I did it!!! Fixed my computer & managed to save all my files!! I feel like such a PC guru now~!! :D

I could have sworn I posted last week about all my pc troubles but I can't find it now? Weird.


( So I'm going to vent again! )

And then to to put the icing on my super-frustrated, wanting-to-cry, cake - I heard about the Megaupload shutdown (my fingers just typed sh*tdown instead - how appropriate). The drama-watching community is reeling and I really didn't need more potentially lost files weighing on my shoulders. (All of BillaSub's dramas were stored on Megaupload) *sigh*

Edit: And now I can see my original post, back on Dec 28th. Have I really been fighting my PC troubles for that long??

just finished browsing the ebook manga at Barnes & Noble. why is it that the available manga is 85% yaoi and the remaining 15% is harlequin romances mangafied? oh well...

I've been a busy clayer this past month and I am so relieved to get it behind me. I'm taking a break for a bit and planning to focus on finally, FINALLY, finishing the HQ DVD release of ToGetHer. (If I manage to get over my current PC hurdle anyway. See previous post.) Anywho - here's what I've been working on!


Ninjabread men earrings! So kawaii!!!


Snowflake earrings!


My favorites! Candycane Hearts! I ended up making a dozen of these and giving them away to my boss, good friend, siblings, and my mother.

But - the Pièce de résistance is this charm bracelet.
 

I love the poinsettias. They were so much fun to make. Everything else was just not as exciting. When I get the clay back out, I'll probably make a ton of them and just sell them as earrings and charms. 

Oh - and here's a non-clay bonus project I worked on. My good friend and I had a girl's night out to see Breaking Dawn, part 1. (I know, I know - but I loved it anyway, ok?!) And seeing as I'm a Jacob fan, she gave me these little silver wolf charms to make earrings out of. But Jacob isn't a silver wolf so I did a little improvising, a little alcohol ink, and voila!


In the process of designing the charm bracelets, I ended up with quite a few variations of the charms. 
( Here's the rest of them. )

The most horrific of computer-related horrors has happened to me. We went away for Christmas weekend and our first night back I turned on the PC to balance the checkbook. Everything went fine and as soon as it was balanced, I logged out of the bank and started browsing android apps for potential side-loading on my NEW NOOK TABLET Hubby surprised me with at Christmas!!! (Eee!!! How much do I love him!!?) Anyways, I had about 4 tabs open and my computer suddenly rebooted which was odd, to say the least. But I just shrugged my shoulders thinking it was weird and reopened Firefox, telling it to retrieve my 4 tabs. It was only open a minute or two when the Firefox window closed and a new Firefox window opened with two tabs - one stating that my Video Downloadhelper Add-on had updated, and the other listing my 4 previous tabs asking me to select which specific ones I wanted reopened as there was obviously something wrong.  I decided to avoid the one Android App APK page I had been browsing as it was the only site I had never been to before and my Firefox problems appeared to be fixed.  I shut down the PC for the night and everything was peachy.

Then about an hour later I needed something and went to boot it back up. Only the computer froze immediately - it didn't even get to the Windows logo - I have the Dell logo and the status bar at the bottom freezes halfway - and a thin strip of red color flickers across the very top of my screen! I tried rebooting and got the standard "this computer is having issues - want to try repairing?" message. I told it to go ahead and an hour later my PC announced it could not repair the problem. But scrolling through the list of tests it had performed, everything seemed to have gone ok. 

I decided to try restoring, picking a point about a week before. No good. Ok, let's try the point before that. No good. Before that? Nu-uh. :(

Now this is a fairly brand-new pc - a parting gift from my father-in-law just before he passed away in April. So I hunt around for the Windows disc but all I can find is Hubby's Vista but I know my PC is Windows 7, 64 bit. So I call my brother-in-law who mailed the PC to me after they purchased it at Best Buy. Ah, seems like it didn't come with a Windows disc. But my father-in-law paid extra for a system-restore disc or some such when they purchased it. Brother-in-law is just having a little trouble locating said disc and, of course, it never occurred to me to make one myself before I had problems... Hmm...

I've found a couple sites where I can pay to download and burn a system-restore disc. All these sites used to be free until a month ago - grrr, Microsoft - but at least I'm not 100% out of options. But I'm thinking maybe Brother-in-law can attempt making a disc on his PC (if he even has Windows 7, 64 bit), and upload the image for me to make my own. Of course, he's incommunicado today. And everyone else I know either has Vista or Macs. *sigh* 

Fortunately, I keep almost everything on my external drives. Except I'm pretty sure most of my ToGetHer sub files are on the PC itself. And I was planning to finish the HQ DVD rerelease this month!! :( :( :( 

Just one word - Finally!!!

Annie got a gun! I haven't even finished the episode yet but she grabbed a gun. Finally!

