It's a Wonderful Day in the Neighborhood

and not only is the neighborhood nice, but the temperature should be around 75 and the sky is about as clear as it gets. The only down side is that I can no longer, due to the growth of the trees around my house, see Denali (Mt. McKinley, to those of you who have never seen the mountain, and have no real concept of its size, grandeur and the ridiculousness of its being named for a president that no one remembers) from my bedroom window. When we first moved into this house about 11 years ago, I could not only see Susitna, which is called The Sleeping Lady and is across Cook Inlet, but also Denali, which is about 180 miles northwest as the crow flies. We can still see it from the bridge over the highway, but it's not the same.

The cool thing is that we live right in the foothills of the Chugach mountains, and as such the view from our front windows could and has been described as spectular.

Today's plan: smash some metal, plan some flower beds, memorize some lines for the Parable of the Talents. I think each of those is self explanatory, with the possible of exception of the smashing bit. For those of you who don't know (and if you don't know me in person but are still reading this, I think I love you) I make jewelry. Sometimes it's strange, but most of the time it's pretty cool. Anyway, I recently picked up some 16 and 18 gauge copper wire and am "WigJigging" it, without the WigJig. Essentially I'm bending it into freeform serpentine patterns, which I will then link with turquoise beads, since there are few combinations more natural than turquoise and copper. It's getting smashed because the only way to force the wire to keep its shape is to smash it. I use not only the flat head of my chasing hammer, but also the ball peen (spelling?) side, so that it looks like what all the fashion mags call "hammered copper." You know, all dented and shiny.

I'm going to go get on that. Song of today: Hips Don't Lie by Shakira.
I can't find anywhere from which to download the song itself, so if anyone has that info, please let me know.