Born to Cut

I absolutely love to cut little teeny, tiny bits of paper. I had so much fun today - my heart was racing! Notice these photographs were taken on a white sheet, using a light tent of sorts. I like the softer, diffused light - something I'm going to have to work with further. But not bad for a first effort.

This frame is 5" square so those corner squares are 1/4". I made this one today as well as the blue and teal pieces below.

These next 3 pieces are 7" square.

These blasts from the past are 8-3/4" square. These were at The Wine Trek and I'm taking them to Artisan's Alley this week.

So I had quite a productive day - I'm very happy. I was able to accomplish so much because I worked half a day (7:00-11:00) so I could go with Simon to traffic court this afternoon.

Piece of cake. We arrived at our local town court 15 minutes early. He signed in and stood in line to speak with the assistant district attorney, who was very nice. Simon accepted his offer to reduce his speeding ticket (16 mph over the speed limit) to a moving violation, reducing the points on his license from 4 to 2. No request or explanation necessary - that's just what they do, just like everyone told us. (I stood with him in line, but hung back and Simon spoke with him alone.)

We went into the court room - there were about 20 people there - and we waited. And waited and waited. The judge came in and finally got things rolling after an hour or more wait. Maybe the ADA was still speaking with "criminals" but it looked to me like we were fully assembled. The judge spoke for 5 minutes on the procedure and started down the list. Simon was about 6th or 7th, which is why I told him we should go a bit early. First come, first served. Each case took 2 minutes - just long enough for the person to declare guilty or not guilty and a fine was assigned. I couldn't make sense of the fines because they were all over the place for the same offense as Simon's. I mean, I guess the judge bases it on any previous offenses and I don't know what else. He was given the lowest fine of the people ahead of him, $85. Plus a $55 surcharge (which was all over the place too - you'd think that would be standard), so the total was $140. I had cash on me but once we saw how things worked, when asked, Simon said he would not pay today. The court clerk gave him a slip of paper with $140 written on it and the date 8/29, which is when he has to have the fine paid. I did not want to front him the money on this. And had I "made" him make his car payment to me on 8/1, knowing he'd be shy of having enough for his fine - but that was his problem to deal with.

It was all pretty painless except for the hour wait, where Simon and I just sat and talked. (I brought a book but left it in the car, not knowing how things would be - or that the wait would be that long.) Geez, Simon is so argumentative and combative! Not in a bad, mean way, just in a constantly challenging way. Teenagers.

The good news is Simon went to work right afterwards. He now has a second job at a phone accessory place at the mall - actually for more money and more hours than he has at Abercrombie Kids. He loves them both - words I wasn't sure I'd ever hear come from his mouth. Between both jobs, he'll finally be where he should be financially, to support his various car and clothing habits. Even worst case scenario for both, he'll be sitting pretty I think. We ran the numbers the other night and I actually saw, for the very first time, the light bulb go off in terms of aggressively paying down his car debt - and building a cushion. It's not to say there won't be stumbles along the way but I feel better about all this stuff than I have in a long time.

So he worked for two hours at the phone place (getting trained), then he must have stopped in at Abercrombie Kids because he called to say he was working until closing. Glory hallelujah! Steve and I have had such a pleasant quiet evening. Even Lizz isn't here, though she's pretty quiet anyway. If Simon's home, he has friends over usually. Their new thing is they bring their computers with them (desktops, not laptops!) so they can play this new game, whatever it is. Meanwhile, it's draining the Internet power away from my computer so badly, it's like I'm on dial-up. Last weekend Steve put Simon and Lizz on a wireless router thingy whatever. It helped but not 100%. Tonight, I'm flying just as fast as I can click - just the way it should be.

Getting this court thing behind us, I mean behind Simon - plus all this paper cutting frivolity, I had a pretty damn good day. Oh, the half day of work was kind of a nice bonus too.