donut & hole , originally uploaded by pollyannacowgirl.

Prepare yourselves. Starting tomorrow, the Firefly Express will be exclusively featuring holiday crafts, foods, and activities! So turn your radio dials to the local soft-hits station, and make the miraculous discovery that instead of playing regular James Taylor songs, it will be playing James Taylor's version of "Baby, It's Cold Outside," which even I find painful.

How to rebound from a wasted day? Sometimes it takes me a long time to get my act together (see: my life in general); today it took me the better part of the day to complete and mail four tiny pouches. Other days, I can bust out 50. Being both lazy and self-employed is a tricky combination. I'll be spending the next few days finishing (and by finishing, you, dear readers, know I mean starting) some overdue wholesale orders, doing piles and piles of laundry (post-shower, I have been drying myself with a hand towel, which is not a good use of my time), sending a special package to one of my favorite internet people, Melissa of Hobocamp Crafts, who was featured today in Etsy's Quit Your Day Job series.

While I haven't exactly quit my day job, I'm looking forward to devoting my time, however slowly I may devote it, to creating a handful of new products for the holidays. Let's see how long it takes to thread the needle!

I wasn't allowed to play Nintendo as a child. But I was allowed to play computer games, and play them I did. I grew up on classic shareware and text adventure games, which generally involved extensive reading of descriptions on an otherwise blank screen. My favorite of all was a game simply called "Castle Adventure." You're a guy, in a castle, picking up stuff. There are lots of corridors. Then you die. I never beat Castle Adventure, but it was an awesome game, and now that I'm unemployed, I might take a little walk down memory lane.


I'm taking Peter to see some nerdcore rappers tonight, where we hope to hear MC Frontalot sing a charming song about his own favorite text adventure game.

When things get weird, I can always turn to a little movie magic. This scene from Follow the Fleet has gone down in history as one of the most beautiful things ever filmed. Here it is, repurposed for the uber-trippy and slightly unpleasant film Pennies from Heaven. Enjoy!

Diamond Necklace, originally uploaded by pollyannacowgirl.

Wow. Last week was rough. I lost my cat, my job, and very nearly, my mind. But I came out of it feeling hopeful and full of new ideas.

Well, I didn't really "lose" my job. My temp assignment just ended sooner than I had hoped. In three months, I'd gotten pretty attached to the great people and even the company, which hasn't happened since my 2005 sojourn at Five Cities Medical Imaging. So I'm sad to leave, but such is temp life! (It's kind of like thug life, but with cubicles and free coffee.)

The good news: I put all the extra money I made into Pollyannacowgirl, which means I now have tons of supplies and promotional materials to use for the holiday season and upcoming fairs. The bad news: I won't be buying anything else for a while.

I'm excited to now actually have the time to use all the new stuff I've purchased; although the prospect of not working is terrifying money-wise, it's going to be great to have the holidays free for extreme gingerbread house decorating and cider drinking.

Where's Pollyanna?

pink french dresser, originally uploaded by swanketyswank.

Try to find the purse made by me in this awesome display, created by the wonderful Yabette, owner and proprietor of Swankety Swank in SF. If there was ever a store where the things I make fit in perfectly, it's here. As well as selling jewelry and other art stuff from craftsfolks like myself, Yabette takes old furniture and refinishes it; the end result is always awesome. If I had more room for furniture, I would buy one of her pieces, but as it is, we don't even really have room for a coffee table in our cozy little shack.

I'm in a terrible mood and nothing I have to say is very fun today, so I'm posting this bit of ultimate trippiness for your satisfaction. I was looking for good Edward Everett Horton videos to post, when I discovered the 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland, starring folks like Gary Cooper, W.C. Fields, Charlie Ruggles, and Cary Grant. It's never been released on VHS or DVD, and looks pretty god-awful, but also amazing. Here's Cary as a big awkward turtle. Enjoy!

Cleo

hawaiian cat, originally uploaded by pollyannacowgirl.

Tomorrow we are saying goodbye to our beloved cat Cleo. She had a long, comfortable life in Toronto, Victoria BC, and California. But she's now in a lot of pain, and after numerous trips to and consultations with the vet, it's time.

Cleo came to live with us last Christmas; we didn't expect her to last this long, but she hung in there as long as she could and brought us a lot of joy. Such a sweet, mellow old cat.

I'm going to complete this entry so I don't cry here in the middle of the Palace Hotel.

I still have to upload a bunch of pictures so that I can talk about my busy/weird weekend; while you're anxiously waiting, please enjoy the opening scene from Ernst Lubitsch's 1933 film Design for Living, based on Noel Coward's play of the same name. It's hilarious, dirty, and stars some of the most beautiful and charming people in the movies, ever.