SUN OCT 5th 2003

sounds: SPINNER.COM ... Halloween station, lots of interesting music and funny skits

Weather: It has been 20 to 40 degrees over the average for a month now so until yesterday the temps were up in the 70s and 80s but it has finally dropped into the 60s and down to the high 20s and 30s at night

I have been in a really down mood lately which is why I have not done anything lately on my blog or much on my web page, it is hard to get motivated to write anything here when nothing good seems to be happening lately.

The minivan has me really down, we replaced the thermostat and it worked fine just long enough to drive 240 miles to a town calleed Pocatello to go see a guy and of course I forgot my camera which pissed me off since the one of the main reasons I was going was to take pics for the page, trust me there is NOTHING to do in Pocatello, so I just end up visiting for a while and turning around and coming home to find out that my van is overheating again so it takes me 7 1/2 hours to drive 240 miles since I have to keep pulling over and letting the van cool off and then I can not drive over 60 when I do drive.

So we try putting a water pump in and that does not work so on the 27th we have it schedualed to have the engine taken apart and have the head gasket checked and I am just hoping it is JUST the gasket and not a warped or cracked head.

So this week I am without a car and that has me really down since I have no idea how long it will take to fix my car once they start working on it or how much it will cost. All of this has really disillusioned me about my new van. I really seem to have a car jinx.

Well with halloween coming up I guess it has motivated me more then usual, I have a bunch of glass votive candle holders I bought in sets that came with 20oz candles (pumpkin spice, ginger snap or clove candles) and I have been painting them with glass paint.

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 TUE OCT 21th 2003

I have been doing a lot of crafts lately, spending a lot of time just playing around with different projects using stuff i have around the house.

I guess halloween inspired me and I made some masks for the wall

A Medusa death mask

A green man mask (I am thinking of painting this gold and then doing verdigris on it (a light touching of green)

All of these are a form of paper mache built up over a mold, I use wrapping tissue and a mix of tempra paint and glue and paint it on then layer the tissue squares, this gives me a lot of control to the shape and when I need to build up an area I do a normal form of paper mache with shreded paper and the same mix.

The Medusa is formed with a flat 'halo' out around its face then I bought a small package of flexable stretchy snakes and cut them as need be and gludes them to the face and halo and then after they dried used strait glue along the sides to build up the shape then layered over a thin coating of tissue on which to paint. Before painting I cut out the curviture of the halo then painted it gold.

The green man I built the same way andI had originally tried to build leaves out of tissue and found it to be an annoying waste of time and they did not look all that good so I went to the dollar store and bought a "pick" of silk leaves and instead layered the back of them with tissue and strait glue to give them a stiffness. I then began glueing them on and shaping them in layers.

A moon mask (this on will have a fancy decorated stick and ribbons)

The moon mask is actually the first one I did it is built on a black plastic half mask (lone ranger mask for $.18) I laid tin foil out on a cookie sheet and covered it with lotion (use what you have....LOL) and began by cuting big curving pieces of tissue that were about 2/3s the size of the moon and over lapping them and then went down to pieces 1/2 the size and then 1/4 of the size all cut on curves, moving them around so they covered different parts of it then started filling it in to add some bulk by using up the little scrap pices toward the middle and saved a few big smooth pieces to do the top layer with. I also did a few layers over the other part of the mask and then painted and decorated with glitter glue. I then cut out the eyes and will add a decorated stick and ribbons.

The best place to get tissue for this is actually the dollar store where I have been able to buy big packs of white wrapping tissue, usually twice as much white as you get when you buy a color.

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 SUN OCT 5th 2003

 SIGH I am just not that shocked you know, I have no luck with cars. On Friday night I was about 5 miles from home, i have been driving since Monday and have put well over 120 miles on the van just zipping around town, and as i drove into downtown it overheated, thankfully it flashed a CHECK GAUGES light at me and I was able to pull over and let it cool down.

I checked it and the reservoir was empty so I figured maybe the radiator was low or leaking so I took it to the 7-11 on the way home and bought a gallon of water (they were out of antifreeze) and filled the reservoir and got home without it heating Asian, about a mile.

Later that night, 2 am, I went out and put stop leak in the radiator which was a bit low and filled it up and did as it said and ran it for about 20 mins with the heater on high and it never got past the middle of the temp gauge, then I drove it for a few miles and brought it home still it did not heat up. I did this at night since we have been having heat 10 to 15 degrees hotter then usual keeping it in the high 80s and low 90s.

I drove the van around a bit on Saturday and then went and visited grandma and on none of my drives did it over heat till I drove it after it had sat for a while and then drove about 2.5 miles to a Target and it heated way up. I parked and looked under the hood and the water had backed way up into the reservoir and was bubbling.

I went in to shop and came out, the reservoir was still high and the car had only cooled to the center of the gauge but I decided to try to drive the 2.5 miles to my grandmas and had no problems at all in fact it stayed just under the center point and the same when I came home about the same distance.

I talk to a mechanic, well it can be one of two things ... the Simple and the Pretty damn Awful

SIMPLE: A stuck thermostat... a few bucks, my uncle Steve puts it in, flushes the radiator and reservoir, puts the antifreeze I bought in it and we hope for the best, I drive it around and we see if it over heats again, nice little waiting game there.

and if it over heats again then there it is a chance it is ...

PRETTY DAMN AWFUL: A Cracked Head which is letting gasses into the radiator and we have to go to a mechanic to get this tested to see if gasses are escaping THEN we need to see if we can even fix it yourselves OR if I am going to have to shell out even more bucks I don't have to fix this.

I am really hoping for the best here, I would love to have a car i could trust for once.

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SAT SEPT 27th 2003 

Well it is new to me anyway and that is all that matters.

We went to the auto auction at 9am this morning having gone yesterday and checked all the cars and mini vans to try to find one that I could fit, there was two I could fit, a van from Qwest communication that we would have had to take a bunch of metal racking out of and that did not have any back windows on it and that had a cracked front window and a blue Plymouth voyager from Boise State University. My Ex-Boyfriend had one and so i know I can drive them and I like it even though it does not have any back seat and the paint is peeling a little.

We waited for the Mini van to come up and a lot of cars went really cheap but it was mostly dealers there and we were hoping that the peeling paint and not backseat would help us get it but it only has 69,000 miles on it so we ended up bidding against a dealer up to $800 but we got it. The title says BSU has had it for 10 years they must only have driven it on campus since they have only put about 10.000 miles on it. My big concern is they are selling it cause something is wrong and not just cause it came to a certain date.

i have lousy luck with cars......

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THRU SEPT 18th 2003

I have gone on kind of a crafts binge lately, I spent way way way too much this month and am now dead ass broke so I am having to come up with stuff to do at home

I went to SALLY Beauty Supplies around the first of the month and found a great deal on polishes, a dollar a bottle for RUSH and SAVVY and I already had a bunch of Sally Hansen chrome polishes as well as some I was ready to get rid of so when I saw this banks at the Greenbacks dollar store for $.50 each I decided to grab some and paint them in fun and silly pattrens. Since I am planning to do each room in my apt in a diffrent theme and the kitchen is CRAZY KISTCHY so I figure these little loony toons can go in there or go for Yule gifts.

I have one more cat and one more elephant to do but I have to take a break for polish fumes ... LOL They are a little harsh ater a while. I ended up supergluing flat hemetite beads on for the elephants eyes so it gives them a cool 3D sort of dazed look, about like in the bottom pic.

I also bought this goofy jiggly gargoyal that was a truely scary color and I have painted it to look like stone, I just wish I could get a pic that showed it the right color but the flash reflects on the paint too much.

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