Me and the USSC

Brief due today in the United States Supreme
Court. I always sit straighter on days like
today and since I am busy with the Supreme
Court, I obviously have no time for the likes
of you people!

Goodnight Moons

Things were crazy at work on Monday and Tuesday.
Incredible hectic. Someone mentioned it must be the
full moon. I thought it couldn’t be that - they aren’t
crazy on a monthly basis - so maybe this week’s moon
was a Blue Moon (the rare occurrence of two full
moons in one month OR the Third full moon in a
season with four full moons) but nope - it wasn’t that
either.

This week’s moon is the Harvest Moon - the full moon
closest to the Autumnal Equinox. This month’s moon,
and next month’s moon, rise about 30 minutes faster
than the other moons (something to do with the narrow
angle of the sun’s eliptical path) so there is no period of
darkness between sunset and moonrise. Next month’s
moon, the Hunter’s Moon, will be similar: Rising early,
appearing extra large (an illusion) and appearing more
colorful (due to being seen through lower portions of
the atmosphere, e.g. pollution).











It turns out that every month’s moon has a name:

November = Snow Moon
December = Winter Moon
January = Wolf Moon
February = Ice Moon
March = Storm Moon
April = Growing Moon
May = Head Moon
June = Mead Moon
July = Hay Moon
August = Corn Moon

Next Purchase: Used Boeing 747

Make has a good question going here.
What would you do with a used Boeing 747?
(apparently they are about to go on
sale as they are put out to pasture).

I would use one as a bookmobile
or make a long teardrop trailer out of it.










If I used it as a bookmobile I could quit
my job and just drive around and share books
all day.














I could do it until I was 90 like
Myrtle Peel.

And I could drive by people who have the bass
in their cars turned up really loud and, as
bookmobile librarian, I could shush them.












And in the five minutes it took me to
come up with those ideas, I've started
to really want a used Boeing 747

Moscow Night Life

Woke up too late to post this morning and
it's busy at work today so thought I'd give
you this photo of Moscow night life to ponder
till I have time to post.














I found this postcard online and it really
was taken in Moscow Idaho, but in 1954.

Joann's Fabrics and Cia's Palette

I’m not a big fan of Joann’s Fabrics. They are
stingy with their fabric for one thing. I always
feel like I am getting shorted an inch or so on
the yardage I buy. They also have a surfeit of
surly employees. At the Joann’s in Moscow (the
only fabric store in town) there is one nice lady
with an accent; everyone else is surly.

Then there is this story:

“Jo-Ann Fabrics Refuses To Let Customer Use Bathroom,
Even As She Suffers Diarrhea Right In Front Of Them”

Luckily I found a great fabric store online: Cia’s
Palette.

I received my first order this weekend and the
fabrics are great.

My favorites are this paisley floral:









and this cute dog print:













She has a huge selection of very cool fabrics.
And very nice service to boot.

Brocante Home's Reading List

Brocante Home has a great reading list on her blog.
She lists the book and very considerately gives us
a sentence or two about the book and/or the writer.

Her list includes:
Sunbathing in the Rain by Gwyneth Lewis
I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
What Do I Do When I Want To Do Everything?
by Barbara Sher


I am currently reading The Club Dumas by Arturo
Perez-Reverte. On deck are two interesting non-
fictions: The Historian As Detective and The
Children's Blizzard.

First Edition

I'm a book lover. And I have a couple of nice
first editions that I am saving for my children's
inheritance. Nothing hugely valuable - not yet
anyway. I'm am also a Joyce lover* so my dream
is to own a first edition of Ulysses - or any
Shakespeare and Co edition.

So I was very pleased to find this first edition
on eBay for $4.95.

















That pretty Greek flag blue of a Ulysses first
edition. This one, which arrived yesterday is
the size of a quarter. It's a mini first edition.


* (you can read more about that at my blog Nosey
Flynn which is readable but having some graphics
problems).

Envirosax

My Envirosax arrived yesterday ! I first
heard about them on Not Martha's site. ( I think)
They come all rolled up on a card like this:



















You just unsnap them and off they come. Unrolled
they look like this:




















On the back they give directions on how to fold the
bag back up to its tiny snapable size:

















My favorite part of getting this was when I took
the sack off and saw that they had tied it on with
STRING! No plastic holders. I love string!!



















Envirosax come individually or in packs of five.
I bought three individually because I liked several
from each of the sets, but no set in its entirety,

My Retirement Plan

My retirement plan is to work as long as I can stand it,
then quit my job and live aboard a boat. Have I ever
owned a boat? No. Do I know how to sail? No. But I
need to live close to the water (living in Idaho has
taught me that) and I think a boat is the only way I can
afford to do so.














So I’m on the lookout for books, blogs and websites about
liveaboards. So far I like We Live On a Boat. And here’s
a site that tells you how to do things when you live on a boat.

And then there’s The Wanderer - a blog created solely for
the purchase of selling my dream boat to someone who
perhaps has the same plan that I do.

Gone Shoppin'

So for my Etsy purchase today I went with
a stamp from SweetPaperie which is similar
to the one below. I’m going to have a stamp
made for my Tienda Viva site which is doing
much better than my Etsy shop. I may end up
dropping the Etsy site later.













