A Moment Captured..

SUGAR!

2012-02-17T08:05:00.000-08:00

What with the new jobs and moving and general chaos, it's been a while since I spent any time being creative in the kitchen.

Yup. New job. I started on January 9 at a new company, back in supplier quality. So far, so good! The only fly in my ointment right now is the 26 mile (each way) commute. As much as I love Petunia, gas mileage is NOT her strong suit.

The new job means, of course, new coworkers. And I like most of these people, which is a significant change over the last job and probably has a great deal to do with my willingness to spend hours slaving over hot icing.

I doubled this recipe, and it made 25 heart cookies. Each of them was approx. 3 inches across at their widest, and probably 1/4 inch thick. I LOVE this recipe... it's quick, you don't have to chill anything or fool around with it, it works fine with my kitchenaid mixer; it's forgiving, and since I'm usually baking at 1 am, this is a good thing; and the cookies taste fantastic.

My Mom's Cut-Out Cookie Recipe:
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Cream together butter and sugar. When well mixed, add egg and vanilla. Sift together dry ingredients and add gradually. Note: once you start adding flour, you can toughen the cookie with handling. Use a low speed and be gentle - don't mess with the dough any more than you have to.

The dough will be kinda crumbly looking in the bowl. Lightly flour your work surface, grab enough dough to make a softball-sized ball, form the ball, then roll out. Thickness is up to you; I prefer these cookies a bit thicker so 1/4" is perfect. Use your favorite cookie cutters, then place cookies on a lightly greased cookie sheet. I just use my counter as my work space, and the dough will stick a bit. I have an offset spatula (from the Wilton Tent Sale, of course) that I use to remove the cookie from my counter. It is totally worth paying retail for one of these things, just in the sheer frustration saved.

I take my softball-sized ball, roll it out, fit as many cookies in as possible, and then put the bits off to one side. (I save one little bit to use as a thickness gauge for the new ball of dough.) Make another ball from the bowl (finish off what's left in there if doubling) and repeat. After I've used all of the "fresh" dough, I combine the scraps for the second run, and then the third.

Here they are on my wonderful HUGE cookie sheet (also from WTS)...

Bake at 400 degrees. I put them in for 6 minutes, then turn the cookie sheets and give them another 3 - 4 minutes. This will vary with your oven, size and thickness of cookies.

Scoop them off the cookie sheet onto a cooling rack and let them cool completely.

Icing:
3/4 cup sifted confectionars sugar
~ 3-4 T water
food coloring

For the double batch of cookies, I used 2 cups of confectionars sugar, started with 11 T of water, and then just dumped a bunch more water in until it was the right consistency. Then I put some in another bowl, and added red food coloring. You can just brush the icing on and call it a day. I broke out the syringes, paint brushes, toothpicks, and my sprinkles collection.

For the marbled ones, I used the brush to paint on a layer of icing in one color, then I had another color of icing in the syringe. Put a squiggle of the other color on, then pull a toothpick thru in straight lines like you are drawing a checkerboard. It works better if you "draw" each line in a different direction. (So vertical line up, vertical line down, vertical line up all the way across. Then horizontal line left, then right then left, etc all the way across.)

Once the cookies were iced, I stumbled off to bed and left them to dry.

Any time I use confectioners sugar, I have an explosion with it and have to clean EVERY surface. Seriously, it's like my super power, to make confectioners sugar cover every square inch of my kitchen. Happily, my cabinents are white so it's hard to tell. The visible aftermath was bad enough...

All packed up and ready to go for Valentine's Day:

I brought these in for Valentine's Day on Tuesday. They were joined by my coworker's chocolate cake (OMG, best chocolate cake I've ever eaten!!), and her chocolate covered strawberries.

Then came Thursday, and this coworker's birthday. I'd ended up agreeing to bake the birthday cake but after Tuesday, I decided that bringing this woman a chocolate birthday cake was like bringing inferior tea to the Chinese - maybe not the best idea ever. So I went with a favored standby: Texas Sheetcake.

CAKE:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup butter
1 cup water
4 tablespoons cocoa powder

FROSTING:
6 tablespoons milk
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 cup butter
4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a jellyroll pan.
2. Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in mixer bowl.
3. Add butter, water and cocoa to saucepan; bring mixture to a boil then remove from heat. Add cocoa mixture to the flour mixture, mixing until blended.
4. Beat in the sour cream and eggs.
5. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

6. For the icing: In a large saucepan, combine the milk, cocoa and butter. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat. Stir in the confectioners' sugar and vanilla, mixing until blended. Spread frosting over cake. (Cake can be warm or cool when iced.) If desires, sprinkle nuts over top. (I usually put nuts on half the cake.)

So, yeah. I've pretty much spent the whole week in a sugar coma. I'm going to go have a salad for dinner tonight.

Broken

2011-12-03T12:08:00.000-08:00

Pardon me while I freak out. I just need to get this out, and this is about the only place I have that is still unknown to my real-life life. Yay to parents on facebook, right?

Broken... Well, not yet but it's coming. I can feel it looming and when I think about it too closely, I can't breathe. I can feel the cracks in me, like fault lines. When I think about you, and us, and where we are going, I can feel the cracks and I know that one day, I'll shatter.

It's not like you've been anything less than honest with me. You were. I just didn't see you coming. How can I feel like this for someone who was just a voice over the phone? I have a little voice in my head, and she warns me when it's time to run. Always before you, I listened. I ran. Usually across the country. (No intimacy issues here!) And it worked, and I stayed whole. Untouched, really. She tried with you, and I didn't listen. I didn't believe her. Yeah, we talked for hours and hours, and no one has ever managed to keep up with me the way you did - intellectually, and with your sheer randomness and your goofy sense of humor - all so like mine. But you lived in my "friend" box, and there you were going to stay. I was safe.

