Level 42

Happy b-day to my old college roommie Wendy, who turns 42 today and is/was a fan of the band Level 42.

I made her this card, which says, "Your friends from the 80s couldn't help noticing that 'there is something about you' that's different today. Could it be that you have finally reached Level 42?"

Feel free to print, fold, and send to your 42-year-old friends (probably the only friends who remember this band).

Vive la Révolution!

As I mentioned in a previous post or two, I have been wanting guillotine earrings since I read about them in 1989 in a magazine article about the French Bicentennial. They were the Holy Grail in my quest to have earrings for every occasion. Until this year, I only had Eiffel Tower earrings to wear on Bastille Day, but I didn't feel like they quite cut the Grey Poupon. I finally acquired the guillotine earrings shown in the photo from ebay; however, I would really like to know what the antique ones from France look like, so if you ever come across them, do let me know.

Today is Bastille Day (the storming of the Bastille is seen as the symbolic start of the French Revolution), and I finally get to wear guillotine earrings, but it is also my last day of employment at a company where I first worked 19 years and 9 months ago. I have been unhappy in my position there for many years, and I finally got a new job.

Thus, today is a day when two of my longest held desires are fulfilled. By literally fulfilling the one desire, I also symbolically celebrate the other. Vive la liberté! Let them eat cake.

Flying Saucer Earrings

I picked up these UFO earrings at the UFO Museum in Roswell, NM a couple of years ago when a friend hooked me up with VIP passes to the annual UFO Festival. The festival seems to coincide with the Fourth of July because it commemorates events that happened in late June and early July 1947 in an area north of Roswell, which was the site of a crash landing of, depending on whom you believe, an alien spacecraft or crafts, a weather balloon, a top secret U.S. high altitude surveillance balloon, or Soviet aircraft carrying grotesque, 12-year-old human Guinea pigs meant to scare the bejesus out of us. (You can always blame anything on a Commie plot!)

I greatly enjoyed my trip to Roswell. I made myself a silver duct tape skirt just for the occasion. They have an alien-themed parade. There is no such thing as traffic, and parking is not a problem. It's a cute little town, what with its alien-head-shaped street lights, but you can tell its tourism is soon to take off even more. The museum plans to move to a bigger location, and I heard a rumor that a UFO-themed amusement park is in the works.

If it weren't so dang dry and far away from a beach, I might consider moving to Roswell and setting up some kind of cute little shop with a punny name. Like the Cup & Saucer coffee shop or the Crash Here Bed & Cocktail. The place is practically screaming for a Flying Saucer franchise.

If you go to the convention, see if you can find some UFO Dip: a tin of dry spices, created by some enterprising Roswell residents, that you mix with sour cream. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have a website, but the stuff is truly out of this world!

Spectacular Earrings

These earrings are good for the Fourth of July, but they are getting kind of old and not as brilliant, so I could really stand to get some new ones. I also have these flag earrings and several stars that also work for the occasion. Have a safe and happy Independence Day!

Origami Earrings

Although it is Canada Day and I am actually wearing maple leaf earrings, today's post is a lovely pair of origami crane earrings that I received just now in the mail as a surprise from a friend.

I am also kinda surprised I hadn't made myself some origami earrings by now. When I was in college, a roommate once brought to me as a souvenir from Germany a book about the Japanese art of origami. Folding paper into 3D shapes is hard enough to learn when the diagrams are in 2D, but it's even harder when the instructions are in a foreign language.

Nevertheless, I now habitually make lotus flower coasters out of napkins and fold beer labels into cranes while sitting at the bar. I do it absent-mindedly, hardly thinking about it, but it's a good way to keep track of how many beers I've had.

Thanks for my newest pair of earrings, Amy! How cool!