YET! So tired though… We just arrived home from the Season Opener at GM Place [Canucks vs. San Jose] and a couple of hours in the casino. A
perfect Friday night if you ask me… especially ’cause I left the
casino with ALL the money I came in with, played steadily for 3 hours
and had a grand time.

This is just a quick note to say I’m alive and well-ish, just tired. Night all… or should I say MORNING? I will catch you all up tomorrow… or later today LOL!

With the beginning of hockey season comes the inevitable NHL Hockey Pools and my bid to become the winning Poolie for the current season.The two pools I’m participating in this 2006/2007 NHL season are an inter-office and outer-office pool.

The inter-office pool is organized and held by our IT Dept and is a structured ‘pick list’ with ‘10 WILDCARD players’ mix. It means that there isn’t as much competition for players, since we all have the option of picking similar players [or exactly the same as the case may be] and make our selections based on how we think the players in question will perform.

Participating in this kind of pool usually requires a bit of research since you have to weigh your choices per group against each other and evaluate the player’s previous year’s performance against his predicted current season performance. It’s a fine line and complicated dance that usually requires some dumb luck in choosing correctly.  Entry for this pool is usually between $15-20 and you can win hundreds depending on the number of pools/people entered.

The ‘outer-office’ pool I’m participating in is a little different. The group of people involved is mostly fellow employees [many I don’t know, a few I do] and is considered a DRAFT style pool. This means that once a player is selected, that player cannot be selected by anyone else and is removed from the roster of eligible players. It also means that the poolies are way more cutthroat and the actual selection process a lot more interesting. For example…

• We are meeting at a local pub for the DRAFT selection - this means beer, pub food and interaction through the selection process. A structured pick/wildcard pool is generally done in isolation… just you and your Hockey Preview/Predictions magazine.
• Once a player is selected, that player is no longer available. This means that you can royally SCREW your friends and co-workers by stealing the best players and underrated players for your pool team. FUN!!
• It’s a serpentine draft… basically you pick a number out of a hat 1 - 15 for example. The selection order then goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 then backwards 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, then forwards again like a snakes and ladders game… back and forth until all the picks are made.
• The draft selection also means you can steal the BEST players and also get stuck with a lot of CRAPPY players LOL… it is all in your positioning on the serpentine chain. [I like to be in the middle. Being first means you may get the best player, BUT it also means you have to wait the longest for your pick to come back to you and that can really screw you for team selection.]

Either way… my interest in Hockey is always kept more current and my knowledge of NHL players fresher because of the pools. It makes watching the hockey season more fun and you have a vested interest in how your team and players perform.

You may watch your poolie teams climb the ranks to 1st, 2nd or 3rd place if you’ve picked well and earn yourself some bragging rights [particularly if you’re a girl like me]… or you’ll suffer the barbs of co-workers who poke fun at your not so smart choices. Pools makes the season more fun and far more engaging… and it has become a Fall ritual for me and my hubby.

I guess you can say that for me, the true beginning of Fall isn’t the leaves changing color or falling to the ground; it isn’t the cool and sometimes foggy mornings that are warmed to sunny skies; and it isn’t even the arrival of pumpkins and Halloween candies. For me, the true beginning of Autumn is signalled by the arrival of Hockey Pick magazines and team/player research; it’s the annual arrival of the Pool pick-sheet or Draft Day; Autumn is Poolie Season… and truth be told, I love it.

Well, it’s official… there are now less than 4 weeks to Circle Craft and the madness in my studio has begun.

For the next 4 weeks I’ll be cutting NEW and existing rubberstamps, packaging them for sale and pricing them. In addition to our usual and not-so-usual rubberstamp fare, we’ll be selling Altered Scrapbook Kits comprised of handcut elements, paperWERX paper, rubberstamps, vintage embellishments and other goodies.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting Sneak Peeks at both our new rubber [it’s so cool!], as well as what buyers can expect to receive in the Kits we’re assembling. Here is your first Peek…

Evidence Sheet 1
This sheet is based on my hand drawn boxes, tables and journaling lines. Included in this 5×8 sheet of high quality, natural red rubber is a series of word prompts  and is designed to prompt journaling right on layouts, in text blocks and on photographs. I personally love this set and have been anxiously waiting to debut it and yep, it stamps just as good as it looks - LOVE IT!

This very cool, very functional set of unmounted stamps will be available in a variety of Altered Scrapbook Kits and as an individual Design Sheet.

I hope you will be as excited as I am about it! We have lots in stock… and will posting them in out online store after November 15. It will be debuting at Circle Craft 2006 from November 8-13 at Canada Place Convention Center!

Must say that I love iTunes. New music, COOL music and I can buy any time of the day… middle of the day on my lunch break, after dinner and at 3am [my usual time LOL!] when I can’t sleep.

As part of my musical birthday gifts from my sweet hubby [T bought the tickets for Cirque as part of my birthday gift - $275 for two seats! and the NEW Killers CD], he also gave me a nice big iTunes gift card. So… I immediately went trolling for new, inspirational artistic tunes.