And then your facebook status changed to "in a relationship" and unlike a friend, I was not happy for you. Not even a little. I wanted to scratch her eyes out - which is an entirely new feeling for me. And then she posted that picture of the two of you, and you were asleep, and she was smirking into the camera with this "he's mine" look on her face and it nearly killed me. And I thought, "oh, shit." I have very strong feelings about poaching, in that I don't, and feeling like this for someone I'd never met who lived across the country AND who now had a girlfriend wasn't something I had any intention of nurturing, so I pulled back. A lot. And it hurt. A lot. And you kept calling. Friend. *snort*

Sometimes, the phone would ring, and I'd see your face on the caller id, and I'd curl into a ball on the couch and just stare at the phone. Then you'd call my home phone, and I'd cave and answer and just say that my cell was charging. And then we were off on the random talks and deep philosophical debates and pointless bickering and next thing I knew, it's 4 hours later and I was going to hate myself in the morning. You told me that I was your favorite female. And like a lovesick teenager, I held that to me.

She lasted about a month. You gave me several perfectly valid reasons why it didn't work... she's too young, she's too vanilla, she's going to be moving out of state, she didn't "get" you. And you dropped a bomb: "She wasn't you." And our nightly two to three hour conversations resumed.

On October 29, you told me that you loved me, and I was your best friend. About an hour later, you told me that you were IN love with me.

November 3 was an awful, wonderful day. I had no idea what we were doing or where we were going but it hurt. It was the least productive day of my professional life to date because I spent the whole day on the phone to my brother, my dad, my mom, several friends... all spent freaking out over you. Yeah, I told my parents all about you. They haven't heard about a guy I was interested in since Jeff, and he's been gone a long time. And then you called. So I now find myself in an "open" relationship with someone that I really truly fell in love with.

We all have a history. Yours is not one I ever suspected I'd be telling my mother about. YOU are not anything I ever saw myself bringing home to meet the family. A lot of your past, while not something I'm happy about, is not something I will hold against you. Or at least, I'm trying hard not to. You were a dumb kid, you screwed up... and your brain and your very different perspective on things were what attracted me the most.

But some of the things that you like scare me. YOU scare me, sometimes. Safe, sane, and consentual are words that I live by and I'm not sure, entirely, that you do. That is probably part of your allure.

The thing that will probably be the deal-breaker, though, is that "club" that you took an oath to. I've lost friends to motorcycles, and I hate them. My family has a history with those "clubs" and we're not even remotely fond of them. The worst, though, is that pesky oath. You told me that if I made you chose, I'd lose. Fair enough. I've been warned.

You have already planned the tattoos that you think we should get to go under the wedding bands. And that, my love, is where you will lose me. I love you. I've never felt for anyone the way I feel for you. I'm looking for jobs in California to be near you, in spite of swearing to never live there again. In spite of my family being in Ohio. In spite of loving my life here in Chicago.

As you've said, I am not exactly the poster girl for monogamy. I am, with a like-minded partner. But that's not you. I think you think that marriage to me would be like open relationship with me, except with rings and matching tattoos. But it's not. I'm much more conservative on some things than you suspect. If I take an oath to you, you have to be free to take an oath to me. And you can't. I'll never be first for you. Also? Not into open marriage. And I highly doubt I'll ever be the only for you.

I'm going to enjoy this ride while it lasts. I may as well; I've never been here before and may never be again. But it's a very bittersweet ride. Because you are going to break me into a million pieces. I hope I can put them back together again.

October?!?

2011-10-25T21:31:00.000-07:00

How the hell did that happen?? I blame Facebook. And google+. And at least one other site. That's where I've been spending my online time lately.

I'm doing well. Still at the same company. Still don't like it. Believe it or not, but I only have a couple of months to my one year.

The house is okay. It's NOT what I had in North Carolina, but it's okay. Gods know that it's got its quirks (terrifying electric, mice, no porch light, weird animal smells, balls of random wires, roof bubbling off, etc etc etc) but thankfully, it's a rental.

I'm having a ball, actually. I'm still doing pottery (Mondays & Saturday mornings), AND I'm back to doing Stamp Camp with the girls (one Tuesday a month), AND making my own wine (Thursdays), hanging out with friends, and so on.

In addition, I've starting dating again and really, I need to get some of this written down. Wow. Some people... No one serious, and that is absolutely fine.

My family is well. The cats are good. No real complaints here. Well, except that winter's coming and Accuweather claims that we're going to get hammered this year - yay. And I totally knew what I was getting into there, so I have no one to blame but me.

So. How's you?

A Quandary...

2011-04-23T01:22:00.000-07:00

I started this job the Monday after Thanksgiving last fall. I knew it was a risk, moving from dealing with suppliers to dealing with customers, but I REALLY wanted out of North Carolina.

Now, I work in a very small office (<30 people). The manufacturing plant is in Mexico. I like the company, I like my boss, and I like most of the people that I work with here. But. Oh man, BUT... I really dislike my job.

I really dislike not having the plant close enough to get my hand on them. I REALLY dislike dealing with the customer. I flat out hate the total lack of ownership or responsibility from people in the plant.

And none of that is going to change. Nothing I do is going to fix this. My boss sends out red fonted, bold faced emails to people telling them to do their jobs and they don't. He's the director - if they aren't listening to him, they sure as hell aren't going to listen to me.

