Behold the Design-it-Yourself Week Planner! Mine now has daily temps and appointments I’ll forget when I’m standing there groggy.

Customize to your own style

Buy ANY frame you like. Write whatever you want, or nothing, on a white piece of paper (I just used the back of the fake-happy-family that came with the frame). Buy a “chalk ink” or dry-erase pen for writing on glass. Et voila!

Planning my clothes a day ahead should be easy, and subconsciously it’s a better start for the day. A little motivation to get out of bed and put on something you like… or at least it removes one subconscious barrier to getting out of bed. (I hate getting out of bed, you can tell.) But yeah, I don’t quite manage that level of planning. At least this way, I know if I’m supposed to be someplace!

My frame was $8 (and then another 25% off). The “chalk ink” pen was literally more expensive than making the whole board — I splurged on a favorite color: “green tea.” (You maybe knew, but I just learned, that this is how the smoothie and ice cream and coffee places draw up those colorful Daily Special boards. I hail from the era of actual chalk.)

Display rack for clip earrings

In case you happen to not have pierced ears, like me, you might also like to see the frame-hack I’m working on to hang next to the weekly planner: Take a $4 frame and a 1/8-inch wooden dowel (which costs pennies at a craft store) and you got yourself the makings of a clip earring rack. This is something I’ve been wanting, because I buy pretty earrings and then forget they’re in the drawer. So I thought I’d display some in the closet and maybe actually, y’know, wear ‘em.

“Buy the Good Stuff First”

Here’s the explanation I promised of my new closet principle. Many of us, I think, operate on the “Veggies first, dessert second” principle, and when applied to closet organization, that means we force ourselves to box up stuff and relegate it to Goodwill or the attic before we allow ourselves to go buy nice new stuff. Gotta make room for it first, right?

So here’s where this doesn’t help us when it comes to closets: Having the new stuff hanging next to the old stuff will make it easier to toss the clothes you really should toss. If you sort your closet first, you will see, let’s say, eight items: Two you hate, two that fit but you don’t like wearing them, three that are good enough, and one you really love. What do you box up? Maybe the two you hate. Because you need those ones that fit, right? For days when you’re out of laundry?

Now let’s do the same thing except first we go buy two things we actually like.  Now you walk in the closet and see: Two new things you like, one thing you love, three things that are OK, two things you hate and two things you don’t like wearing. Did you box up four items for Goodwill this time? ‘Cause I sure did.

And now, when you step into your closet in the morning, you see: Two new items that you like, three that are good enough, and one you really love. Better, no?

Now: back up to the Week Planner.

This method/kit just struck me as a really genius way to make a difficult task very easy. Three difficult tasks, in fact, because

– Stretching canvas evenly is hard — it puckers

– Wrapping canvas around corners is hard — you get those annoying thick wodgy triangles of fabric, and your nice neat corners suddenly look like hell

– And mitering corners — cutting a 45-degree angle at the ends of two pieces of wood so that when you join them together, they make a nice neat corner — is the devil himself.

So what did they do? They deconstructed the frame, created a clever reusable gadget, and simplified each step to the point that the hardest thing you have to do is cut a straight line.

The kit appears to be kind of expensive, but I’m not suggesting we all go buy ‘em — I’m just appreciating it for the beauty of the idea. It takes all the frustration out of the process while also yielding much better results. Clever.

The animated twinkling of the fireflies, the cool blue-green of the jar (just like an old Ball jar) — I loved this piece instantly when I drove past it the other day at dusk. The sign is five feet tall!  And dusk is the perfect time to see it, just like real fireflies.

And it turns out the piece has a pretty cool back-story, too: Sanders said he made this artwork and its twin for the wedding reception of country music stars Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton, who got hitched May 14 at a ranch near Boerne. You can see one of the “Fireflies” signs glowing on the back left wall in this photo of the extremely funky-cool reception area, created by Junk Gypsy, designers based in Round Top. (And Aggies, whoop!)

The Junk Gypsy blog (which has many more gorgeous photos of the wedding setup) says the designers settled on a theme of “moonshine and mason jars, fireflies and pink guitars” to represent the couple. Sanders said the inspiration came from a Lambert song about treating love like fireflies in a jar — I think it must be her 2004 hit “Me and Charlie Talking”:

So you treat your love like a firefly,
like it only gets to shine for a little while
Catch it in a mason jar with holes in the top,
and run like hell to show it off

Junk Gypsy commissioned the neon works from him, then returned the pieces to him after the wedding, Sanders said. And thank goodness he put one up in his window for us to enjoy.

