Thanks, Mini Disc and Random Thoughts

First, I wanted to send out a hearty THANK YOU to everyone who has stopped by over the past couple of days and left a comment on my bellpull ornament finish. My scanner always gets the colors wrong, so it looks a little darker than it truly is, but I am thrilled with it. I love The Sweetheart Tree’s designs, even if this is only the second one I’ve managed to stitch. 😉

We had a pretty rough weekend, so I was glad to have treated myself to some mini disc player accessory purchases on Friday because they came Monday morning! I bought a leather case for $35 and a plastic 6-disc carrier. I wasn’t happy with the price on the case, mostly because I wasn’t looking for leather, I was just looking for a simple belt clip! Everything they have now are arm bands. Look folks, I’m just trying to find something so that I can clip the player to my belt, so that if I get really wrapped up in my music and walk away from my desk still attached, the player doesn’t smash to the floor, open up and dump the disc out. Yes, it is a funny sight and yes, I have done it before. I’d just rather not test how robust the player or the discs are!

So, with the player attached to my hip, and a new set of ear buds ($40 for a pair that fits without hurting my ears after a while – sheesh!) in my ears, I’m in business. I even went home last night and recorded two 1 GB discs and three of the smaller 80 minute discs last night. WOW, did they ever expand the number of CDs you can fit on the smaller discs! Before, I was able to squeeze 5 CDs to a disc, which I thought was pretty good. Now, with the Hi-MD technology, I can fit 16 CDs to a disc! And how many to a 1 GB disc? You don’t want to know. I stopped counting after I was able to fit my entire classical music collection onto one with room to spare.

I am extremely grateful for my music, this week, though. After this weekend, Terry and I have been feeling really down and I’m having trouble concentrating and have to focus on something (anything) or my mind wanders off into unhappy spaces and I start to cry. I found out yesterday that music is the only surefire way to ease my mind and I feel blessed to have that outlet.

And now for my random thoughts. I was reading a post on Debbi’s blog about spiders. I had to laugh because I’m afraid of spiders, so I could totally relate to her post. It gave me chills just thinking about it! Anyway, I just wanted to share something that happened to me yesterday (or was it Sunday night) while I was upstairs working on my computer. I have a stuffed Ty Beanie Baby that is perched on top of my monitor. It’s name it Spinner (yes, it’s a huge spider) and I adopted it because I thought it was appropriate as a web designer to have a mascot named Spinner. Okay, yes, it’s corny. I’m corny. Deal with it. 😆

However, as I’m casually looking up at Spinner the other day, I see a *REAL* spider slowly crawl across the top of my monitor towards it. Of course, I called Terry up to kill it. But, it just struck me as odd that a real spider was crawling across a stuffed one. Was it drawn to Spinner? What is it narcissistic or something? Well, I guess we’ll never know because it’s dead. And I don’t feel bad about it because I warned the spiders when we moved into the house 3.5 years ago that they were not welcome in the house. They can be outside, in nature, where they belong and are a welcome part of the ecosystem. Otherwise, I put my foot down. Or a tissue. Actually, if you read my meme from yesterday, it’s actually Terry who puts his foot down, but … same difference. 😀