Some deadweight (the guy who I dealt with when this company was MY supplier, the same one that I banned from my site 'cause he was a moron) left the company a couple of months ago, so I've been doing his job too. And I hate it. I hate customer visits and trying to act like an electronics technician when I'm not and don't want to be one. I've been trying to just hold on 'till we got a new hire in, but a couple of weeks ago, my boss mentioned that they may not be replacing him. I've said that I hate customer visits, but I don't know if that's going to make any difference.

Even if they hire someone for that role, I still can't actually FIX anything - I can't get to the plant. My whole job is pounding on other people to do their stuff. There hasn't been a single thing - not one - in nearly 5 months that I've needed from the quality manager down there that I've gotten in a timely fashion, if I even get it at all. Huge presentation to the customer - a monthly one, so it's not like they didn't expect it - on Friday. I'm supposed to send the presentation to them on Monday before. I didn't get some of the critical data from the qm until 2:30 am the night before the presentation. So I was at work at 6 am, throwing this thing together, to send to them 10 freaking minutes before the meeting started.

So, I guess I'll polish the resume AGAIN and start poking around to see what's out there. I really don't want to move again this soon... at least not until I've finished the HUGE claim for this move. (Note: Wheaton Mover = evil. Evil, evil, evil. Stay away!) I don't want to leave my boss high and dry - he's been good to me. But there's no other place for me to go in the company here, and I really don't want to stay either. Gah.

BLIZZARD!

2011-02-03T20:26:00.000-08:00

They said it would snow, and I kinda didn't believe them. They always say it's going to snow. They said six to ten foot drifts, and I said "whatevs, not gonna happen." I did wonder about my coworkers' somewhat hysterical reactions - BLIZZARD! OMG! BLIZZARD! - 'cause I'm NOT in North Carolina anymore, and frankly I expect a bit more, rational weather-wise, from people who live in Chicago. And then it started.

We all went home early, although I couldn't resist playing with the Xterra in the snow. Petunia is a tank. I also gave some guy a ride to his house from the train station, which gave me a golden opportunity to play in the snow some more.

Of course, the cable was the first to go, so I huddled in my little house while the wind howled and gusted and the lights flickered. When I got bored with that (which didn't take long, given my attention span), I covered the bedroom window with a quilt to help with the draft situation and went to bed.

The next morning, it turned out that weathermen do occasionally know what they're talking about.

Happily, my neighbor did my sidewalk while he had the snowblower out doing his.

It only took 45 minutes to unbury my porch. (That is after I had to remove the glass from the storm door and shovel through the door to clear enough of the porch to open the door to start shoveling.) I'd been out there a bit over an hour when my other neighbor's son came over to help me dig. And about thirty minutes after that, his dad brought their snowblower over. All told, we didn't do the whole driveway (I have a HUGE driveway!), and it still took nearly four hours to dig out. Thank the gods for my neighbors or I'd still be out there.

And I'll be damned if I didn't have six foot drifts in the driveway. There's just something fundamentally WRONG with having to reach UP to shovel.

I had 22" of snow in my yard, in the sheltered spots, with drifts several feet high. (I'm not sure how high exactly because I wasn't willing to wade out there to check. I actually measured the drifts in my driveway 'cause I'm a dork like that.) Also? For the first time EVER, my company was shut down for a day. (That was the best part.)

So, is it Spring yet?

Ch Ch Ch Ch Changes

2011-01-27T21:07:00.000-08:00

Wow, life's been crazy for me lately.

There's really no part of my life I haven't changed in the last couple of months. I moved back to the Chicago area (and holy smokes was THAT a nightmare! OMG moving SUCKS!). I changed jobs. I got a new vehicle. I've started (may the gods be merciful) dating again. Changed, changed, changed.

Well, except for my hair. So this weekend, I'm getting that highlighted. My life already feels pretty surreal, why not scare the hell out of myself every time I pass a reflective surface?

Happy New Year

2011-01-01T22:20:00.000-08:00

A recap of my week:

Monday: flew from Cleveland to Chicago (oh, the irony) to Raleigh, my friend picked me up and we drove to the middle of freakin' nowhere. We stopped at the house, I picked up the jeep and hauled in the mail, then off to the studio to visit and GLAZE. Got back to the house around 9:30, cleaned a bit and fell into bed. (It's funny - I had never had keyless entry before Petunia. Within two weeks, I was totally ruined. WTF do you mean, I have to use a key?? At first, I found myself pretty much incapable of figuring out how the jeep worked. How quickly I forget...)

Tuesday: Up at 8:00, the packers arrived shortly after that and then I spent the day trying (with marginal success) to get them to pack what needed to go while leaving what needed to stay. While they were busy downstairs, I stealthily managed to pack up all of the liquids and chemicals that they wouldn't pack that were upstairs. (This was 8 boxes of stuff from the bathroom closet and the laundry room.) I went out at lunch and picked up food for them. (It's best to keep these people happy, after all.) Packed: my hairbrush, towels (but I managed to grab a couple of clean "junk" towels so I could actually shower), the carrying case to my toothbrush, the 3 bags for goodwill [that I had signs (STAYS!) on, told 3 people they stayed and hid in a previously empty closet], a secretaries desk, all of my trash bags, and a bunch of other stuff I probably need. I kept stashing packing paper, boxes, and tape so I could keep packing after they left, they kept taking my stashes away from me and putting them back in the truck. I finally resorted to hiding paper and tape outside when they weren't looking, and just demanding that they leave boxes. Headed to my friends' for dinner (their homemade lasange - YUMMY!) then back to the house where I spent several more hours packing up all of the liquids that I wanted them to take. (The customer service guy at the movers basically said that if I packed it, they'd take it with no questions - wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)

