OK, now this is just getting silly

No art with this post. I didn't have anything handy to illustrate the absurdity of my morning...

I went out to my garage today, got in the car and backed down the driveway.

Fwup. Fwup. Fwup.

You have GOT to be kidding me.

Another flat tire.

At least this time is wasn't the front passenger tire. Again. That is the tire that was flat a couple months ago, then flat again Wednesday night.

So I was leaving to go to work. Thinking I didn't want to wait for AAA, I drove (slowly and with flashing lights) to a service station about 1/4 mile from home.

I thought I would just get air in the tire then head to the tire store. Again.

But this was an actual service station. Shocking. Even more shocking: It was open.

Which is a good thing since the tire wasn't going to hold air. There was a hole on the back side of it.

So I had to have the guy put on the spare.

Now when I had the two front tires replaced Thursday, I thought they would leave me the better of the two as a spare.

NO! They left me the tire that won't hold air for more than a few hours!

So othe service station guy filled that one up and put it on the car. I was off to the tire store again.

Yes, the same tire store that gave me a flat spare. But I figured anyone can make an honest mistake. I mean, it had air in it Thursday when I went there. It just won't hold the air.

And I was going to be much more careful about checking that spare before I left.

Besides, I figured I could wrangle a discount out of them. Which I did. It ended up being about $15 off the total. Not bad.

So I now have four brand new tires. Let's hope that is the end of it for a while.

The whole situation made me two hours late for work. And I still managaed to come in ahead of all my deadlines.

Yeah, I was feeling this way last night/this morning

I was in such a good mood last night as I was leaving work. It was about 7:30, so a little earlier than normal. A favorite colleague of mine who had been off work for a couple months after a car accident was coming back to the office today.

So I decided to welcome her back by making a couple giant pans of chocolate bread pudding. I was going to hit the market on my way home, then start baking after a quick dinner.

Now I live 37 miles from work. It's kind of a pain, but I deal.

Unless I get a flat tire on the freeway while doing about 70 mph and I am only on the second of my four freeways (about halfway home.)

Yeah. Nice.

The really bizarre part is that while it happened, I was on the cell (hands-free, thank you very much) talking to a friend who was describing a tire blow-out he had on the way to Vegas just a few days earlier.

Then suddenly I felt something odd. Like my tire was filled with bread pudding instead of air.

It wouldn't have been so bad except that I had a flat a couple months ago when I came out from work. Luckily I was still in the parking structure and AAA came out and put on the spare tire.

Of course, since I am SO busy with my life, you know making cards and bowls and generally a mess, I never went to deal with getting a new spare.

So I am sitting at a Shell station in Garden Grove, halfway between work and home, at 8:30 last night waiting for AAA to show up.

I know I have no spare. I know I don't want to leave my car in the Grove. I have no way to get home if they can't fix the tire somehow.

So they show. The tire that went flat on the freeway was the brand-new spare that was put on a couple months ago. It has a gaping hole on the backside of it. No chance of fixing that one.

We pulled the other flat tire, the spare flat tire as I called it, out of the trunk.

Yay! It held air.

So I drove toward home, stopping at a market on the way. I'll been damned if I wasn't going to make that bread pudding.

People had heard about it. People were planning to skip lunch to have some.

So I did my baking and went to bed around 12:30 p.m.

I got up today knowing that I would have to deal with the tire. And sure enough, the tire was flat again.

So I called AAA out again (yeah, I am getting my money's worth out of that service). They aired the tire and I was off to Costco to get a couple new ones for the front.

Costco where you usually wait about an hour. Well... I guess when they have a tire sale it must be good. Because it was a FOUR hour wait.

Um, no thanks. If I hung around a Costco for four hours, I would spend so much money.

So I headed to a local shop and got a couple tires put on the front.

Whew. What a saga.

But man was that bread pudding amazing!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_36519,00.html?rsrc=search

(I skipped the rum sauce and had fresh mixed berries and homemade almond whipped cream!)

Oh and the photo is another from the Santa Barbara trip in March.

Time to get creative again - already!

It seems like only a couple weeks ago that the stamping group met.

Oh wait... it WAS only a couple weeks ago.

The thing with the group is that we don't always meet on a set Sunday, say the third Sunday of the month. We meet on the Sunday that is the best for the most people. So sometimes they come one right after the other.

I was going through some cards I did for some recent Splitcoast swaps. The one above seemed to be well-received and it was quite simple.

I may do that. But since I am doing premade cards instead of sets that we make during our gathering, maybe I can get more elaborate.

I like to keep the ones we make at the gathering simple. I feel bad when I make people spend so much time on a really fancy card with lots of little doo-dads and techniques.

Anyway, the image and sentiment on this card are Stampin Up, as are the inks. I used generic patterned paper for the stripes. I like a lot of layers and I like a lot of texture. So I used my paper crimper on the pink backer paper. And I turned the stripes horizontal since I mostly see vertical stripes on other cards. It also is a good contrast to the vertical crimping. Then I used the extra strip of orange behind the "Heartfelt" to make it stand out more from the vellum.

I inked the flower with my markers to get the mottled look and then added a coat of glitter glue to give it some sparkle.

Sounds like a lot of steps, but it really is an easy card.

My cartoon alter-ego

I did this card a while ago. I just loved the stamp. I call her the "birthday babe."

I also did a version of it in orange tones to give to a friend with an October birthday.

Anyway, I chose to post the "birthday babe" today because when I bought the stamp last year, she reminded me of the figure I had oh, say, a few years back (OK, more than a few, but who's counting?).

And I have been on my diet lately, trying, trying so hard to be good. It is tough to diet when you are a foodie like I am.

But I lost another 2.5 pounds this week. Yay for me!

So the "birthday babe" is my sort-of inspiration. She's hot for a cartoon, huh?

Purple poppies

So I finally have the pictures of the purple cards I did for an online swap. I did the top one first, but wanted to coordinate the paper more, so I ditched the big piece of dark purple paper and brought in more of the stripes.

I used a smaller piece of the dark paper just to accent the image of the green flower pot.

The images and sentiment are all from PaperTreyInk (www.papertreyink.com) and the striped paper is from Stampin' Up.

I stamped the pot in green, then overstamped in versamark and embossed with a thick clear powder to give it the glassy, shiny look.

The middle flower is cut out and popped up and the center of it is embossed in black.

It can be hard to get a real sense of the embossing and dimension in the photos.

These took quite a while to make. There was a lot of embossing, and cutting out the pots and each flower was quite time-consuming. Assembly was time-consuming as well. I sure hope my fellow swappers like them!

Anyway, yesterday I went to a family barbecue (sooooooooo much good food) and after soaked in a very hot jacuzzi for a while. It was so relaxing. I was falling asleep by the time I got home at about 9 p.m.

Today I am off work, but was feeling a little queasy this morning. No, not from the barbecue. I am not sure why. But I checked with some other people who were there and no one else feels ill. So it probably was just one of those weird things.

I am doing better now, but I did skip pottery this morning. Bummer.

It was for the best since I have tickets to the Angels-Twins game tonight and I wanted to be sure I was feeling well enough to partake in the stadium cuisine of hot dogs and beer.

Now, since I am home, I am going to tackle some bills, then head out for some errands.

I hope everyone has a good day!