Can't believe I've only seen this posted at Ockoala's blog but Ouran already has a teaser trailer?! Geez, the drama only just ended - they really must be filming fast! Though the trailer really only seems to show one small segment of the movie so manybe that's all they've filmed so far? Either way, since the drama ended right when Tamaki & Haruhi began to get an awareness of their feelings, the movie, of course, has to bring in the conflict of a 3rd party. So new characters are AKB48’s Shinoda Mariko (love interest for Tamaki) and 2PM’s Nichkhun, playing a business man older brother of Mariko’s character. The youtube trailer seems to be blocked in the US but here it is on tudou.

Hubby's brother came up to visit for a couple weeks in October. It was
terrific to see him doing so well after all he's been through. I think he
really enjoyed his visit, too. Once he recovered from *the food poisoning
we managed to give him his first day*!!

Here's the sordid tale: we pick him up from DIA, dashed across Denver to
try to get to Casa Bonitas before they closed at 9pm, literally walking in
as they lock the doors and ate a late dinner - I think there was only one
other family there period, that's how late we were. He had the fajitas
which were sizzling when they were served, though of course, the veggie
toppings were not. The next morning we ate breakfast at our hotel - he had
waffles & cereal. We hit the town for a little bit and he pushed himself to
hard, wore himself out, and we returned to the hotel around 12ish, picking
up lunch at McDonalds and he just had a chocolate shake. 3 hours later, he
was the sickest person I think I've ever seen. It got downright scary! I
ended up running to Target to get him some meds which helped a little but
basically he was up every 30 minutes until around 3am!! I'm convinced it
was food poisoning as it was so violent but so short-lived - he was fine
the next day. But which of the meals gave it to him? Weird. It sucked,
though, cause we were only in Denver the one day and spent most of it in
the hotel or right around it. Ever tried to give someone a little privacy
when you're sharing a hotel room? Not easy. Munchkin and I spent a lot of
time at the playground across the street while Hubby took care of his
brother. But once it got dark we didn't have much choice but to quietly
huddle in the room. We ran out to a quick dinner but didn't want to leave
him alone for very long. It really was scary for a while there.

Btw, Casa Bonitas has a young cashier/matr'd who is the spitting image of a
hispanic Tegoshi Yuya. (Now Casa Bonitas is going to get mobbed by TegoMasu
fangirls - lol) Wish I could have gotten a picture for evidence but
couldn't think of a discreet way to get one. ^_^

Anyway, back to my brother-in-laws visit. It's amazing how well he has
recovered in 3 months but he has a literal hole in his thigh where the
muscle will never grow back from where the bone broke through and they
inserted the pins. It's covered with skin but you can feel it - bizarre. So
he can't walk very far or for very long without hobbling and exhausting
himself while the remaining muscle strengthens to compensate. So there
wasn't a lot we could do during his trip as walking wore him out so
quickly. But that was fine, talking is better for socializing than
activities anyway. And we finally got to see Thor as he brought the DVD
with him (It was great! Especially the Robin Hood/Xena/Jackie Chan line -
lol)

Oh, in other news - had I ever posted about Munchkin's dyslexia? Well, she
is improving by leaps and bounds! She's started learning simple 3-letter
words a few weeks ago and her teachers weren't expecting her to get there
until at least January! And she had a huge rhyming breakthrough about a
month ago that made me cry. You have no idea how wonderful it is to see
your beautiful child finally grasp the concept of rhymes after months of
working. Heck, her 1st grade teacher told me he almost cried a few weeks
ago when he wrote something on the board and she carefully copied the
entire sentence down, letter by letter. It's such a little thing but makes
me so proud of her! She wants to read so badly and has started writing
stories at night on her coloring pages, asking me how to spell various
words. If she keeps this up, she might be caught up with the majority of
her class before the school year is over!

I finished the live-action Ouran Host Club last night and it was fantastic.
I loved, loved, loved it! But I'll save my ravings about it for a dedicated
post, maybe tomorrow I'll have the time. I'm getting over a cold and think
I'm going to crash until Hubby gets home from work.

A while back I was playing around with some glow-in-the-dark clay and made a little pumpkin charm. Well, a tourist saw it where I had it displayed at the pizza shop at work and not only bought it, she commissioned a set of earrings & a necklace with the same glow-in-the-dark pumpkins and also ghosts. Now, Hubby & I don't celebrate Halloween but that's a personal conviction, and since it was for something cute, I didn't have a problem making these items for her.  All the materials used are high-quality polymer clay & sterling silver. I sold the set for $45. It turned out so cute my mother ordered an identical set & several coworkers ordered ghost &/or pumpkin charms & earrings.  What do you think?

  

So, in the midst of our move across town, I also decided it was time to rearrange my office at work. Halfway through dragging my desk to the other side of the room and getting my computer all hooked up again, I somehow managed to knock the cheap plastic clock off the wall. The battery pack fell off the back, thereby setting the hour/minute/second hands free and since I had to take it all the way apart in order to get it back together I decided why not print a little something out and make it a more fun clock while I was at it.  I found an adorable anime-type picture of some kawaii nekos and here is the end result.  I only have a black & white printer at work and our color printer at home recently went caput so I will reprint it in color someday and at that time I will probably tweak the kanji/romaji to make it a little more legible. What do you think?