Wednesday: I didn't hear the alarms on my phones (alarm clocks got packed), or the huge truck pulling up. The driver pounding on the door woke me up. The day was spent riding herd on the loaders. There was a lot that the packers didn't pack, and it turned out that the driver had already picked up two over-sized loads, so there was about half of the space for mine that there was supposed to be, so he loaded up the heavy stuff and called for a second truck. The second truck didn't arrive until 5:00, and that bunch was completely incompetant. I had to instruct them to put everything in boxes, even though they KNEW it was going into a warehouse and needed to be better packed than if it was a straight shot in one truck. Then I had to stand there and make sure they did it. They didn't leave until after 7:00. My friend had come over when I started squawking about the second truck. She and I grabbed burgers and headed to her house. We ate and watched "Nunsense" and then I crashed there.

Thursday: Up around 9:00, to PetSmart for Nature's Miracle cat treatment, then to the house, treated the carpet then off to deal with the Post Office, electric company, gas company, return the cable box and remote, so on and so on. Then to the studio to work on glazing. Then my friend and I went to dinner to use the "baseball bucks" from my previous company. I had $75 in baseball bucks, dinner (drinks, appetizer, 2 dinners, desserts and coffee) was $75.15. SO SO SO good! Then I went back to the house and cleaned and packed up misc stuff until 2 am. Then I sneaked quietly into my friend's house and fell into bed.

Friday: Up around 8:30, did the final walk-thru with my landlord, then finished cleaning the stove. Wrapped my plants up in stretch wrap, loaded everything into the jeep, went to the studio, finished glazing, loaded my pottery supplies into the jeep and hit the road around 6 pm for Ohio.

I arrived at my parents' house about 11 am this morning, and fell into bed for about 5 hours. I'll leave here later tonight to head for Chicago with the cats. I have an appointment tomorrow at 2:00 to meet my new landlord and pick up my keys.

The first truck is supposed to arrive with my stuff on the fourth. No clue when the second truck will arrive. Maybe someday, this hell will actually be over...

Tomorrow...

2010-12-26T21:27:00.000-08:00

I will fly from Cleveland to Chicago to Raleigh and one of my friends will pick me up in Raleigh and drive me back to No Man's Land, where I will wander my house and (hopefully) play in the studio.

Tuesday morning, the movers will arrive to pack up my stuff. Wednesday, they will load up my stuff. And then sometime between the third and the fifth, the movers will deliver my stuff to my new house. (Or so the theory goes...)

Ironically, my new house is only about 2 blocks from my old apartment. It's a bit smaller than I was hoping to find, but it's a 2 bedroom, 1 bath bungalow with a full basement (with an outside door) and a two car garage. So, it'll be okay I think. And it's walking distance to the train station and the library, so it's where I want to be.

It's also only the second house of the millions that I looked at that was even habitable. I wish now that I'd thought to take pictures of the bright orange counters, falling down ceilings, small dead mammals, inoperable bathrooms, sinks with no water, a garage with a body marked on the floor... seriously, it's been quite an adventure.

I've spent three weeks in an extended stay hotel, which was perfectly adequate... but omg am I glad to be out. One room living, camping out with a toaster, a microwave and 2 sparking burners is just not cool.

So, all's well here although even more nuts than usual. If you think of it, please send good karma my way - I could really use it this week!

The Spirit Of Christmas

2010-12-18T13:41:00.000-08:00

May the gods help me, I'm about to go brave the mall to finish (ahem, start, then finish) my Christmas shopping. This is the first time in years that I've had to deal with a real mass of humanity in a mall, so this should be exciting. And awful beyond words. But, what I did already get for people is in North Carolina and will be until after Christmas and I don't actually have an address for shipping so... it's off to brave the mall. *whimper*

This is exactly what I needed to get me into the right mood. I love Jenny. She's almost as insane as I am, but in a much more funny way. It started here, when Jenny offered up gift cards to the first 20 people who commented that they needed help. When she read the comment from #21 that needed help, her heart sank. And then, a few comments further, someone said that they'd handle assistance for #21. And then it snowballed. Comments on her blog have helped literally hundreds, and several of her readers have done the same on their blogs.

This is what it's all about - just reach out a hand if you can. Or give an hour. Or don't stab the bell-ringer. You know, do what you can. And today (at least until I start the war for a parking place at the mall) I can believe that maybe, just maybe, all humans don't suck.

Hungover Owls

2010-12-16T22:57:00.000-08:00

I'll bore you silly soon with my mis-adventures in moving. For today though, this site made me hoot with laughter. :-D

(Due to language - aka an INSANE number of f-bombs - I'd rate this NSFW.)

The Real Reason That I Love Tim Gunn...

2010-12-13T20:02:00.001-08:00

Because in real life, he's C3PO!

The End...? (aka Jones Junction = Jones Nissan = Bel Air Nissan = Evil)

2010-12-12T16:53:00.000-08:00

The story behind how I acquired Petunia is here, and here, and there.

On 11/23/10, Roxanne told me that the Garmin was on order and it would be delivered in 2 weeks or maybe 3 due to the holiday.

