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Good lord. I just spent the last hour or so getting caught up from day 5 to day 13. Now I’m ready for a nap! LOL Dang, this gets to be a lot of work!
(and I have no idea either…)
…wait…actually, I think I do. Hmm….
February 27, 2012 at 7:36 pm in reply to: February 2012 Grab Bag Young Poads–post their arrivals! #874968Mine was signed! Yours must’ve escaped before Melody had a chance!
Heehee, she must’ve been excited to come see me! :bigsmile:
Must have! Mine was signed on both pad and back of the poad card as well, so you might want to contact Susie.
She’s a lovely little thing; I bet you won’t have any trouble trading her.
I just asked my mom, because it sounded familier. We had a cat that had a urine blockage. He ended up with crystals in his urine. After taking him to the vet, they were told to look into changing our cat’s diet, so we did and he didn’t have any more problems with blockage after that. She says dogfood can cause urine blockages in cats too. Our cat lasted until he died of old age.
THIS. This this this. I’m still dealing with a migraine, so my head’s not really clear, but I’d swear a lot of these cases in cats are food related. See if you can find anything online; the book “The New Natural Cat” has a LOT of info on feeding for specific health conditions, and it’s helped me with two cats in renal failure. I’d swear there’s info on crystals in there too, just can’t put my hands on the book right now.
Loads of positive vibes headed your way!
February 26, 2012 at 7:44 pm in reply to: February 2012 Grab Bag Young Poads–post their arrivals! #874846Personally, I wouldn’t mind having another one. So I’ll be looking for someone who doesn’t care for theirs and wants to sell. I love mine and wouldn’t want to trade her!
I’d like at least two more myself, but finances are probably not ideal for it. (doable, but other priorities *should* take precedence–we’ve all be there, LOL) Otherwise, I’d be sending out a number of “if you ever decide to sell” PM’s already! 🙂 So many unique poads, there hasn’t been one yet that I didn’t like.
February 25, 2012 at 11:47 pm in reply to: February 2012 Grab Bag Young Poads–post their arrivals! #874786Aaarrrrgggghhhh! I only wish I could afford to have them all!
*adds “learn to paint” onto list of “things to get around to eventually” so I could at least do a batch of my own PYO something-or-others*
And because I should be off doing chores…here’s what happens in my office when I’m not around:
Allestra’s still trying to master the iPad, and now she’s teaching her new minion. First “Angry Birds”, eventually the world. I’d better lock down my Amazon account before these two go on a shopping spree…
February 25, 2012 at 9:54 pm in reply to: February 2012 Grab Bag Young Poads–post their arrivals! #874763Dark brown eyes.
That was the 2 minutes of sun we had today! It’s been raining all day. LOL
We have hail. Sigh.
I don’t think I’ve seen the dark brown, I’ll have to go look at some of the others.
February 25, 2012 at 9:47 pm in reply to: February 2012 Grab Bag Young Poads–post their arrivals! #874761OMG I finally did it!
Woo hoo! Now we’ll see more Melody pics on the forum! 🙂
Goofing off while trying (probably unsuccessfully) to really capture my GB Young Poad’s coloration during the five minutes of dry weather we’ll probably see for the next week. LOL
A poad’s eye view of…well, a poad!:
(Yes, that’s actually a fisheye lens on my iPhone, silly as it sounds!)
February 25, 2012 at 1:41 am in reply to: February 2012 Grab Bag Young Poads–post their arrivals! #874703My friend’s cat name is “Mine” XD you should go with it! I always thought it was a cute name.
LOL! I suspect my youngest cat calls me “Mine”. She cops some serious attitude whenever my husband gets near me.
Is yours still showing delivery for tomorrow? Now that I’ve seen one closeup, I want to see them all. The detail and the vibrance of the colors just wasn’t all that clear on the livestream. In person, it’s so clear how much work went into these.
February 25, 2012 at 1:19 am in reply to: February 2012 Grab Bag Young Poads–post their arrivals! #874698Thanks, Adaneth & Branzy, for finding her on the main photo, I think you’re right. She’s not pictured in any of the closeups, but that sure looks like her up in that corner.
Its been pouring all day, so even without the headache, I couldn’t have gotten any good natural light pics, but I’ll take her outside for some the first chance I get.
Any ideas for names are welcome. Allestra’s calling her “Mine,” but that’s her general response to everything on the desk. LOL
From what I’ve seen, dog shows in general are just one big stressor. It’s been a long while since I’ve been to one; I hit several in one year while deciding on the right standard schnauzer breeder to go with (and then to get my fix while I sat on the wait list for our first pup), and the barely controlled chaos of them was pretty amazing to an outsider. So much politics going on behind the scenes, and professional handlers who ranged from very nice to completely obnoxious. Yeesh. I don’t envy you.
Agility, on the other hand, was even more chaotic, but it was a lot of fun on both sides of the arena, and from behind the camera. Photographing agility is like any other sports photography; fast paced and fun, as long as you know where to point the camera. LOL Unfortunately my divorce ended Kaya’s chances of getting fully trained on that score, and her “brother” (who’s actually her half nephew? Cousin once removed? Bloodlines are nutty.) is both as dumb as a box of rocks, and just about as coordinated. Agility is not in his future. I regularly tell him, “Your father (K’s half brother) took Best of Breed at Westminster, and I don’t think you inherited ANY of his good points.” And he just looks at me and goes, “Food? Pets? No? OK, I’ll go bark at the cats again. Or maybe steal something else to give to my friend the tree.” The other day, it was a knitting project, complete with wooden needles. Hubby just followed the trail of yarn out the dog door…
And there’s a frustration scream for you: This dog has lived with the same two cats for over three years. Why are they still so endlessly fascinating? Every day–heck, every hour!–he acts as though he’s never seen them before. And if it has to be that way, can’t he at least be quiet about it???
