The places we exist

We've had an eventful past couple of days here at the House of Peanut. Unfortunately not all of it good, or of our choosing. But we're getting back on track now :)

Sunday I finished and mailed the necklace and earrings set for Katie, the winner of my custom jewelry set in my high school's charity auction last spring.



Monday night, Dave and I went to see DragonForce, a power metal band. I wasn't a HUGE fan of them, but liked a few of their songs, and it was an inexpensive show and you all know how I love metal. So I was only marginally excited pre-show. And then we got there, and it ROCKED. The two opening bands, Powerglove and Turisas, were INCREDIBLE. Powerglove plays metal renditions of old video game music.

Turisas dresses up like Vikings and has an electric violin and an accordion as part of their band. Oh, and they're from Finland (of course!) Here's an awesome cover of a disco song by Turisas:



It was the total rock spectacle and so much fun! Totally worth the $25 and I found 2 new bands I like. Not a bad way to spend an evening!

Tuesday was Election Day! And my guy won! I voted in the morning, didn't have to wait in line, and got my sticker.

Unfortunately, yesterday was also the day that TJ's appendix decided to call it quits. Our doctor sent us to the ER instead of having us come in, and we sat around and waited, got some tests, and then TJ had to get the stupid thing removed. He also got to spend the night at the oh-so-luxurious Chez Overlake in Bellevue, and got to come home this afternoon.

I do have to give props to Overlake Hospital for their free wireless Internet so I could keep up on some personal and work email while I was waiting and also obsess a bit over the election results.

Sadly, I had to miss the Matt Nathanson concert tonight (what is it with concerts and illness??) and the next time he returns to Seattle he'll probably be playing at Key Arena given the number of times I've heard "CMon Get Higher" on the radio. Oh well, such is life. The Microsoft dude I gave my tickets to (for free!) better be having a good time, dammit!

Oh, and Trista received her birthday gift from Paul that he designed and I made for her. So I could finally post this custom personalized bracelet in my Etsy shop, in time for potential holiday shopping. This is what I wanted to blog about earlier but couldn't.



I am really pleased with the way it turned out. I was so nervous to work with the more expensive sterling silver sheet after spending all my time on copper and nickel silver, but I guess the practice paid off. And I cannot thank TJ enough for introducing me to my Dremel for all the polishing/finishing steps. Rumor has it that Trista likes it, so that makes me happy.

I'm working on another one for a friend's wife, but since it's a Christmas gift, I can't post that here until next year. But it'll be fun.

In other exciting Etsy news, I doubled my first year sales already in the past 6 weeks! (Actually, it happened before that because I got orders for 10 stamped ID tags and for 5 tags and lumped them into the same order, so Etsy only counts those as 2 sales even though they were 15 items total.) If it continues, I'll hit this year's goal of 104 sales in a couple of months. Woot!

Well, it's that time, and I should get some sleep. Tomorrow is a loooong work day ahead of me to catch up on the past two days, plus making sure TJ is supplied with pills, English muffins, and hot chocolate.

Hopefully your past couple of days have been good ones!