[Mimi]

What a great picture! 😀

DM, thanks for thinking of me. I really appreciate it.

And BDW, thanks for sending me the email! I never would’ve seen it if you hadn’t emailed me. Work has a been (and continues to be) a complete madhouse, and I haven’t been on the forum for ages. It seems like I barely have time to eat and sleep nowadays. *sigh*

I hope you guys are doing well!

[Mimi]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

[Mimi]

Thanks guys!

[Mimi]

Thanks everyone! I just worked on my birthday since it was on Friday, and waited until Saturday to celebrate by going to the Dickens Christmas Fair with my boyfriend. They’ve had this fair in my area every holiday season for many years, but I’d never gone before. It was a lot of fun, and they had a lot of food. The food was better than typical fair food, and we ate a lot! Our favorite place was Cuthbert’s Tea Shoppe, where we had scones, a Devon puff (its a kind of muffin), toffee pudding, and hot cocoa. If you guys are in the California Bay Area in December, I recommend that you check this fair out. Its definitely worth seeing at least once!

Sorry I haven’t been on the forum for quite some time. Work has continued to be crazy this year, and the past half year was completely insane. I’m glad that I’m FINALLY on vacation now!

Starbreeze & Twindragonsmum: I love the squirrel pictures!

Ski: wow, what a coincidence! So what did you and your husband do to celebrate his birthday?

[Mimi]

Aww….that’s adorable!

Thanks Snap!

[Mimi]

Keplilly wrote:

mimitrek wrote:

Looking forward to seeing your comparison pictures — and your updated lap council picture!

the council met today because I had to dust the shelves. No copper lilac yet but everyone else is here. 😀

And someone wanted a gold comparison? (yes, i know she is a little dusty I am in the middle of dusting and my can of canned air gave out before I got to her.)

Beautiful collection of laps! Your circle is getting ever wider. 🙂

Its great to see the darker gold and buttery gold comparison picture…you really do need to have both pieces in the same picture to get an accurate color comparison. I’ve pasted below the pictures of my darker gold lap and Wolfen’s buttery gold lap (from my post in the first page of this thread) for comparison purposes. It looks like differences in how those two pictures were taken makes the contrast between the darker gold and buttery gold seem somewhat greater than it actually is.

mimitrek wrote:

My preference in color schemes is much the same as Lokie’s, so this version of gold is by far my favorite. And its really lucky that my gold fledgling is from the first batch which was a darker gold, so the lap and the fledgling are well matched. Here’s a picture of them together:

And for comparison purposes, here’s one of Wolfen’s pictures (from this thread) of her buttery gold lap and her production gold male:

The three versions of the gold color scheme are so different! 😮

[Mimi]

Keplilly wrote:

Here is an old lap council pic you can see a little there. I’ll have to look and see if I can find my old comparison pics…or take a new one lol.

Thanks! Its good to see that picture again. I’d forgotten how many laps that you have! 😮

Looking forward to seeing your comparison pictures — and your updated lap council picture!

[Mimi]

starbreeze wrote:

Mimi, I’m so happy for you!! I know you’ve wanted that Lap for a long time. Way to go Lokie!!! 8)

purpledragonclaw wrote:

Congratulations mimitrek, on your new lap. I’m trying to picture a herd of buffalo trying to trample a Windstone box now! Syn, congratulations on the sale! And Lokie, that was very kind of you. Mimitrek, you’re right: the variations on the Gold coloration are so different!

lamortefille wrote:

How lovely, Mimi!

Thanks everyone! 🙂 I’m really happy to have her!

Purpledragonclaw: judging from some of the boxes that I’ve gotten, I think every shipping service keeps a small herd in the back for occasional use. 😀

[Mimi]

Please add syn789 to the list. She sold me the gold lap in this thread. She had posted very detailed, accurate pictures, and the piece was in mint condition, exactly as described. It was shipped quickly, and packed so well that a herd of buffalo couldn’t have damaged it! 😀

[Mimi]

Keplilly wrote:

I have one of the original brassy 10. It is so pretty!

I totally agree! I’m really happy that I finally have one too! 😀

By the way, do you still have the pictures that you posted a long time ago of your buttery gold lap and your darker gold lap together? If you do, it’d be great if you could post them again here.

