Glow in the Dark Eyes

I was a wee bit startled the other night when I let the dogs go out before bed.  Fortunately, I had my camera handy and our boy Blackjack has just recently passed his 14th birthday so he isn't super fast going up and down the stairs anymore.  I almost took a jump backward he startled me so bad with the glowing eye thing going on!  His eyes are usually a beautiful ice blue.  Not so much in this picture!

From the Garden

Its been a tough year as far as the garden goes.  It was really a fight to keep things watered enough that they wouldn't shrivel up and die.  This was one of the successes.  This particular plant has about 12-15 of these massive blooms on it and has been flowering for two months now.  It was a gift from my neighbor.

Words of Wisdom

This really brings home the fact that if you you shouldn't give up!

p.s.  You don't have to share if you agree lol.

Adventures With The US Postal Service

So, I have shipped a lot of packages over the last 5 years.  I've always been very pleased with the USPS and haven't had any trouble with lost or damaged packages. Imagine my surprise when I had not one, but two packages go missing from the same facility within two days of each other.  Most of the packages I send get to their destination within the US in two or three days, occasionally,  a week.  (International is a whole different ballgame, time wise, but I digress).  After three weeks I called my post office to find out what happened to my packages. And let me just tell you, wading through the automated system made my blood pressure go up.  I finally got a hold of my local post office.  Once I actually spoke to a real person, they were very good about trying to track things down and keep me informed.  After another two weeks went by, the first customer contacted me to let me know that his bead had arrived (I had sent a replacement several weeks prior, which got to him in three days) Hurray!  One mystery solved, I'm happy, he's happy (he now has two beads instead of one lol).  The second package was still missing.  My customer and I had come to a satisfactory resolution since we had simply assumed that they were gone for good.  She contacted me this week with some surprising news.  The package had arrived!  She sent me a picture of what it looked like when she received it. Amazingly enough, the beads themselves are fine.  Thank goodness I tend to err on the side of caution when packaging my items!  She said that every single bubble on the bubble wrap they were wrapped in was popped.  There were insects smooshed into the packaging.  The best part is, the post office stamped it as damaged when recieved.  Bwahahahaha!  Really?  I know it didn't leave my hands looking like that, so I am pretty sure that stamp should say "damaged by the post office".
All is well that ends well though, and the beads are fine, customer is happy and I am  sooo relieved that the finally showed up (two months later!).