“I love them too,” Sanders said. “When I was a kid, we called them ‘lightning bugs.’ “

Each of these two pieces is priced at $3,000, and even at that, I might try to buy one if I thought my husband would let me hang it in the living room where I could see it every day. Thank you, Mr. Sanders, for telling me about your artwork and letting me post the video, so others can see it twinkling too.

The Bastille Day connection is meaningful to me as I have for years used the date as an excuse to throw a party — a few years ago we had the “Eleventh or twelfth annual” such fest, having lost count somewhere in the late ’90s. Here’s a flyer from the fourth one; I think it must have been in 1993. The tradition probably grew out of all my buddies being in the various geeky language clubs at our high school (I was the Spanish Club secretary) and lasted because it falls at just such a great time to throw a party. Summer doldrums have set in, everybody’s thinking, “Gee, that was fun getting together with family/fireworks/barbecue on the Fourth… we should do that more often… and we still have all these plastic cups left over.”

In the spirit of freedom and celebration, I offer… er… some free wallpapers! How anticlimactic. These are, you’ll see, predominantly in the color my friends have come to call “Sue-green” over the years — which has been one of the only constants in the various (mostly really ugly) versions of Sues-news.com. Luckily the Wayback Machine didn’t store any earlier images of the site — I was going to post some here so y’all could cringe.

These images are all ones I shot (or painted — I made up some fleurs-de-lis for the French connection) — so take any you like! I think I’m going to put the one with the white column on my desktop at work, and keep my desktop icons on the left in the white area.

Thank you for celebrating with me in this very small and silly way!

But as far as my own Mamma is concerned, she had plenty of reason to stitch it in the 1940s or 1950s, too, because her husband — my Pappa — was among the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and she was among the millions more who waited nervously at home for news. My Pappa came home, to a long life, love and family, so he is not numbered among those for whom today is specifically set aside.

So I post this in memory of his friends who did not come home, and their fellow service members, men and women, who did not come home in all our wars and actions, in peacetime, in training for combat, from jungles and beaches and motor pools and hospitals and dirt roads and blown-out towns, in ships and planes and helicopters and trucks, in the air, on land and sea.

thank you all.

The dance hall is a wonderful historic old place I learned of back when I worked at the Statesman’s Round Rock bureau, and now that I live on the other side of the Hippieplex, I miss both the dance hall and the Round Rock Express. So I made a Coupland outing my birthday request, and wow did we have fun.

First we had dinner at the restaurant; the food was quite good, and we got to talk to the owner some — a nice guy and a good Ag. Upstairs, you can stay in rooms that used to be part of a bordello and the back of the dining area and the stairs got used in a scene from “Lonesome Dove” (I am working on finding which scene; they told us you can see the anachronistic carpet in the shot). It’s just a step through a curtain to the dancehall:

J.D. Newbury was playing, and the crowd was unusually small for a Saturday night through no fault of his: There were hail and tornado warnings in the area, which we kept an ear on via the radio up at the restaurant’s cash register. Newbury and his band put on a good show — originals plus plenty of favorites for people to dance to, and dance we all did.

The band showed off their fiddle player with a little bit of classical sawing, then a hot rendition of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” During their break, the DJ put on the “Cupid Shuffle” and about two-thirds of the crowd showed how it’s done.

Though these pictures show the dance floor close to empty (I was trying to catch the star light patterns on the floor), there were lots of couples out there most of the night. Largely young people, for this show, including a nice group of high school kids; but also some couples all the way up to older than me and Jason, gasp! Two-stepping, waltzing and a number of people doing pretty good swing moves too. And what a wonderful old room: tall and wide, with great acoustics (so Kevin Fowler has stated).

And hey, look who’s playing June 4!

Tickets $20, available online or at Cavender’s Boot City, Allen’s Boots in Round Rock, Texas Boot Co. in Bastrop

Sometimes I was even able to tweet an event at the time of day it actually happened, which drew some shivers from readers (they were kind enough to tell me) as, for example, when a norther blew in after dark on Feb. 25, dropping the mild weather to nearly freezing.

My good friend and very funny coworker Ponch Garcia provided color commentary, which I’m also recording below. He tweets as @bourbonitis, a name derived from an Alejandro Escovedo song; I’m @expat_aggie.

Stick around to see if I actually get up at 5 tomorrow morning to tweet the final assault! (Sources and Twitter-jargon help are at the bottom.)

Feb. 23

• 175 years ago today: Santa Anna’s army reaches #Alamo, sends in a demand that Texians surrender. Travis answers with a single cannon shot.
• Nice one #Alamo RT @bourbonitis: @expat_aggie Santa Anna replies, “¡Ay caramba!”
• At 3 p.m., Travis dispatches letter asking town of Gonzales to send provisions & troops. He & Bowie know #Alamo can’t hold out with 150 men.