I miss my Maine Coon. He was the best puppy trainer ever.
Currently I’ve figured out my painting I’ve been having probs with has its deadline bumped up from 3 weeks, to 1 week (Thank you dad for giving me the wrong dates we do a dogshow on! Which is when I give this woman her painting) I have one week to paint and one week to get it back from the printers (Shouldn’t take that logn but I like to buffer that time some)
Now that I’ve run into my deadline, I will crunch time the painting.. I do horribly when I’m pushed to work, but bust out my best work when I run into my deadlines, its backwards, lol!I think there’s a fully justified frustration scream towards Dad in there. 🙂
But yeah, there’s something about imminent deadlines that brings out the best in a lot of people. At least it’ll be over and done with soon!
Thankies for all the support and good words – It’s really helped… My new mantra is
“I can do hard things”
I may not like to do hard things but they are do-able and in the long run me boyohs and I will be all the better off because I CAN do hard things.
tdm
You will absolutely all be better off in the long run. I guarantee it. You just have to hang on & see it through.
For the times when your mantra isn’t enough, try mine (credited to Abe Lincoln): “I can do anything for 15 minutes.”
I’ll admit, there are days where I have to break it down to FIVE minute increments, but knowing you can deal with small chunks, take a break, and then have at it again (or work on something else) for another fifteen minutes really does make it easier to get through some things.
(And for Kaytana–it even works for creativity issues. Twice a week, there’s a task on my to do list: I’ll set the timer on my phone for fifteen minutes and cope with my current WIP, like it or not, knowing that when the timer goes off, I’m free to escape. Of course, once I’ve gotten through that first push, I tend to silence the timer and just keep going–but on the days where all I want to do is take a sword to the computer, it’s enough to know I did what I’d committed to do! There’s also an odd sense of finally actually achieving a goal, even though the project is far from complete, because for eighteen straight weeks, I’ve done at least two writing sessions a week. I can’t remember the last time I felt like I’d actually accomplished something, but now, I’ve come so far, just the thought of blowing that record is motivation enough to keep going.)
Count me in with what Hannah & Kiya and Stephanie and purpleturtle said.
And something to note: It’s pretty clear that those arguing the price is too high have never run or been involved at a high level with the financial end of running a manufacturing or other business with employees. Without knowing ANYTHING about Windstone’s gross, profit, or expense numbers, I can tell you their cost of business has gone up every year. How do I know this? Because even your household cost of living has.
–Rent, if you’re a renter. Property taxes if you’re not; never mind that your property may be worth less than when you bought it thanks to this economy.
–Utilities; our energy company raises its prices every single year. So does our city-owned water supply.
–Gas. Hoo boy. Anyone else see that it may hit $5 a gallon this summer?And those are just the expenses we have in common with any given company. Now add in things like Oregon’s minimum wage went up January 1st–great for employees, but always a bit hard on payroll budgets. Insurance and taxes on businesses are crazy in most areas–and you carry a lot more kinds of insurance as a business owner, paying into State and sometimes private Workman’s Comp/Liabilty programs, carrying high overall coverage in case you get sued, and oh yeah, that flood came a bit close, so flood insurance goes up too. (And business taxes just plain suck. Never try to own a small business in Washington state.)
That’s just a small smidgen of the expenses, we’ve barely scratched the surface. But then take those raises in cost that are applicable to all businesses, not just yours. Your suppliers are all coping with the same problems…so just the bare supplies to manufacture your product all go up. Shipping rates to get those supplies to you go up as well; see that note on gas prices above.
And none of this covers things like one of the office computers dying suddenly and needing replacement–only to find that the only current operating system the new models use isn’t compatible with your accounting/invoicing/payroll software. And the new software isn’t backwards compatible with the old machines. Or there are manufacturing equipment breakdowns. Or a supplier goes out of business and you have to find a new one, which means production of some of your most popular items for sale slows to a crawl–no profit coming from that part of the business until that’s fixed. You have to keep a financial cushion on hand for stuff like this.
So the widget you make that was priced at $40 six months ago and made you a smidgen of profit after expenses, you now lose money on. And this is why it makes me mad when people who don’t understand the economics of running a business on this scale argue wholly from emotion and say, “but it’s the same paint and materials, the price needs to go all the way back down to what it was.”
Will another rise in the GB’s price take me out of the market for them? Definitely. I still support it if the powers that be deem it necessary, because I know all too well how hard it is to run a small to medium sized business. I was stunned to find Windstone still around 20 years after I saw my first dragon in a retail store. I want it to stay around as long as Melody continues to want to run with it, and beyond, if that’s what she chooses.
For Melody & crew: I look at the lap dragon on my desk, and I honestly cannot express the joy it brings me every time I so much as glance at it. I look at the male sitting next to her, the male sculpt that I had to put off buying for 20 years when life got in the way, and I am so thrilled to have him now. I want another generation to experience that. Go Windstone! Do whatever it takes to stay in business and lead comfortable lives while doing so. If I personally can’t afford something, well, I’ll either save up, or live without. But I’ll keep promoting your work to others regardless, because I am truly grateful for what you do!
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