The things that I find in my yard...

I honestly would never have guessed we have these things in Michigan. But one day, there it was. Hanging from a branch next to my driveway. Scaring the crap out of me. I had to mow around it for months.

I should have photographed it before I cut it down, but the truth is, I was so excited when I was at the end of the driveway and I realized that the nasty vicious hornets (or whatever they were) were gone that I scurried straight over to the garage for the nippers and cut the damned thing down. The entryway wound up collapsing -- it hit the ground and crushed, revealing some fantastic details in the layering and... stuff inside. It'll get dissected before too long, but for now it's just so darned pretty, the whole thing is sitting on the bench on my porch.

And here's your scale to fully appreciate the ginormity.

Update: After a little bit of research, I'm quite convinced that this was the hive of the baldfaced hornet. Now I'm not normally bothered by bugs, flying or otherwise, but I instinctively stayed far away from these buggers. After reading that page, I'm glad I did. "Run like hell" indeed.

Detroit at 52 mph

I finally got a new phone.

The ear speaker (as opposed to the speakerphone) had broken on my dear old Sidekick II a while ago (like, months), and I never seemed to know where my earpiece was, so I stopped using it as a phone. Then the email server stopped cooperating with Hotmail. Then I was sporadically not getting text messages.

I continued to stubbornly hold off replacing the handset until T-Mobile released the new Sidekick LX, which was slated for the end of October. That would answer all my problems! Right? Well. The day the hardware was released, I called T-Mobile -- with whom I had been out of contract for something like two years -- and told them I'd been waiting for three months to get this new phone, remaining loyal to T-Mo the whole time, no matter what everyone said about them and their smelly service.

"I have a corporate discount. I'm willing to sign a 2 year contract. I've been a customer of yours for three years. What's the best price you can give me on the new Sidekick?"

"$299.99."

"That's insane. I can actually get an iPhone for $300.* And ATT's service plan costs about the same as yours." (*I have a friend.)

"Well, I can understand why you'd want to get an iPhone then."

So not only did I finally get a new phone, I got a Jesusphone. I resisted. I really did. It's all T-Mobile's fault.

It takes pretty good pictures, though.

Another happy swap!

Over at craftster, a painting caught my eye. (Yes, people post actual art there, too.) I emailed the artist to ask her if it was for sale. I was disappointed to find that the painting was already spoken for, but thrilled to hear that she generally just paints for friends or trades. I sent her to my Flickr stream to take a look at some stuff I've made to see if maybe we could work something out. She liked my Bride of Frankenstein bag, so we agreed I'd make her a sorta steroided-up version.

It's difficult to photograph, but here are the pictures. The printed fabric is encased in vinyl for durability and the piece features some interior and exterior embroidery and a stolen (shhhh) wrist strap. I also made a wallet, with nothing stolen.

In exchange, Brenna made me this fantastic Frankensquid. Obviously she and I are fans of the same colors as her bag and my painting look like they came from the same palette. This is the picture she sent me before I received the painting. It went up on my wall about 15 minutes after I unpacked it, but I haven't taken a picture yet. Really I need to hang it a bit higher -- my art usually goes low-ish, but this one really wants to be higher.

Couldn't be happier with this swap. Makes me want to do more ASAP!