Just a Walk in the Park

We went on a hike on Friday at the Hinckley Reservation;.  It was what we call a glorious Akron day – overcast, damp, and cool.  This is typical weather here in Northeast Ohio, and I guess that I have learned to appreciate this type of day.

I disturbed a Great Blue Heron.  I must have taken just a little too long for his comfort to frame the shot.  He indignantly flew to the other end of the reservoir.

Aggravated Great Blue Heron

The dampness brought many tidbits to my sense of smell.  The woods smelled of freshly decomposing leaves.  It was a clean, earthy smell – quite pleasant and reminds me of why our vegetation is quite lush this time of year.

The air also hung heavy with the scent of wild roses.  They smelled quite sweet right now, but not cloying at all.

Wild Roses

It was a perfect day.

Winmail.dat on My Mac

I have this really important email that has a winmail.dat file attached to it.  This attachment is (I hope!) a list of email address that I am supposed to use.  So I did what I always do – I downloaded the attachment and tried to open it.  Ha! How did that work out for me?  Not so well, thank you.

I did some research and discovered that the winmail.dat file is a format that contains rich text information; that means it contains formatting and font information.  It is generated by Microsoft programs such as Outlook and Exchange.  I wondered to myself, why doesn’t Microsoft use the standard Rich Text Format (.rtf)?  But that didn’t help me.

One site advised me to tell the sender to uncheck the “send Microsoft rich text format” box when sending the mail.  Now, that person is not available, that is why I have this email in the first place – to help her get a task done in her absence.  I suppose that I could send the email to a different Microsoft using person, and have them forward it back to me that way, but I’m pretty stubborn.

A little more research revealed at least 2 options.  One, Letter Opener,  is a plugin to the Mail app called that interprets the attachment and it only costs $7 USD.  That seems to be the best long term solution, but I cannot risk messing up my Mail app right now.  I’m sure that it would be fine, but I decided not to chance it.

The other is a freeware, stand a long program called TNEF’s Enough.  There are links on the website to download the file, so I downloaded in Disk Image format.  Then all I had to do was drag the winmail.dat attachment into the new application and then my data would be revealed.  Unfortunately, although the data file was valid, I saw no email list – not through any shortcoming of TNEF’s Enough.

Well, although I have not harvested the data that I need, I know what to do the next time that I get a Winmail.dat file.  It happens fairly often, and truthfully? I have ignored the attachments in the past.

ArtFire Referral Program – Shameless Bribe

One of the selling venues that I use is ArtFire - you can see the logo over there on the left.  It is fairly new, and there are several things that I really like about it.

First of all, there is just one fee per month and that is a flat rate.  Right now, that rate is $12 per month.  I can list as many items as I like; there is no listing cost at all.  I can sell as many items as I can; there is no “final value” fee.  Second, the shops can now be customized somewhat, perhaps a silly thing, but now my shop has more of a “me” feel to it.

Third, there are plans on advertising to get buyers to the site.  As with most sites, I personally feel that it is more my responsibility to get people to my shop than the site owners, but every little bit helps.

I could go on… listing is easy and is all on one page.  You can have links to your other sites on the web, be it Flickr, Facebook, or even Etsy.  There are links to help you quickly advertise, such as tweeting a new listing at Twitter.com.

ArtFire has recently restarted their referral program.  If 12 people sign up using my referral program, I can have a shop for free!  I would like that a lot.

So.

What’s in it for you?  As a thank you, I will give you one of my Gazing Pool bicone focal beads,  your choice of colors, if you join ArtFire using my referral link.   ( http://www.artfire.com/modules.php?name=power_up&refuid=3467 ).  You have been bribed!  I don’t know if I can see who signed up or not… just send me a message over on ArtFire if you do.

I will update the count here. Hurry!  This is only good for the first 12 people.  Well, until I post here that the offer is closed.  How about that?

Current Count: 0 – Updated 30-May-2009

Zebra Bead

I’m really excited about this new zebra bead. I really love the webbing.

Zebra Glass Lampwork Bead

My “Dead” Azalea

I swear that this plant was dead. It had no flowers last year. It had no leaves last year.

This year, it has flowers.  No leaves, mind you, but flowers abound.

Risen from the Dead Azalea

Where There’s Smoke – There’s Fire

… but the smoke may not be exactly where the fire is.

I went to a bonfire at a friend’s house last night and my daughter and I came dragging in at around 1 in the morning.  Considering that I am more of a morning person than a night person that is pretty amazing.  Anyway, because of said morning tendencies, I just went straight to bed when I got home.  Around 3 am, I woke up and there was a very pungent odor of smoke.  I hazily thought that I smelled pretty smokey and maybe I should get up and shower.  I was quite torn.  I was too tired to get up, but the smell was so strong I could hardly stand to breathe.

About 10 minutes went by, and suddenly there was a bright light coming in my window!  I looked outside, and there was a firetruck shining a spotlight into our back yard.  AND the yard was filled with a copious amount of smoke!  (I guess I wasn’t the source of the stench after all.) We do have a fire pit and the spotlight was focused onto it – but we hadn’t had a fire in weeks. That was obviously not the source of the smoke.  After about a minute, the firetruck left.

I was confused, and almost called the fire department.  In my early morning haziness, I thought that to call the fire department in the middle of the night to tell them that we did NOT have a fire seemed, well, rather odd.  I wandered around the house for a couple of hours and finally went to sleep.

We called in the morning; apparently someone in the neighborhood had a bonfire (must have been a good night for fires…), had gone to bed, and the bonfire started a grass fire . That explains the voluminous amount of smoke.  The fire department came, found the grass fire, and just stamped it out.  I’m still not sure why they were inspecting our yard though – maybe they were still looking for the source of smoke at that point.

Our Fire Pit area, desperately in need of a clipping.

Weedy, Unused Fire Pit

Our quite fancy fire observation location, also undisturbed.

Fire Observation Location

This was part of the yard that we had not mowed in a couple of weeks. We did mow this morning, but we carefully avoided things like this:

Half Wild Columbine

Finding Your Voice Workshop – Channeling Mash Up

We had a interesting assignment for the Finding Your Voice Workshop – channeling two artists. Here it is:

You are going to pretend that you are a well known glass-bead artist…mostly pioneers in the movement (also people on my favs list that I threw in for fun)… people whose style is DEFINITELY their own… easily recognizable. You would say that each of these people found their voice… no doubt.

Well… one morning they woke up and found that their “to-do” lists include making beads that “belong” to another beadmaker… beads that THEY are known for. These beads will still need to definitely LOOK like bead artist 1 (who you are channeling) but should definitely be the style of beadmaker 2.

Oh, yes. This was a really fun assignment. I loved looking at some of the artists’ work. I’ve been lampworking for more than 6 years, and was not familiar with all of these artists. Yes, shame on me! I chose to be Sylvie Lansdowne (nothing like trying to be the teacher’s pet) making a Kathy Johnson bead.  Sylvie makes whimsical mermaids and fairies with cute decorations, and Kathy makes realistic horses.

I present the result of this experiment: the MerMare.

MerMare - Glass Lampwork Bead

Rosemarie Hanus makes beads too in her home studio.  See these beads at Etsy,  Art Fire, or her Spawn of Flame website.