[Mimi]

A big thank you to Lokie from me also! 🙂 Thanks to Lokie’s sharp eyes and great memory, I finally have this gold lap that I’ve wanted ever since I found out about the first batch of 10 shortly after they were sold in 12/05…which was ~2 months prior to my finding out about Windstone’s auctions on Ebay! I’d just about given up hope of ever getting one after Keplily beat me (by half an hour!) to the one that appeared on Ebay ~2.5 years ago. And then along came this lap, which I hadn’t even known about since I’ve been on the forum so little lately. By chance, the initial buyer of this lap decided not to go through with the sale…Lokie made a post…syn789 decided to follow up…and you can guess the rest!

Thanks to syn789 for selling me such a beautiful piece! The gold lap is in absolutely perfect condition, and was packed so well that a herd of buffalo couldn’t have damaged it! 😀

My preference in color schemes is much the same as Lokie’s, so this version of gold is by far my favorite. And its really lucky that my gold fledgling is from the first batch which was a darker gold, so the lap and the fledgling are well matched. Here’s a picture of them together:

And for comparison purposes, here’s one of Wolfen’s pictures (from this thread) of her buttery gold lap and her production gold male:

The three versions of the gold color scheme are so different! 😮

[Mimi]

I think you can’t, because the fuzzies are eitther hermaprhoditic or asexual. 😀

[Mimi]

I’d like to put my name in for the red fire OW trade! Your griffin and wolf would like some company. 🙂

[Mimi]

Wow, that’s amazing! We need more cats like that! 😀 And those baby squirrels are adorable!

Thanks BDW!

[Mimi]

Wow, this sounds very similar to a problem that I had many years ago. I also woke up after 2-3 hours each night even if I took some kind of sleeping pill, and my doctor also did all of the tests and verified that it wasn’t a physical problem. But that was what I’d expected, because I was pretty sure that my sleeping problem was caused by work related stress for a couple of reasons: there were things at work that were causing me severe stress, and my sleeping problem improved dramatically on weekends and when I was on vacation.

It sounds like your sleeping problem is also caused by anxiety which is caused by work related stress and/or other anxieties (which may be subconscious and triggered by the work related stress). It sounds like you’re waking up as soon as your exhaustion level has been reduced to the point where your anxiety level is able to wake you up (which is pretty much what had happened to me).

If you’re pretty sure that the cause of your problem isn’t physical, I think the first thing that you need to do is to identify what is causing you anxiety. For example, if you take vacation for a few days and completely detach yourself from work, does your sleeping problem improve? By the way, since you’ve been seeing a doctor about this problem, s/he should have no problem prescribing a medical leave for a couple of weeks so that you can get away from work and rest, and verify if the stress is indeed work related.

The bottom line is that if your sleeping problem is caused by stress, you need to either change your situation such that your exposure to the things that cause you stress is significantly reduced, or change your perspective so that those things lose their power to cause you stress.

I was able to overcome that sleeping problem by changing my work situation and also by learning various techniques to cope with stress. Nowadays, I occasionally still have problems with waking up in the middle of the night if I’m under a lot of stress, but its nothing like the problem that I had all those years ago. I found these two books to be extremely helpful in overcoming my problem, and I strongly recommend that you take a look at them in the bookstore:

The second book was given to me by a friend of mine who had suddenly started having severe sleeping problems in his early 30’s. In his case, he had underlying anxieties which had built up over time and surfaced when these anxieties were triggered by his work situation at that time. His therapist had him use that book as part of his therapy, and he was able to overcome his sleeping problems in ~1 year.

I suggest that you also take a look at this book, which has good techniques for relaxing and reducing stress:
http://www.amazon.com/Relaxation-Reduction-Workbook-Harbinger-Self-Help/dp/1572245492/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239304650&sr=8-1

One other thing that I’d suggest is that you take some time each evening to search your mind and think about anything that might be causing you anxiety. If there is something, think about what the problem is, what the worst case scenarios are, whether you can accept it if the worst happens, all possible courses of action, and select the best possible course of action. This is a technique that I learned from the first book, and it works really well. Basically, a lot of anxiety disappears once you identify the problem and have a clear course of action. And if you think everything through before you go to sleep, it greatly reduces the chance of it being on your mind and waking you up in the middle of the night. That first book has a lot of other techniques like this which I’ve found very helpful.

The cause of your problem may be different than mine was, but hopefully what I’ve mentioned gives you some insight into your own situation. I know exactly how debilitating this kind of sleeping problem is, and I really hope that you can overcome it.

[Author]

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