Musings from Insanity...

I don't really have any new and exciting news to impart. I'm just looking to kill time so I thought I'd post.

We finally have a solid date on Tiana's lengthening surgery. She'll go to Shriners on August 9th to have the surgery done, and she should be home on the 10th. This is a short one, a piece of cake considering what she's already been through. She should grow another inch or two afterwards also, so I'll probably wait to buy school clothes!

Last week I had some time to myself, so I got to play a bit. I purchased a polymer stamp maker with a bit of the tax money last winter, and I worked on getting my technique down. I had to make a couple of calls to the company before I managed to work out some of the kinks, but I think I finally got it.

My big issue with making stamps was sticky polymer (sounds like a band name). See how it works is that you pour this goopy polymer into a mold, it's kind of the consistency and feel of honey or light corn syrup, and then you shine a UV light on it. Wherever the light hits, the polymer cures and hardens, where it doesn't hit, it washes away. I couldn't get it all washed off though, and so even when the stamps were finished, they were sticky in the areas that were recessed. I'm not talking a little tacky either, they were nasty, disgusting, can't get it off sticky. You didn't want to touch those stamps to any part of your body that had hair on it, let me tell ya!

So I called the company and whined, asked what I was doing wrong, and it turns out it wasn't me (do try to hide your astonishment). They gave me a couple of tricks that weren't included in the instructions for curing the sticky polymer, and now I'm good to go. They're still a bit tacky, but they no longer remove bits of skin and hair wherever they touch. A big improvement in my opinion.

I made some cute stamps last week, and have some ideas for some others I want to try. Once I get all of the sticky polymer off my desk, I'll make some cards with my new stamps to share with you.


So what else is new...

We had some changes in the band last weekend. Jim our drummer wasn't happy with the new direction we've been taking, and how things are going in general, and we decided it was probably time to part company. We'll miss him, he's a good man, but this way we can still be friends in the long run.

Sean and I are going to start cranking out some new music. It's time for us to move away from playing the Blues, and we've been working on some awesome new stuff. I'm really excited about what we'll be doing in the future. The music that I'm writing has a lot more feeling for me, and I'm finding that I can really feel it pouring out of me as we play it. So I think it's going to be great.

So we'll be writing, and possibly doing some recording while we start the search for a new drummer. If you're interested, you can always check out the bands web page or myspace page for updates.

Well, that's all the exciting stuff in my life right now... Pretty boring over all, I know.

Hugs,
Anne