Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

It’s been fun selling some rings via Etsy — surprising to me as well which rings sold first by the way — and getting to see them in traditional ring gift boxes (that’s how all the jewelry ships — in a nice box suitable for gifting or long-term storage, not just a cardboard box). I have a decent number of new designs on the way as well. The stuff below are clay and in various stages of designs. The skull ring (bottom center), which is sort of a “low bulk” version of the Brainiac design has just been started and I haven’t had a chance to do anything but rough out some teeth and squeeze out the general shape. The zombies (seven new ones, two half-face and five full-face) are much complete and I’ll probably mold them in the next couple of days, and the Nibbler (FUTURAMA, middle right) ring is pretty much good to cast.

On Monday I had an appointment with a neuromuscular and myopathy expert — in a way a follow-up because it was the same doctor that first figured out my diagnosis, which was good because it meant he didn’t have to re-familiarize himself with a rare disease (and he’s a nice guy that seems compassionate). He did order some bloodwork looking for some long-shot protein abnormalities which could give us a few unexpected treatment options, but unsurprisingly, he’s seconding the opinion that we are out of treatment options. I don’t really like the idea that it’s all downhill from here without repreive. Feels like a difficult thing to be optimistic about. Carving the stuff above has been a slow process because my hands hurt when I work on them (assuming they’re strong enough in the first place). Hopefully there’s something positive on the medical horizon that I’m not seeing yet.

But I do have positive stuff on the non-medical horizon. I’m trying to fill as much of my calender with excitement as I can. It goes a long way to helping convince my doctor that I’m not about to pull the plug on my life-support machines (and maybe convince me too) — I’m always paranoid of the consequences of speaking candidly, because I have a profound dislike of being licked up, even “for my own good”. Anyway…

That picture of a shipwreck was taken from a submarine at 100ft depth. It’s one of the many fun things (and something I’ve never done before) that Caitlin and I might be doing next week in the Cayman Islands. I haven’t been there in years — which reminds me, I’m finally getting tattooed again tomorrow (reminds me because last time I was in the Carribbean, so was my tattoo artist Shane who joined us) — and I can’t wait. I read that it’s one of the best place in the world for snorkeling (which I love doing and is one of the last physical activities that I can still enjoy) so I’m really eager to go. We leave in just under a week!!! Woo woo! And then after that I’m going to go visit Nefarious again, and then all of us are going to Cozumel in November… Christmas vacation isn’t planned yet but it might be another visit to Costa Rica. Anyway, there is still a lot of nice stuff on the horizon, and I do hope we get to enjoy it.

Oh and I seem to be cursed with transformer problems lately — the USB/charging cable for my tablet blew up on my way home from visiting Virginia (a big burn marrk on the tablet side of the cable, but luckily only the cable and transformer seemed destroyed with the tablet surviving). I got it replaced after checking at the tenth possible store… A while back I lost the batterly charger for my Canon Rebel SLR, which even though it’s very old at this point still takes far better pictures than most modern mini cameras, so I went to Future Shop where they offered to sell me a generic for $80. I declined after looking on Amazon and seeing that I could buy a charger and an extra battery for under $10. I checked Henry’s (a bigger camera shop here in town) and they wanted $80 (and no free battery), so I did the online order, which came today. Fifteen minutes later I heard a loud pop and smelled burning plastic. Argh. It’s dead. The battery still works, but I have no way of charging it. It was so cheap that it’s not worth the expense of mailing it back, but still, I don’t like getting ripped off, so I hope I can just convince them to replace it.