Feb. 24

• 175 years ago today: 24 hrs into #Alamo siege. Bowie falls ill; Travis takes full command. Weather: warm/cloudy, 100% chance of cannonballs.
• Travis writes second call for backup, the famous letter stating #Alamo has not lost a man and he’ll fight to the death: http://bit.ly/hwDC4C
• (love it!) #Alamo RT @bourbonitis: Little-known fact: In his famous letter, Travis dotted his “i’s” with smiley faces.

Feb. 25

• 175 yrs ago today: Fannin leaves Goliad with 300 troops to aid #Alamo- a mission he never completes. Inside walls, water, firewood run low
• Fannin barely gets on way to #Alamo before turning back, thus seriously reducing number of Texas high schools that will be named for him.
• Although, put yourself in Fannin’s shoes with this summary of his predicament: Scroll down to “Fannin’s value” http://bit.ly/igIt0T #Alamo
• 175 yrs ago today: Night falls at the #Alamo on 3rd day of siege. A norther blows in, and the “summer heat” drops to just above freezing.

Feb. 26

• 175 yrs ago today: Day 4 of siege. Some #Alamo defenders slip outside walls for water/firewood, engaging in small battles w/surrounding army

Feb. 27

• 175 yrs ago today: 5th day of siege. Sentries sleeping at their posts. Small group of fighters sets off from Gonzales to aid #Alamo troops.
• The Gonzales Ranging Company has 32 men. They will have to get through a thousand Mexican soldiers just to reach the #Alamo.

Feb. 28

• 175 years ago today: #Alamo still under continual bombardment, but morale inside is high: Not a single defender has been killed.
• Davy Crockett part of why morale is high; prob. didn’t play fiddle, but “was seen at all points, animating the men to do their duty.”-Travis
• Travis has written to Col. Fannin and Gen. Houston, confidently expecting they will send troops. None have come. He knows #Alamo will fall.
• Little-known #Alamo info! RT @bourbonitis: Davy Crockett was known to craft his hat into a motivational puppet named “Scrappy Cappy.”
• From sickbed, Bowie looks at calendar, realizes 1836 is leap yr so thank God Sue will only tweet 12, but men still must fight all 13 days.

March 1

• 175 yrs ago today: At 3 a.m. the Gonzales reinforcements (32 men) slip through the Mexican army; #Alamo gates swing open and they dash in
• The #Alamo’s 12-pound cannon fires twice, and one shot strikes the house Santa Anna is using as headquarters (Photo – http://bit.ly/dUKY1R)
• Rumors fly inside the #Alamo that Fannin is coming to their aid with 400 troops.

March 2

• 175 yrs ago today: Delegates at Washington-on-the-Brazos issue Texas’ declaration of independence. (Broadside: http://bit.ly/gMcoP9 )
• Day 9 of #Alamo siege: Troops unaware of declaration, but Travis is eager for it so “world will understand… what we are fighting for.”
• 175 yrs ago today: Texas newspapers begin printing Travis’ plea for #Alamo reinforcements; printed “broadsides” of the letter also circulate
• re: Alamo letter in Texas papers … RT @bourbonitis Also in that day’s newspapers was the last “Garfield” strip that was actually funny.
• Present day — The original Texas declaration of independence is on display right now in Austin at Lorenzo de Zavala State Archives

March 3

• 175 yrs ago today: At 11 a.m. Bonham returns to #Alamo with news that aid is coming (it isn’t). Santa Anna, however, gets 1,000 more troops.
• In 10 days of siege, no #Alamo defenders have been killed. Legend says this or March 5 is the day Travis draws his line in the sand.
• One of Travis’ last letters, a brief note to a friend named David Ayers, begins, “Take care of my little boy.” #Alamo
• Sunset: Frenchman named Rose either flees #Alamo & lives to be 65 http://bit.ly/f1d6GQ Or never existed http://bit.ly/enaNZH . Take yer pick

March 4

• 175 yrs ago today: Santa Anna calls afternoon meeting with his officers to tell them he plans to overrun the #Alamo.
• Some officers want to simply wait for the big artillery to arrive and blast the walls, rather than lose troops scaling the walls.