Here’s what I downloaded and am l isteni ng to right now: 

• Om Lounge 10 - Again tancey, downtempo electronica. Great for ambience when creating art.
• Enigma - A Posteriori - Brilliant Enigma does it again. Always interesting stuff, always good, great art ambience.
• Delerium - Nuages du Monde - Very cool trancey, urban with hints of medieval AND they are Canadian! coolness.

I also have other Delerium CDs… and was hooked on them about 10 years ago in the mid-late 90s. Flowers Become Screens was a huge, mainstream hit for them and I’ve really liked them ever since. It’s great music to work to… whether it’s on a computer or in your studio.

Last night T and I went to see the new Cirque du Soleil show [actually more of a concert] last night called Delirium. It was pretty cool!

The music of Cirque has always made the live circus shows so amazing, so they decided to stage a concert tour featuring their music as the foundation of the show. It is a pared down show with minimal BIG cirque performances but what they lacked in the big aerial stuff, they made up with stellar music, very cool screening effects and dance.

One of the coolest things about the Cirque group is their visionary use of materials. Stretchy, gauzy and incredibly textured, the show’s costumes are as much part of the spectacle as the actual performances. At one point a singer was lift high above the stage in a Carmen Mirandaesque costume [all she needed was a pineapple on her head!] and this long tube of fabric cascaded below her. Suddenly, dancers popped out from under the stage, under her dress and stretched it out the length of the stage, forming a huge triangle from her waist down. Then they illuminated the skirt with different patterns of ‘fabric’ so it became this huge changing swath of fabric. Very cool…

The screen effect throughout the show played as much a part of the show as the live actors, dancers and singer. They used a very interesting fabric that when digital footage [door images, film clips of odd people open and closing said doors for example] was shot onto the screen that ran the length of the very long stage, it became an integral part of the show… The stage was open along both sides of the length, so whatever was shot on one side, was duplicated and produced a complex layer if viewing from the other side. It’s hard to explain… but was really an amazing effect.  The coolest two screen actions were a tank of water that filled the surface, waving and shimmering like a pool of water. COOL! and then the other effect was a series of gently waving hands coming up from the stage floor. It looked like the hands were trying to catch the aerialists that dangled from the scaffolding above. Very effective and really dramatic. In a word, very CIRQUE.

Over all the music was pretty cool… typical Cirque stuff with more back-beat. Very urban/tribal in nature and right up my alley. Gotta get me that CD… Maybe I can download from iTunes soon!

After the show… we headed to the Casino across the way to spend some of my birthday money. After two and half hours, many .05 and .02 slot machines and a roulette table, I only lost $20. Pretty good considering I played STEADILY the entire time we were there… Won money, lost money, won it back… over all did pretty well for two+ hours.

We finally arrived home after 1am… so it was a nice night out for sure, had lots of fun and post-birthday celebration is officially over. Thanks to everyone [you know who you are!] who sent me birthday wishes - it’s nice to know that people care =)

A sneak peek at a product we’ll have in the Circle Craft Booth…

Coin Folder Mini-Albums

A folding, three-panelled multi-holed coin album.
Inside you can put your favorite contact sheet sized photos in the round slots and embellish with patterned paper and labels for journalling. FUN!

Ideas for use include:

• Birthday parties momentoes
• Grandparent gifties
• Brag Book
• Babies first year [a photo from each month!]
• Advent calendars
• Wedding snaps
• Funny quotes
• Favorite things album
• the list goes on… just use your imagination and think small [about 1.5"]

Image on right is the fron of the album, cover closed. Lower image is the inside three panels.
[Please note: the center panel has 6 holes to fill but I want the space for journaling strips so I cover it with chipboard and pattern paper.]

Tomorrow I turn 37 and I don’t look a day over 6 [hee hee - I love this Poppet of me].

How weird is that? To turn 37 and feel like I’m in my 20s…  To be 3 years shy of 40 <gasp!> and be told I look like I’m in my early 30s [thank you Carmi!]… yet tomorrow at about 1:30pm PST I turn 37.

A few big things come to mind thinking about the big day tomorrow:

1. It has been over 26 years since my father wished me a Happy Birthday [he died when I was 10]
2. My hubby and I have been together for nearly 13 years [over 1/3 of my life]
3. Many of my artistic friends are fellow Librans [yo’ dewds, we rock!]
4. My brother has finally reached the age of 35 and seems to finally be maturing into a solid adulthood
5. My hourly wage is almost the same as my age… not bad ;^)
6. My mom had been single mother in the 80s for 7 years already by the age of 37
7. I am a year older now than the age when my father passed away [he was 36]
8. I’m starting to slowly run out of time to have a biological child… we may be adopting anyways
9. I am the youngest of my oldest friends from elementary/secondary school [Janice, Susan, Eliza, Joyce and Teresa] and ALWAYS will be! LOL =P
10. I am pretty happy with my life overall.

So on that note, Happy Birthday to me…  and thanks to those who will call me tomorrow, who called me today and my mom who will undoubtedly sing to me [badly, but with wonderful intentions] on the telephone after my lunchbreak at work.