Here I was rushing around like a madwoman, trying to get my extruding done and my clay table cleared off before Clay Play Day Saturday/tomorrow, and then I checked in on Facebook and saw an invitation from Jackie to join The Claypen Chat on Polymer Clay Central (which I know is always on Thursday).  Hmmm, I never seem to make it to Claypen Chat, so I rushed over to do that and. . . first of all, remember that reformatting my computer got a week or so ago?  I didn't have JAVA something or other and I need JAVA whatever to go on chat, so I quickly download that, but. . . JAVA doesn't play well with Google Chrome (although it says right on the thing they're working on it, LMAO).  I finally got into the chat, but couldn't get the website, with the pictures, to load.  So I disconnected from chat and changed my browser back to Internet Explorer and then went back to chat and tried to reconnect.  Guess what happened next. . . it connected, I was able to get the pictures and had a wonderful hour or so with a great bunch of other polymer clay addicts, from all over the world.  Thanks to any of you who read this, I had a great time.  In the middle of Claypen chat I realized it must not be Friday and checked the computer clock/date thingie and sure enough, it was Thursday.  With Mr. C's weird schedule and me not having a schedule, I often lose track of the date, days, etc.  If I ever had to go to the hospital and got asked what day is it, they would think I was really bad off, as I probably couldn't tell them, LOL.....

Then, I started work on the rest of my extrusions, and TA DA, I finished extruding everything, and even got the first part of the eye canes all assembled.

 I know, they don't look much like eyes,
yet, but as I always tell my clay buddies
during clay play day,
just trust me. . . it'll be right when we're done.










So, tomorrow, I need to get my clay desk all cleaned off again to truly get ready for clay play day:
Yuck, what a mess.  I'll put all the like colors together and make new sheets of the combined yellows, greens, blues, turquoises, browns, etc.  I need  everything cleared off by Saturday morning for our clay play day.
So I won't get to reducing the new canes until Sunday.  Then I'll use the Jana Whack Method to reduce them, which is always a good tension reliever.

If anybody in Central IL is ever interested, I host a Polymer Clay Play Day every so often.  We try for once a month, occasionally it is twice and sometimes we miss completely (depends on Mr. C's schedule, our vacations, my sister's schedule etc.)  Our Clay Play Days are always on Saturday and usually go from about 9 to whenever.  People can do whatever they want, but at present, since it's usually just me, my sister, and her best friend and neither of them knows too much about polymer clay, it usually turns into a class, but we sure have a good time.  We play clay all morning, break for lunch (either I provide it, we bring sack lunches, they bring something, or we have a potluck).  Then back to the clay tables.  We have lots of fun and laughs.  This month, weather permitting (Oh yeah, how could I forget, one other item that determines clay play days. . . the WEATHER!!!) we're able to have 2 clay days.

Let's see, did anything else momentous (it should be obvious by now that I live a VERY quiet life, LMAO) happen today?  Yes, I got tons of requests to add friends on Facebook.  That would be great if I could figure out how Facebook works, (laughing at myself here, folks).  I didn't even know I was ON Facebook until my daughter pointed it out to me, DUH!  Now people are sending me 'gifts' and asking me to send them 'gifts' back and I don't have a clue.  B, my daughter, is going to "call you this weekend and walk you through gifts and apps".  I feel so incredibly stupid. . . EVERYBODY is doing Facebook, and I can't figure it out, LOL.  This is also the daughter that is designing my banner and buttons etc. for the blog and signatures etc., isn't that wonderful?  I think so.

I also have a little rant about the State of IL.  As I've pointed out before, we live in the middle of a cornfield; however, we also live on a US Highway.  Our mailbox is across the street from our long driveway, as that's where the Postmaster General says it has to be.  There is a paved shoulder on our section of the highway and our mailbox is set back from that shoulder.  Every year we lose our mailbox to the snowplows at least once, sometimes more (and occasionally to the tractors/combines, but not every year to them).  We go out and if we're lucky the mail hasn't been delivered yet, but sometimes it has and our mailbox and mail (hopefully) are lying in the ditch.  We don't think we've ever actually lost any mail yet, but we can't be sure.  We have a very large mailbox, one of the Rubbermaid kind (hoping it would be less destructible by the snowplows--obviously NOT!) because we do a lot of on-line shopping and get lots of all sizes of boxes.  So, this year Mr. C. has had enough (with a couple of feet of snow and frozen ground, we can't even replace the mailbox lying in the ditch, although he makes a heroic effort with the assistance of Gorilla Brand "duct" tape, LMAO).  So, we wrote to the snowplow people to ask them to talk to their drivers about trying to not hit the mailbox.  They write back that we've written to the wrong place and we need to direct our complaint to the county snow plow people.  So, we write to them, and they politely write back that we've written to the wrong place, since we're on a US Highway, we need to write to the Highway dept.  So, we write to them (fortunately, all on email, so it doesn't take a couple weeks at each place).  The Highway dept writes back that understandably they are a little busy at the moment but they will call us to discuss it.  So, we have our mailbox back in service, carefully (and heavily) duct taped in place, it works for us, it works for the mailman--remember, I can say mailman, he really is a man, at least I think so. . .  Yesterday Mr. C picked up the mail on his way home from work (I'm not goin' out in the cold to get the mail, ) in the dark (since he's working 7 am to 7 pm, he leaves home at 6, in the dark and doesn't get home until about 7:40, also in the dark).  He comes into the house and says, "Did you see 'they' put a new mailbox up for us today?"  Uh, no, what happened to we'll call you to discuss it?  So, I finally had to go out today, to the store for lasagna makings for Clay Play Day and to mail some canes out, and here is this little tiny white standard metal mailbox that a checkbook box order wouldn't fit in, grrr, and our old mailbox now lying in the snow/ditch beside this new one.  They even put in a new post (which it didn't need, the post was still intact).  We didn't want them to replace the mailbox, we just want them to quit hitting it.  So, when I went to the post office I asked the gal at the counter to please apologize to our mailman for the tiny mailbox the state had put up and explained it all to her.  She was about dying laughing, as she said, but you guys get boxes all the time, you NEED the bigger box.  I agreed and she said she'd tell our mailman.  Mr. C says next time we get to town we'll get a big standard mailbox and just screw it in, in place of the tiny mailbox, so I guess it will get fixed eventually.  But it's just one of those little things that nags the daylights out of a person.  They said they'd CALL.  

Oh, and UPS brought me my new keyboard and mouse today.  Mr. C helped me remove the old chewed wired ones and put in the new ones and they are working GREAT (except I'm used to the split ergonomic keyboard and they're really hard to find anymore, so I'm hitting a few wrong keys, but I'll get used to it).  It's still an ergonomic one, called the wave and I like it a lot.  I just type too quickly and then it does multiple key strokes (like a whole row of g or t or h or whatever).  Hopefully we'll get used to each other eventually.  Both this mouse and keyboard are much more responsive than the last two I've had.

So, that's it for my big and exciting day today.  I hope you've had a good day, too.  Good night!