Stylish Blogger Award

I've got to say I'm really please that 2 people have chosen me for the Stylish Blogger Award and I procrastinated acknowledging it. I'm so ashamed.......   :(

So, very belated thank-yous to Milena of Just the Goods and Cathy of Headpin Wear.

And, now, I get to tell all of you 7 things about myself - I have to say, I don't like this part, I'm not very good at biographical writing... Enough procrastinating, here they are:

1.  I live in a lovely house in Los Gatos, California. Los Gatos is in the San Francisco Bay Area, down in the south part, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Los Gatos is a small town that still has a real downtown, with small shops. Since our house is in the mountains, the house is built into a hillside. This means that we have a lot of decking around our house. There is no level piece of land on our property. By the way, you can't find our house on Google Maps because our street is a private road, so they couldn't come up and take pictures.

2.  My husband and I own our own business. This is Turner Designs, which makes fluorometers. A fancy word there :)  These instruments are used to measure water quality, so a lot of researchers use them to watch what the ocean is doing. Some of our instruments are used around oil wells to check for oil in the water (there were a lot being used during the Gulf oil spill) and others are used to check the water in streams, lakes and cooling systems.

3.  My husband and I are both electrical engineers and we met at one of the companies we both worked at. He didn't like me when he first met me because I was hired to test this big in-house test system that he had built and I told him it didn't work! He was not a happy camper then. Obviously, that changed!  :)

4.  We have 2 daughters who are both taller than me, so that makes me the shrimp in the family. My husband is 6'1", daughter #1 is 5'5", daughter #2 is 5'10" and I am 5'2". This makes hugging my girls a little interesting. :)

5.  I quit working as an engineering manager (director level) when my oldest daughter was in kindergarten because she was diagnosed with a learning disability. I hated to quit, but I knew I had to stay home with her for a while to help her learn. Both daughters were thrilled!

6.  I volunteer and taught science in the elementary school that my daughters went to. And, when my oldest hit high school, I was the Robotics teacher. :)

7. I love animals and so does the rest of my family. I was such a soft touch, that my oldest daughter has a bird, a cockatiel named Dover and my youngest has a Dutch bunny named Oreo. We also have 2 Australian Shepherds, as I have written about before.

Boy, I feel really strange telling all of you about me. I wrote a lot more than I expected. I hope you found this little glimpse into my life interesting.

I have a weird dog :)

As you may know, we have 2 Aussies. One Aussie is from a breeder who was trying to breed a dog that could compete both as a show dog and as a herding dog. It wasn't a successful attempt. :)

Shadow is cute and friendly and loves to cuddle. But, for an Aussie, he's not too bright. So, when we went to get a second Aussie, I looked for a dog from a herding line. Actually, this dog is our third Aussie, our first one died from cancer and I missed her so much, I needed to get a puppy.

So, enter Penny. She is a herding dog that I got from a breeder in Missouri. She's smart, energetic and a lot of fun (and work). We are constantly learning new things that she can do. One of the strangest is the way she sits on the stairs. She will sit on one step and put her front legs on another! I have never seen a dog do this before, so of course, I had to take a picture.

She will sit this way outside too. I guess she is so long that it's more comfortable for her to sit this way. Every time I see her doing this, I have to laugh!



Shadow, on the other hand, will lay down every opportunity he can get. You can see how hard a life he has when you see him yawning when I try to wake him up and get him off the sofa. I'm going to bed, but Shadow would prefer that I leave him alone to sleep on the sofa all night.

I may be a softie with my dogs, but letting him sleep on the sofa all night - I don't think so.

Actually, both my husband and myself are real softies with our dogs. Both of them love to sleep on the sofa when ever they can. Penny still sleeps as a puppy, all sprawled out and when she does, you can see that she has very long legs.

In fact, I have to make sure she doesn't push me off the sofa when she stretches out her full length. :)

Jewelry by Jaynemarie: It's Raining, It's Pouring.....

Jewelry by Jaynemarie: It's Raining, It's Pouring.....

It's Raining, It's Pouring.....

Well, this past week has been an exciting week in my little spot of the Santa Cruz Mountains. This was the week of my daughter's Spring Break from UC Merced, and a Spring Break should have some sunshine in it, shouldn't it?
Well, not this week. It poured! And then it poured some more. I know, it's not snow, but this is our winter, and I have to say that if I don't see the sun, I get very depressed. So, this was a depressing week, right? No,
I have to look at the brighter things in my life, so I went around to find some.

First, my daughter came home for spring break! This is great! She says it's only because she didn't have the money to go away for her break; OK, I'll take that excuse and I won't raise your allowance either. :)

Second, the more it rains, the longer the stream on our property will run; and I love the sound the stream makes as it runs down the mountain. After this week's rain, I hope this means the stream will run into the summer. To have this stream run until next winter, it would have to rain a whole lot more. And, as much as I like this sound, I would rather have more sun. I'll buy a fountain to listen to in the summer.

To show you what happens when it rains, I have two pictures of this stream. One is from last week, before this deluge started. The second is from yesterday. The entire stream bed if full of water and most of the rocks are under water. I was a little worried about it at its peak, because one dog, Shadow (he's in the picture with my daughter above) is really sweet, but not a very smart Aussie. He was so fascinated by the fast water, he was leaning over farther and farther to look at it and I was really afraid he would fall in. That would not be one of his brighter moves!

Today the stream is down from its peak, but faster and with more water than before. A lot of the rocks have been rearranged and lost, so we may have to find others to line the stream bed with.