On 11/24/10, Steve Zell told me that he hadn't returned my calls because the service manager was supposed to be handling it, and they couldn't get the nav system or the cradle. Also on the 24th, I talked to the registration people and the title people in Ohio and they still hadn't received anything BUT I could bring in the bill of sale and some other paperwork and get a 30 day temp tag from Ohio. I talked to Tracy and she said that she'd fedex copies of the papers that they'd sent to Ohio so I'd have them and that they'd arrive at my parents' house on Friday.

On Friday, nothing happened.

On Saturday (11/27/10), I called Tracy's cell phone to demand to know where the fedex package was. She checked the tracking number, and it was never shipped. So she went into the office, scanned the papers and emailed them to me. I printed them out and kept them with me. (The theory was that if I did get pulled over, I'd have proof that the registration was in process.) Also on Saturday, I moved into the Extended Stay hotel in one of the Chicago suburbs.

On 11/29/10, Tracy told me that the courier company would have the paperwork from the state the next day and would fedex it directly to me. Later that day, I talked to Roxanne, who needed to know what county in Ohio. Also on the 29th, I left a message for the guy at the dealer license place to let him know that the situation was not resolved. And I got a message from my parents saying that the fedex from the dealership arrived at their house today. Also, I started my new job.

On 12/1/10, I left several messages for them but didn't hear anything.

On 12/2/10, I talked to the registration and title people in Ohio again and learned that the registration had been completed the day before. Yay! I also got a message from Roxanne with the fedex tracking number of the registration coming to me at my new place of work.

On 12/3/10 (the day after my 60 day temp tags expired), I received the package with my registration and Ohio temp tags, with the note that my plates were being manufactured and I'd get them via fedex in the next 2 weeks.

On 12/7/10, I talked to my dad, who told me that Petunia's tags are at their house. Success! Yay! I'll pick them up when I'm home for Christmas, and I have the temp tags (which are good until 12/29/10) until then.

Now I wait and see if the dealership has the nerve to call and try to collect the additional taxes... I have been keeping track of the hours that I've spent on the phone for this, and there's a lot of them. If they call me for the taxes, I will bill them for these hours and it will be substantially more than the tax difference, and if it comes to it, I will take them to court. I am so sick of businesses pulling shit like this because they know that they will get away with it because there isn't any way for you or I to do anything about it without a significant output of time, money and energy which most of us just can't afford. At this point, I'm almost hoping they do call - I need a target for all of the rage and stress, and they'd be a handy one.

Interesting Side Note:
I need a local Nissan dealership here so I started researching the Nissan dealerships around here. I found one that did the same thing to a guy buying the vehicle from Virginia. And a lady I talked to in North Carolina went through something very similar when buying a car in Florida. I have a hard time believing that this is a coincidence. So, if you are buying a car out of state, BEWARE.

Lessons Learned:
1. Get everything regarding pricing and available options in writing, preferably notarized, from someone with the authority to give it. Hint: sales guy probably doesn't have the authority.

2. Make sure writing is CLEAR. (Something scribbled on the side of the brochure = not clear.)

3. Eat BEFORE you go. Take snacks.

4. Read everything. Question anything that is not perfectly clear. (If you can't explain to someone else and have it make sense, it is not perfectly clear. Ask.)

5. Research the dealership carefully. This includes an address search! (I researched by Jones Nissan and Jones Junction, which is what all of the advertising says. The actual name of the dealership is Bel Air Nissan, and THAT is where the bad reviews live. Yes, they are operating under an alias to hide from their bad press. That never occurred to me. I will not forget in the future.)

6. Try to get something in writing from them before you leave stating that you have paid everything that you are responsible for - I don't know if this will work, but if it does, it will probably save you being called weeks later for additional fees.

7. Learned from a forum online: do not mention a lawyer unless you have one. Most dealerships will immediately stop talking to you and go straight to their lawyer. Don't try to bluff this one.

8. The Attorney General, the BBB, the corporate parent company (Nissan Corporate Customer Affairs), the finance company, the clerk of courts in Maryland and Ohio, AND the registration people in Maryland and Ohio were sympathetic, but useless to resolving the situation. I think my calling several times a day for several months helped, and I think I'd still be fighting with them had Agent Hubbart from the Maryland Dealers Licensing Department not called and snarled at them for me. So, don't forget the dealer licensing people if you have a problem.

Best Snackies EVER

2010-12-05T15:18:00.001-08:00

My friends gave me their old dehydrator when they got a bigger one for Christmas last year. I have only used it a couple of times but this totally makes storing it worthwhile! Another kitchen tool that I have but seldom use is the mandolin. So making apple chips is awesome in many ways - I get to play with seldom-used kitchen gadgets AND I get super yummy and nutritious snacks out of it. Win win!

This "recipe" is from the same friends that gave me the dehydrator. We went to Sam's Club the other day and found big bags of Jonagold apples. We both squeaked with joy and pounced.

Ingredients:
Apples (I prefer Jonagolds for this.)
Orange Juice

Directions:
Pour orange juice in a bowl. Wash apples, quarter and core them. Use mandolin with thickest slicer attachment (mine is about 0.25 inches) to slice apples.

As each quarter is sliced, put slices in bowl of orange juice.

When the bowl is full, arrange slices on dehydrator trays.

Stack the trays, turn it on and let it go. (I use the middle of the fruit setting - 135 degrees.) After a couple of hours, I flip the chips over to keep them from sticking to the trays. I also restack the trays with the top on the bottom, front in the back to ensure even air flow.

They're done when the apples are dry to the touch. Or you can't wait anymore, whichever comes first. I store mine in freezer bags in the cupboard, but they never last long - it's an act of will to not snarf them all down as soon as I turn the dehydrator off.

