Got to be birds flying higher

I cleaned my office today and I'm still not done. I had all holiday break to do it, but there were so many other fun things to do, of course. I wasn't sure how I wanted to use the space either. My office, which was originally a girl's small bedroom, has seen so many changes over the years. When we first moved in, I had a card table and old desk and some shelving units for my model horses.

Then I splurged on Billy bookcases from IKEA for my books and model horses, a new desk, some over the desk shelving, an ALEX drawer unit, and another IKEA computer cart. The computer cart makes a great printer stand and there's room for file folders underneath where the computer would go. Last year or the year before I added another ALEX drawer unit for my Pazzles die cutter. Well, I'm e-cycling the Pazzles because the company is no longer functional and the machine won't talk to my computer anymore. I bought a Cricut (something I swore I'd never do!) because most of my customers use Cricuts. In hindsight, I did well with the furniture I chose and thinking modular. Our house is the three bedroom model; the two bedroom model has a bigger master bedroom and bigger second bedroom. I know this because my neighbour with that model used to be my co-worker ;-D

If you recall, I graduated from art college and have been tossing, recycling or rehoming a lot of things since April and I just put off the heavy duty chores of pulling almost everything out of the room to vacuum. Once again, I can't believe the amount of recycling I'm doing. Tomorrow I'm going to sort my paper scraps into colour families.

In case you're wondering, what's on my shelves if not books and model horses? Well, there's still three shelves of model horses and one Benno unit full of books. I have my "good" crafting paper organized for die cutting and my rubber stamp collection as well.

Since the passing of my dear, sweet Muffin, I'm no longer beholden to crafting where he is. I can close my closet door and actually use my office without having stuff fall on me! Aw! Poor Muffin. He was just not one to sit nicely while I worked ;-D

This is the first of two posts about crochet and cockatiels and both kind of happened at the same time. I just happened to be across from a vendor named Jubblier and she had crochet budgies and a cockatiel. You can bet I bought one of each! They are as just as cute as they are on their Etsy listing.

My real tiel wasn't so sure about the imposter :-D

I made a little Facebook page for my bird! It updates on Sundays and Wednesdays. Click the picture to visit and like.

I had a fun weekend making lots of art. I cut paper, I sketched on the paper and I cut the paper some more! I made seven pictures in all and will be posting five of them this week. You can stay tuned on DeviantArt or Flickr.

Originally posted by calzephyr77 at Instamuffin

Originally posted by calzephyr77 at InstaMuffin!

I was only a quarter of the way into this book when I realized what an effective manager my cockatiel is. He has clear goals (pasta! toast! you!), communicates them effectively (wheet! WHEET! WHE-WHEET!), and knows how to motivate staff (cooing, cute eyes, sheer bravado). Anyway, he gets results from his employees!

I would really like to read more books by Richard Conniff because of his keen observational skill and wry wit. With his vast experience observing animals and humans, he takes some of the stereotypes that we love to pepper our speech with (dog eat dog, monkey see monkey do) and relate human behaviour to mostly that of our primate cousins. It's not to suggest that when dealing with problem people, it's time to toss the psychology books and start pounding on one's chest, but more to realize that animals and people have a lot in common. Self-organizing behaviour, cliques, hierarchy, even economics - there's a lot of invisible things at work in human relationships that we might not even realize or unconsciously go along with. Much like the chimps mentioned in the book, people are constantly jockeying for status within their own troop, be it family or work.

It's hard to put this book into a nutshell, but there were so many theories I found fascinating. Studies of chimpanzees has shown that they are much better at making up than humans; vervets trained to use stones as money were noticeably ticked when one vervet was given a grape for his money (the others got cucumber); the smile is akin to the "I'm not a threat" grimace in chimps; and gossip is akin to social grooming in apes.

This book is not a self-help book; it can't solve certain problems like other tomes. Rather it is meant to decode people behaviour that is sometimes puzzling. My favourite chapters were actually near the end, such as overcoming "facial pre-destination", which us baby faced people know well, and "Why do jerks prosper". There's even a chapter on animal economics, which explains why piranhas don't go into feeding frenzies or lions don't jump at every antelope.

I would write more, but my manager is telling me to stop dawdling around on the Internets and give him a cracker, so I gotta go!