March 5

• Day [12] of #Alamo siege: I am developing dorky crush on Lt Col Travis. Slight difficulty; I am married and he is, well, dead for 175 yrs
• Srsly though. OK, he’s overdramatic, a bit of a dandy, but while he was not eager to die for cause, he was ready to. End result: Texas.
• 175 yrs ago today: At noon, Santa Anna tells his staff the assault on the #Alamo will be tomorrow morning.
• RT @bourbonitis Officers suggest trying to drive them out of the #Alamo with conjunto versions of Guns N’ Roses songs.
• Last courier leaves #Alamo: James Allen, a college kid with a fast horse, carrying yet another plea for help to Fannin. Guess how that goes.
• 175 yrs ago today: At midnight, about 1,800 of Santa Anna’s troops begin moving quietly into place for the final assault on the #Alamo.

—

Photos at Alamo, March 4, 2011

As I happened to be in San Antonio on Friday on another matter, I was unable to stop myself from driving down to the Alamo in the afternoon!

• L-R: Lt Col Wm Barret Travis, me, former Congressman David Crockett http://twitpic.com/467vut
• Near sundown they cleared crowd for a photo shoot – Alamo all gussied up for her birthday pic with yellow roses http://twitpic.com/4680b6
• Earlier in afternoon: Some unusual sights on #Alamo Plaza. Opposing troops chat in friendly manner http://twitpic.com/4681k0
• Some of Santa Anna’s soldados drill in #Alamo Plaza. http://twitpic.com/4682xm
• Toward sunset (my fave time to be there). I believe that’s a @mysa photog up in the cherrypicker taking #Alamo ‘s birthday pic http://twitpic.com/4685ha
• City of San Antonio handed yellow roses to female #Alamo visitors. My Rose of San Antone (now in vase on my desk): http://twitpic.com/4687ma

Twitter jargon

For non-Twitter initiates: An @ usually precedes Twitter usernames; putting # before a word allows people to search for all tweets with that label in them; and RT means retweet, as when I’m forwarding Ponch’s comments to my readers. A link that begins with bit.ly is just a shortened version of a long web address.

Sources

I leaned most heavily on Randy Roberts and James S. Olson’s 2001 book, “A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory.” Also, Stephen L. Hardin’s “Texian Iliad”; the Handbook of Texas; the official Alamo web site; this transcription of Travis’ letters; and this chronology.

Fightin’ Texas Aggie Class of 1994!

Look at the earrings you’re thinking of buying. If the main part of the earring dangles from a small ring, you’re in business. Like these dime-store lovelies:

When you are sure your earrings can be altered, buy them. Then hie yourself down to the craft store and buy, for a few dollars:

• A cheap pair of round-nose jewelry pliers
• A packet of cheap earring clip-backs in gold or silver-toned base metal (see note at bottom for real gold and silver)
• A packet of open jump rings, medium-size, say 3.5 mm, in the same metal color

You might not need the jump rings, if the clip-backs you find have an open ring, like the one below. You need jump rings only if you’re hooking together two solid rings, or if you need an extra ring to make the front side of the earring dangle in the right direction (think of how a chain’s links alternate — straight, sideways, straight, sideways). But jump rings are cheap, so you might grab them anyway.

This is an open ring that is very conveniently integrated into the clip-back:

Use the pliers to get rid of the pierced part of your earrings. Here, I just had to open a ring on the French wire:

Next, attach the earring to the back. The metal is pretty easy to break with pliers, so be gentle. Here, all I had to do was hook the solid ring onto the open ring. Make sure the dangly part of your dime-store earring faces forward before you close the open ring with pliers.

You are done! Behold your new clip earrings.

Tools: Read about the different kinds of jewelry pliers here. If you’re gonna make jewelry, you might need expensive ones or several kinds. But if all you’re going to do is repair or alter a few earrings, I think a cheap pair of roundies will do you fine.

Real gold or silver: There is absolutely no reason why you can’t do this with real gold and silver jewelry. (Except that, as you already know, clip earrings fall off your ears much more easily than pierced.) The same pliers will work fine, and the craft store might have gold-filled or sterling parts right there in the beading section. But clip-backs in precious metals are much harder to find than that, usually.

Try sources such as Monsterslayer.com (the name’s a reference to a Navajo origin myth), Artbeads.com and Jewelrysupply.com. Shipping is often free. The parts will cost several dollars more — I find that a single sterling clip-back can cost $8 — and be careful when ordering because these expensive items are in fact sometimes sold singly, not in pairs. Ya don’t want to eagerly rip open your package to find you only have one earring back.

The Razorbacks are playing Ohio State, and it should be a barn-burner. (Curiously, the only time I’ve traveled outside Texas for a bowl game, it was to play Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans! That would be the 1999 Sugar Bowl, with my beloved Texas Aggies )

But I’ve learned to love the Razorbacks, too. And of course I love New Orleans, and anything to do with it. So Allez les cochons (Go Pigs!)