If you don't have a dehydrator, you can probably use the oven on its lowest setting. You should try, 'cause these things are seriously delicious!

To Give Thanks

2010-11-26T21:32:00.000-08:00

I'd classify myself as more spiritual than religious, and as I'm about as deep as a dry creek bed, probably not very that either. And I'm much more inclined to believe that if anyone IS watching over us, it's because we're someone's ant farm more than for any other reason.

Having said that, however, I think that it's a good idea to reflect on what's good in your life and to try to find a positive spin for what's bad and to be grateful for what you have. Sending good thoughts in the direction of karma, or luck, kismet, fate, the divine - whatever floats your boat - can't be a bad idea. A friend on facebook puts her daily note of thanks to the universe up every morning and while I'm not willing to be quite as public about it as she is, her doing so has made me think more about it, which was probably the point of her making it public to begin with. (That sentence just gave me a headache. I'm going for the Bailey's, back in a jiff.)

Right. Now fortified! Yum. Warm Bailey's. Where was I? Right, thankful. I'm thankful for warm Baileys...

I'm not sure exactly when it occurred to me - undoubtedly several years after it should have - but being who, what, when and where I am makes me one very lucky lucky lucky person. I am blue-eyed, mostly blond, blessed with my health, the product of a rock solid marriage by two people who loved each other and their children. I have a world class college education, which I worked for - but not nearly as hard as it was necessary to for others. I live in a country that gives me recourse if I am treated unfairly because of my gender or my age or my sexuality or any number of other things, in a time where nearly all things are possible.

I got an email a while ago, and while I don't remember most of it, it was basically a check list of things that I usually take for granted that most of the world's population is without. And that got me thinking about how much I do have and being rather statistically inclined, I started thinking about THAT and realized that I am probably more fortunate than more than 90% of the world's total population. Think about that for a minute.

As I whine, and plod through my days, and mutter at gas prices and groceries, vet bills, MOVING (omg, the whining. you have no idea. yet.), drama with Petunia, my family and their complete lack of all rational thought processes, the new job, the search for a house, etc it's very easy to overlook what I have.

So I'm going to bundle up and go sit next to my thinking tree and say thanks, to the universe or anyone else who might be listening. Fate? Karma? Random good luck? Whatever it is, I've already won the best lottery of all. (There's another email that I get occasionally that blathers on about being grateful for all of this painful stuff - I'm grateful that my back hurts because it means I accomplished something blah blah blah - that mostly makes me want to punch the nut that came up with it, but I guess I do understand the thought behind it.)

Anyway, next time you have a moment, even if it's just at a red light, stop and say thanks. Who knows who is paying attention, and frankly the atmosphere can use the positive energy.

The Saga Continues...

2010-11-22T21:55:00.000-08:00

Where did we leave off? Ah, yes. Here.

Well, after I talked to the finance people, and learned that the dealership had until January 10 to send them the title and paperwork, I was pretty upset. This meant that I HAD to go through the dealership to get Petunia registered - I couldn't cut them out and go directly to the state myself. And then I got to thinking... I couldn't get them for myself unless I got the temp tags extended to past the date that the finance people had to have the paperwork. THEN (so my theory went) I could get the finance people to send the title to the state and I could just deal with it then. Ha HA!

So a new quest began - to hunt down the vehicle registration people in Maryland and see if there was any way to extend the original temporary tags. I talked to Tina there, who told me that the temp tag is a one time thing - there were no extensions. Then I unloaded the whole sordid story on the poor woman and she told me to call a number and tell the guy that answered my experience. I owe Tina flowers. And my profound gratitude. THANK YOU, TINA!! Because that guy - who's name I didn't quite catch in spite of his saying it several times - is the guy that handles the license that the dealership must have to operate in the state.

He asked me what dealership it was, and when I told him, he was surprised - he said that they were pretty good. So I informed him about the F rating with the BBB, and the 15 pending cases with the Attorney General's office (both of which were news to him) and then I related what I've been through. He basically said that I was SOL on the garmin, since I'd gotten nothing in writing, and then asked why in the world I'd bought the extended warranty. (My brother already raked me over the coals for that - it's a huge money maker for dealerships. Never buy the extended warranty on a new car - you can apparently buy one at any time before the factory warranty expires for much less money. Sigh. Live and learn.) He asked when I bought the vehicle. (The paperwork says 9/29/10 even though I picked it on on 10/2/10.) Then he told me that he'd call me back within half an hour and hung up.

In less than 10 minutes, the dealership called ME, for just about the first time ever, to explain that the paperwork was with the state and everything would be fine and and and... they crawled. It was awesome.

Ten minutes after THAT, he called back. I meant every word when I said he was a god and I loved him. He told me that the dealership has until 11/28/10 to get this situation resolved, or they answer to him... and he can yank their license to be a dealership. YAY!!!! I'm to call them every day, and let him know what happens either way.

Finally, after 8 weeks of fighting with them and countless hours spent on the phone either talking to people or waiting to talk to people and countless more hours researching online and many many MANY countless hours spent going completely mental over this situation, finally FINALLY, I have a glimmer of hope.

Bel Air Nissan Is Evil, Even For A Car Dealership

2010-11-18T07:34:00.000-08:00

Being me, I researched my vehicle purchase A LOT. I did scads of internet research, narrowed down the list of vehicles, went and test drove several of each and finally decided on the Nissan XTerra. Then I researched some more, drove more of them, looked at available options and decided that I wanted a 2009 or 2010 XTerra with the off road package, a 6 speed, and oh yes, a dark color - preferably the Night Armor. THEN I spent over a year looking online, in the papers, and so on for my new vehicle.

