Earthquakes and such

Well, my blog has been sadly neglected for a long time, I have been so busy at school. School is such a challenge for me, although I enjoy it. It's hard because my life is split...I'm here at school for 5 days of the week, home for the weekends with my boyfriend and daughter. There is no creative outlet for me here at school, which is insanely frustrating for me, since I really just want to make jewelry all day! But, if I were to bring my jewelry making supplies down here, I would get no school work done at all, ever!! So, I have to live frustrated until I'm home on the weekend, and then try to balance time with my daughter and boyfriend with time creating new things. I have three notebooks full of designs and ideas for jewelry, it will be YEARS before I get a chance to even attempt half of them! That's good though, in case I run into a creative dry spell in the future, at least I will have something to fall back on in those notebooks!

So, I've been getting into some metal stamping designs, and so far I'm really enjoying the results! Check out my pics of the new designs, and let me know what you think! I have TONS of ideas for stampings too, so stay tuned to my shop, I will have some for sale in there eventually!

Earthquakes. Ok, so there there seems to have been a lot of them in the news lately, and there is a lot of speculation out there about what is considered "normal" for any one year. Religious people are claiming it's the end of the world, non-religious people are scared, scratching their heads, wondering what is going on. I refer you to the NEIC (National Earthquake Information Center) website here to put your minds at ease: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/neic/
Here, you can veiw the worlds catalog of daily earthquakes, an extensive amount of information, and view recent seismic activity and even archives of old earthquakes. If you look at the data for any day, any year, you will find many earthquakes. The earth is incredibly dynamic, and none of the earthquakes that have occurred recently are outside of scientific expectation, either in size or location. Haiti exists on a transform plate boundary and has had massive earthquakes because of this in the distant past. Chile exists in an active subduction zone, characterized by massive "mega-thrust" earthquake events and extensive volcanism. Tibet is part of the Himalayan orogeny, where the Indo-Australian plate is colliding with Asia, pushing up the Himalaya in the process - the region is prone to giant thrust faulting as a result of these collisional forces. Baja is part of the San Andreas fault system, another active transform plate boundary where earthquakes are common, and expected. The ONLY thing different about this years earthquakes is the fact that they are being so widely reported. So PLEASE put your mind at ease about the current seismic activity of the planet!!! Unless you live in a seismically active area (and you should know if you do!), you don't have to worry about your area suddenly becoming active.