Even though Shadow was fascinated by the fast running stream, he doesn't like to go outside in the rain. He might get all of his pretty fur wet! And Australian Shepherds are herding dogs, too. Well, both Penny and he stayed in most of this week. Their favorite spot is, of course, our sofa. At least, they share!

The forecast is for this rain to end and we'll finally get some sun - and warmer weather. I'm all ready for that, and so are the dogs. They go crazy staying in the house all day, as do I.

Life in the Santa Cruz Mountains

As I let everyone know via my Facebook page, on Wednesday, March 16, we lost power. Well, now everything is fixed, so I can tell you what really happened.

Tree and Pole on Road

I was busily writing my weekly feature on a fellow BESTeam member, and had just finished it when the power went out. My first thought was "great - not" in that I finished the feature and needed to post it. Well, here's were technology helped. My new iPhone came with a hotspot (internet connection via mobile phone) and so I quickly started this application up and was able to transfer my feature up to my blog and let everyone know I was finished. I wasn't really paying much attention to anything else, but getting this done.

Well, once finished, I realized that the lights were not really off, just very low and wavering in intensity. That's odd, that's not how an outage usually works. So, I went around the house and tried to figure out what was going on. I noticed a buzzing sound and found it came from outside, so as I tried to trace it, I realized I was smelling smoke! SMOKE! Oh, no! I'm surrounded by trees and my house has cedar siding; this is scary!

Scorch Marks on Road

OK, back into the house for my binoculars, to look for any signs of smoke. Nothing I could see around the house, so I went out to the road and since I heard arcing and hissing from down the road, I went down. As I went, I saw power lines on the road. I looked closer and I could see scorch marks - the line is still live - I better keep clear.

Broken Pole w/ Broken Insulators

As I round the curve in the road, I see wood on the road; it was a power pole and a big tree. I got closer and saw that it was a smashed power pole - you can see broken insulators.

Fire in Trees

Wow, the damage was worse than I thought. But, where was the smoke coming from? I looked up, and there in the trees, the power line had started a fire. I called 911 and the fire fighters were here in minutes! We were lucky, since there has been so much rain, everything was too wet to burn. The only place that was burning was just where the line touched the tree tops and it wasn't spreading.

Tree next to Workers

That was the good news, the bad news was that it would take PG&E 24 to 48 hours to fix this. Oh no. No lights, no heat, no computer. It turned out to be done quicker than expected. It was a huge tree, you can see its size in the picture on the right, in relation to the workers waiting for the big equipment.

Lights came back on in a few hours; the power company rerouted some lines to get power up quicker.

Penny & Shadow w/
Cut Tree

Today, I went out before the rains started again and took a look at what they did. They sawed up the tree and left most of it behind. Take a look at the pieces of the trunk - they're huge! I put my dogs in front to get a picture of this.

New Power Pole

And, with my final picture, you can see that the power pole had snapped in half (20' left standing) and they just put a new pole right next to what was left of the old pole. The line that is running low, is the phone company's line. I hope they'll repair their lines too, but I doubt it.

If you want to see more pictures, check out my Facebook Page.  I have an album of pictures there. Like me there and follow me on Twitter - JewlryJaynmarie to keep up with my life and my jewelry.

Countdown to Spring

We're just adjusted our clocks and I know I am past ready for Spring to be here. This has been an unusual year of weather, even Northern California weather.

• Rains started a little late
• Then it poured
• Followed by days of warmth and sunshine
• Freak dusting of snow 
• Now, it's raining again.....

Well, in between the showers, I went outside to check for signs of Spring. After all, Spring is officially here in 6 days! {on Sunday, March 20th}

Bee gathering nectar
from rosemary blooms

Want to play? Please....

I found out that I am not the only one anxious for good weather.

Bees humming from flower to flower, only to disappear when the rain starts again.

California Fuchsia 

One of my dogs, Penny, running to grab a tennis ball and then trying to get me to play with her.



And, finally, some more flowers! This time from my California Fuchsia in a pot outside on the deck.

Now that I know that I am not the only one anxious for Spring to be here. The bees have started looking for flowers. My dogs want to go outside and play. And, one of California's native species, telling me that, yes, it's almost Spring!

I can't wait!

Life, Dogs and Thunder God Vine

Today, I'm going to write on a subject that important to me and to many others who suffer constant pain. My pain is from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. For those of you who don't know what Chronic Fatigue (CFS) is, its a constant lack of any energy at all. Fatigue is really a misnomer, because many people who see the word fatigue say, "oh yes, I know what it is; I've been really tired lately too." Well, not to get morbid, but CFS fatigue goes way beyond mere tiredness; you don't have the energy to move at all. And, there is the constant pain as well. If you want to read more about CFS, the famous writer Laura Hillenbrand, the best-selling author of “Seabiscuit: An American Legend" has CFS and here is an interview with her about her writing and living with CFS.

Now, I don't want you to think I sit around in pain all the time, I have pain medication that helps, and I know how much to push myself. So, some days, all I can do is lay down and read; other days I can make jewelry and work on my computer to support my blog, my shop and my teammates. And, I have to say, watching my dogs, always brings a smile to my face. Laughter is sometimes the best medicine.  



So, I was surprised when Time Magazine devoted an issue to dealing with pain. I was a little afraid to read it because many doctors don't believe in CFS or constant pain, but I was pleasantly surprised. It actually said that doctors are starting to treat pain as a real disease in itself. And, they talked about what you could do for pain other than medication; things like massage, qi gong, yoga, acupuncture and taking something called thunder god vine.


Now, I know what the other items on this list are, but thunder god vine? What is it? How do you use it? And, most important at all, where and how do you get some?


Help! Any clues? Ideas? Hints?