Finally, late in September, I found a black one in Georgia and a night armor one in Maryland. Both were 2010 models with the off road package and a 6 speed. The 2011 models were out, and my Jeep was definitely feeling its age so I needed to act. The black one was used, but with less than 4000 miles on it. They were offering $27500 for it. I contacted the dealership (Jones Junction, aka Bel Air Nissan) in Maryland and told them that if they could beat the price on the black one, I'd be in the next weekend. Dave Himer, the internet sales guy, asked me to make an offer so I came back with $26000. He went off to talk to his sales manager, came back and said okay.

I arranged for a loan thru my bank but agreed to let them run the numbers to check what they could get me. Dave came back with paperwork thru Nissan that was for a better interest rate, so I said that I'd go thru them. He fedex'd the paperwork, but spelled my name wrong then told me they'd just reprint it at the dealership. When I called and asked about the mileage and whether a Garmin was included with the vehicle, he put me on hold for 10 minutes to go check and came back and gave me the mileage and said that the Garmin was included.

The first weekend in October, I drove from NC to pick up the vehicle. I told them several times that it would be registered in Ohio. My drivers license is from Ohio. My permanent address is in Ohio. The insurance is based in Ohio. When I arrived for the appointment, I was told that i'd have to wait since others had arrived before me. There was no Garmin in the car and when I questioned them, they said that it wasn't listed on the sticker on the car and they didn't have any in stock. Then they said there was a problem with the financing and the interest rate was going to be higher than what my bank could give me. Then they made me wait longer to talk to some female who tried to talk me into a manicure and spending an additional $1000 on some clear coat protective paint thing. Then I waited longer to deal with the finance guy (Ron) who kept hitting on me. We had several discussions about where their numbers came from since they didn't agree with my numbers.

I finally escaped from the dealership after 5 hours, dizzy and half starved, without a Garmin to find my way home, with a higher interest rate AND - I found out later while reviewing the papers - that they charged me nearly 4 times what they quoted for the extended warranty. But, I left with Petunia and I love her.

It is now 7 weeks later, and they are telling me that they didn't charge me enough tax to register the vehicle in Ohio and they expect me to pay an additional $800+ to them. I have been on the phone with Roxanne or Tracey or Steve or Chad damn near every day. Chad is useless - he never once returned a phone call. Ever. Roxanne is nice when you talk to her, but doesn't call back either. Actually, Steve is the only one who DID call when he said he would, and even then it wasn't every time.

They claimed to have the tags from Ohio. This week, I talked to people at the title place and the registration place - they have gotten NO paperwork from the dealership, even though Roxanne claimed to have sent it 2 weeks ago. When I called her on that, she said that there was one more form that she had to fed-ex out and they should have gotten it yesterday. One other thing that makes me believe that she hasn't done anything she said that she would - the sales tax in my county is 6.75%, not the 6% that they've been mentioning.

Today, I talked to the finance people because Ohio won't let you register the vehicle until they have the title. The finance lady (Doreen) told me that they didn't actually have the title yet and the dealership HAD to be the one to handle everything... and they have TWO months from the date of the first payment to get everything under control. This means that they don't have to get things organized until January 10.

Steve Zell is the one who I'm primarily dealing with now. I don't actually know his title, but I think it's "enforcer." I read a review on Edmunds.com that talked about how he made some woman cry from getting after her so badly. Last week, I told him that if they provided the garmin and the cradle that were supposed to be on the vehicle, I would pay the tax that they screwed up and didn't charge. He had to talk to the owner to get approval. Then he came back and said that the the deal had been approved but the garmin and cradle had been discontinued but he'd look on Amazon and take the price of the garmin out of the tax. I said no. He was supposed to call yesterday and SHOCK did not. I talked to him this morning, and he said he didn't call because their service manager said that he was going to call me.

I'm at my wit's end. I talked to someone from the Attorney General's Office in Maryland last week and they told me that I was probably going to need a lawyer, which will cost more than just paying the confounded tax. They said this because there are more than 15 pending cases currently open with their office against this dealership. I filed a report with the BBB, but they already have an F rating there. I talked to Nissan Corporate Customer Affairs, and Ryan told me that there was nothing he could do - the dealership is independently owned. He also said that he'd called the dealership and they told him that the issue had been resolved. So, they lie to corporate too.

I am moving from North Carolina NEXT WEEK. I NEED to have this handled NOW. And I have no idea what to do. So if you have any ideas, please share them... and DO NOT ever ever ever ever buy a car from this dealership!

November 24 - TSA Opt Out Day

2010-11-17T11:23:00.000-08:00

I've read several articles lately that said that the American public is perfectly okay with the new body scanners at airports because that is necessary to make them safe. Every time I read it, my head explodes.

When you allow a government to control your actions, words and deeds, it is not a democracy. Safety is an illusion. You are not safe. The government can't protect you. It SHOULDN'T protect you because that is not its job. The government is not your parent. You are not a child. A government controlling its citizens is tyranny. And I am sick to the eyes of people claiming they are safer if the government controls how much liquid you can bring on a plane, or makes you strip off your coat, shoes, belt, sweater, jacket, hat, hoodie, etc or makes you deposit your laptop, keys, cell phone, pda, etc in the little basket. Personally, I'd feel much more secure if everyone on board was armed to the teeth. I find it interesting that our government is subjecting us to searches that US soldiers are not allowed to administer on hostile ground.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

This is attributed to Ben Franklin. Smart guy, that Ben.

