The system proves handy for portable work!

Whew, I am completely exhausted. It’s been a long, but very lovely day, full of activities and outings, yet I still got a few hours’ work done thanks to my system!

The day’s excursions

We got up and had a quick breakfast, had a really good workout at Bridges, then ran some errands before BARTing over to San Francisco to meet Jackie and her dad at the Ferry Building. We took a little tasting tour of the marketplace, enjoying sushi and sesame green beans at Delica, seafood at Hog Island Oyster Co, blood orange and Persian lime olive oils at Stonehouse, and chocolates at Recchiuti and Scharffen Berger, and picking up some Acme Bread to take home. Delicious. I love the Bay Area immensely, but tasting my way through any of its various markets really makes me feel the gratitude and amazement at everything that’s here! The Ferry Building is fabulous sensory immersion: so many sights, smells, tastes, and sounds, with the ocean breeze over everything. After parting from Jackie, Erik went home and I stopped in Berkeley for Bollywood dance class. I had almost two hours to put in before class began, so I had a tea at Chick O Pea’s and discovered just what a gem of a place this is. The one guy seemingly running the place couldn’t have been sweeter or more attentive, and every single person in the cafe seemed truly to recognize this and leave a little happier than they came. At six I went over to Precious Life and discovered that the dance class has been permanently canceled, so I returned back home to Erik and the kitties and the Stonehouse blood orange oil and Acme Bread. 🙂

Work remarks

It seems like I spent the entire day out, which I guess I did. But I brought work with me, and what’s more, I actually did it. I had to gather together my work materials in a hurry this morning, so I just grabbed my action lists and a couple of project sheets (with the supporting documents already paper-clipped to them) and stuck them in a folder. This worked astoundingly well. While we were BARTing to the city, I didn’t feel like reading, but I was all energized from my morning cardio and I wanted to brainstorm. I got in a nice half-hour of planning, and another few minutes while we were waiting for Jackie at the Ferry Building.

BART on the way back from SF was so crowded we had to stand, so I couldn’t take notes (or really think, for that matter), but after settling myself at Chick O Pea’s, I finished my planning from the morning, updated that project sheet with what I’d come up with, then moved on to a different project that required preliminary sketches. When I completed those (much faster than I expected, and I believe this was because I was really feeling the positive energy from the happy day out and the exercise), I still had a little time to sketch my surroundings too.

All told, I got in about two hours of work, which isn’t much, but it was good work. I think brainstorming and sketching are great activities to do outside and when in precisely the kind of open mood that comes from an outing like this. And I love that all I had to do was grab some papers and make sure I had my sketchbook and notebook on me, and I was ready to go.

Shop news

I’ve been featured in another Etsy treasury! I’m so gratified.

This time it’s one of my chamomile eye pillows, made from a lovely taupe floral linen I got from FabMo. The eye pillows can be hard to photograph because they’re such a boring shape, but this one came out nicely and I guess it’s paid off now. You know, the chamomile pillows just don’t sell anywhere near as well as the lavender ones. I use both, personally, and think it’s a shame! But I guess people are just more familiar with lavender; if they know chamomile at all, they associate it with tea.

Yesterday I got an email from FabMo saying a local journalist is seeking stories about people who participate in both FabMo and Etsy. I immediately emailed the person with a few paragraphs about how I got involved in both. I won’t count on my story being included in the paper, but wouldn’t that be great? I’m in no position to cope with more publicity than that, but I think a local paper would be very nice. This is the benefit of being connected to multiple communities; one finds out about more opportunities that way (and avoids the saturation of always finding out about the same stuff at the same time as everyone else).

As you may know, I’m going to be doing another craft fair in March, this time one called Craft Happy in Fremont. There’s a webpage showing links to the vendors who will be selling at the fair, and wow, I’m in some excellent company. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do about my inventory for the fair!

LA friends are driving in tonight so we’re staying up to wait for them… at least that’s the plan for now. We’ll see if I can keep awake that long. ;b