Application Bible, for a different take. Finally I think I will try to write it over “in my own words”. This is the biggest “self motivated” Bible study I have done for a decade, to my shame. 

Everyone says “learning about the Bible/God is not the same thing as getting to know God himself” but, to quote a song, ”you can’t stand on the promises if you don’t know what they are”. So I will study God’s love letter to us, to learn about Him – there has to be a balance there.

I love all forms of video games & geekery, and sometimes it does bother me when I think how easy it is to spend an hour on a game and so hard it is to spend fifteen minutes in prayer. [Asking "WWJD" before killing an orc is not the same as "WWJD" before spending the hours on the game. ]

And which has more eternal value?

I have no happy ending to this post. Just my $.02 and exposed inner conflict, same as any other Christian. It is worth it to ponder this hard question.

This was from the 4th of July. It really didn’t taste bad, but the presentation…

This instantly reminds me of James Lileks great books on “Regrettable Food” such as this one. (Amazon link )

But you can tool around for a long time on his website, looking at his goofy collection of… things… in the “Institue of Official Cheer”: http://lileks.com/institute/index.html

I am sorry I haven’t been updating this blog!

Here is a picture of something I didn’t finish yet, just to prove I am not sitting here playing Plants vs. Zombies 24×7.  The “artfully arranged desk clutter” probably reveals more of my personality than I want it to.

Two half-way-painted birds.

Yesterday I had a piece of foil on my dinner. I like to recycle the used (clean) foil to use as armature for clay creatures, so I went upstairs to stick the foil in the attic where I keep it. And as I went into the attic, in the dark, and stubbed my toe hard on the cedar chest. I could tell pretty quick that something was wrong, so I went to the emergency room. X-rays easily confirmed that it was broken.

Ouch.

So I’m home from work now, with an appointment to see a doctor later. We’ll know more then, but the ER doctor said I’d need to wear an ugly cast-type-shoe-thing for about four weeks.