SweetPaperie has a wide variety of cool stamps
which you can use for your family’s address, your
web site and other things. There’s even a “Thank
you” stamp which includes one’s website. All very
cool!

Etsy Shopping

Tomorrow is PAYDAY and I am going to allow
myself a modest purchase on etsy. I’m considering
this Guinness soap, though I may wait and use it
for christmas presents. (If you shower with Guinness
soap before work - do you come to work smelling
like a brewery?)







Then there is this very nice knitting bag, but the price
tag puts it above the range of modest, I think. I’ll
shop around today and let you know what I decide on.



















I think I’m going to buy something from Etsy every
payday, maybe start on holiday shopping now and
have it finished early. I consider Etsy a good cause
since in my imagination - it consists of people like
me : single moms (or single women) doing what
they can to get by or doing what they can to try
and get out of a negative work situation. I’m sure
that’s true for some Etsy sellers at least.

What I Do

I usually post before I come to work in
the mornings but today I am writing from
work. I've never mentioned what exactly
I do in my blog, I think because my job
doesn't really fit with the arts elements
of Gracehoper. I work at a Capital Habeas
Unit. All our clients are convicted
murderers on death row. Some are guilty,
some are not, some are crazy, some are
mentally retarded. Our goal is to, at the
very least, get their sentences changed to
life in prison.

It all involves lots of paperwork, lots of
client calls, some investigation, lots of
research - legal and otherwise and lots of
little details common to any kind of office.

That's what I do.

Obscene Calls - Just Part of the Job

Here’s some interesting telephone operator trivia I found
out from a cousin while doing genealogical research.

One of my G-G Aunts was a telephone operator before 1901.
(She married in 1901 and telephone operators were not
allowed to work after they were married). Her name was
Ella Louise and according to my cousin Robert Edmondson:

“I did locate G/Mo's eldest sister, Ella Louisa, in Greensboro ,
a boarder in the home of a "Stack" family. I can recall G/Mo
talking about people being very naughty, when talking to the
telephone operators..... how the female operators would get
all sorts of risque calls from anonymous men”























I looked into the early telephone operator careers and while I
did not find mention of these early obscene phone calls, I did
find this about their pay:

“A telephone girl starts in as a student at $3 a week, listening
in at first, and finally taking the case in slack hours. She is
raised gradually according to her capacity until in two or
three years, if she is bright and quick, she reaches the top
of operatorhood, $9 a week. The Supervisors get about a
dollar a week more, the pay of monitors is $12. An expert
chief operator can rise to about $18. No girl has yet risen
from student to the heights of ordinary operatorhood in
less than a year and a half ”.

$3 a week - that's $12 a month or $144 a year. Geez Ella Louise.

Back to Work

Back to work today. I saw something on PBS
yesterday about Lao Tse and the Tao Te Ching
and am working on changing my thoughts, inluding
my thoughts about work. so instead of telling
you that I am unhappy to be going back to work this
week, I thought I’d tell you that it will be nice to
see some of the people who work there who are
nice and that I’m thankful to be employed and making
a living.

Lao Tse is pictured below. I think he looks a little
like Yoda.

Busy Day

Busy day today. Will be posting my
ViPs (Vintage iPod Pouch)on etsy and hope to
get 5 more finished.



















Also, new shipment of kurtas came in and they
are available on ebay or Tienda Viva. Still have
a few colors to add - light blue, white and black.



















and I’m also placing gift bags for sale on Etsy -
small paper bags in white and brown with various
old soap, perfume and fixed labels affixed.































Also want to let you know about a giveaway by
Fresh Vintage in honor of a strange
occurance: meeting a reader of her blog by chance.
I am especially interested in those plastic blue
candle holders.

Sandpoint-Pretty but Pricey

The Sandpoint portion of my trip yesterday was
VERY disappointing. Lake Pend Oreille is beautiful
- no dispute there but the town itself is geared
towards the rich tourist and there is little of
the lake that can be accessed by the public (at
least near Sandpoint). Private property, ritzy
hotels take up the majority of the coastline though
I think at the eastern portion of the lake one
might have better luck.

A nice but modest house goes for 650,000. I saw a
cute blouse an a downtown store for $240.00. A
cute rayon top was going for $149.00. The Cedar
Street Bridge shopping area - a pretty space for
stores which reaches over a portion of the lake -
is over 50% empty, priced too high for people to
afford to open a business.

It was a little like a small Beverly Hills with a
lake.

Next time I'll skip the town and head over to Hope,
Priest River or Coolin.

Lake
Pend
Oreille

Day One

Today - day one of vacation. Spent all
morning cleaning and put up my Bach hooks.

Tomorrow off to Coeur d'Alene and Sandpoint.
Taking my computer and plan to get some
writing done. I am so happy not to be at
work.


C d'A








Sandpoint

Celebrate Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day!!

Being from North Carolina, I was raised
to take Labor day seriously. I still get
riled when I hear people dissing unions.
Things are mostly better now for the
working man and woman than a few years ago,
but they wouldn’t be that way - nor would
they stay that way - if it wasn’t for unions.
One of the best union movies out there is
Matewan. It’s one of my top five movies of
all times. You’ll begin to see the importance
of unions, get to hear Hazel Dickens sing,
fall in love with Chris Cooper and well ...
being a Southern lady, I can’t say what you’ll
want to do with David Strathairn.