Why do so many people have such a problem understanding that the bumper stickers are absolutely right? Freedom isn't free. The cost, however, is not just sacrificing our soldiers on some foreign soil. The cost of being free includes knowing that it is possible for 9/11 to happen. And happen again.

The cost of being free is knowing that freedom to act, to speak freely can allow the extreme few to act in some horrific fashion.

It is way past time that the citizens of this country remember that. And remember that the government works for us, not the other way around. (I'll rant about the job of politician being one that no one who wants it should be allowed to have another day.)

So, on November 24, if you are flying anywhere in the 'States, opt out of the screening. And if you're male, wear a kilt. Commando style. We have to start somewhere in taking back our freedoms, and why not start with making the TSA as miserable as we are?

Update: I like her take on things. I applaud the decision of California DA Steve Wagstaffe to prosecute TSA employees who are guilty of sexual assault. I feel for Erin and what she went through at the Dayton airport.

The Final Countdown

2010-11-16T09:58:00.000-08:00

I have many posts in edit that maybe some day I'll actually finish and post but that's probably not going to happen any time soon. I will be leaving North Carolina the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to head to my parents' house for the holiday. And then on Saturday, I'll be heading to the Chicago area to start my new job on Monday. (Yes, I know... moving TO Chicago in DECEMBER. My brilliance knows no bounds.)

My contract job ended last Friday. They extended the original contract for 2 weeks, and the global director of quality was pushing for them to extend it again, but I kind of needed this week to get stuff done (especially in the studio) and I'm pretty much done with that company. (That's actually one of the posts in edit.)

Done:
I've talked to the movers and have a quote.
I've arranged temporary housing.
I have a plan for leaving and what I'm taking now and not.
Some laundry.
Some (very little) cleaning.

Not Done:
Talk to landlord.
Cancel phone, cable.
Talk to utilities.
Talk to post office.
Deep clean house as much as possible (walls, blinds, ceiling fans, etc)
Organize and get rid of approx. 4 tons of stuff
More laundry.
More cleaning.
401 other things that are buzzing around in my brain like angry hornets right now.

Not Done but Can't Do Until I'm There:
Find a place to live.

Have I mentioned that I hate moving? Oh wait. Yes I have. As a matter of fact, I whined incessantly for months. Brace yourselves, folks, it's about to start again!

Happy Halloween!

2010-10-31T18:00:00.000-07:00

Petunia

2010-10-11T22:16:00.001-07:00

Since I am a contractor and have NO idea where (or really even if) I will be employed in a month or so, of course I ran out and bought a new vehicle.

More on the employment drama later, right now I'm obsessing over this:

Her name is Petunia. I've never actually named a vehicle before, and I feel a bit nuts doing it this time but the thought hopped into my head and I can't get it out. Maybe I've not named the others because I did not buy them new? I'm not really a fan of renaming animals after you acquire them either, if it can be helped. Yes, I know the truck isn't actually cognizant, thank you.

I love my Jeep, but it's aging. (And thank you, Jeep, for discontinuing the best, most practical, perfect vehicle ever. I hate you. And I want another damn Cherokee. What is WRONG with you people anyway???) Twenty thousand miles ago, my brother told me that I had between thirty and fifty thousand miles before things started going really wrong. I'm coming very close to 150000 miles, and the little things have gone wrong a-plenty.

No heat. No air conditioning. (I think. It's not like I ever turn it on.) Strange electrical issues. Rust starting. Weird paint issues after the Great Flood. When it gets Ohio cold (but not North Carolina cold), the locks have started to stick. I had to climb in thru the back a couple of times while home for the holidays last winter. The back door has also decided that cold isn't going to work for it anymore, and below some certain undefined temperature, the back door is liable to come crashing down without warning. The hood sticks. Then releases. The clothe on the ceiling is falling down, and my attempts with spray adhesive have only made things worse. The seals are starting to go, so when it rains (i.e. the Great Flood), the Jeep stays damp and musty for days - very pleasant. The Alpine stereo is beginning to get very warm after twenty minutes or so, and will no longer eject CDs when instructed to do so. And so on and so forth.

Anyway, I started the vehicle search about a year and a half ago. Since I can't have what I really want (Bastards!), I went a-hunting for the next best thing. It needs to handle snow. Rain. Hail. Velociraptors. (Ok, well not so far but if it happens to anyone, it will be me.) Mountains. Swamps. On road, off road, highway, streambed, cornfield. I have to be able to load it full. Of people. Or cargo. Or both. I want a manual transmission, dammit. (And that alone thinned the ranks considerably. I know many people who prefer a stick shift. Stupid car companies.) I finally narrowed it down to either an XTerra or a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. Then I went test driving - many of them, ALL over the place. The Jeeps didn't have enough power to get out of their own way. Seriously, the Cherokee does better HAULING A BOAT than any of the used AND new ones that I test drove. But the XTerra... oh, I fell in love!

So after several months, I knew what I wanted: 2008 - 2010 Nissan XTerra with 4WD, preferably the off-road package, a manual transmission, in a dark color. Picky? Um no, not me. If it was an off-road, I wanted 2009 or newer 'cause of the cool (gawds I'm a dork!) off road lamps. I love autotrader.com. Seriously. LOVE them. I searched and searched and searched. "They" say that everyone wants an automatic transmission, but a car lot gets a manual in and that thing is GONE in minutes.

Finally, a few weeks ago, there was a used 2010 for sale in Georgia. It had everything I wanted except it was black instead of the dark grey. AND there was a new 2010 in Maryland that had EVERYTHING I wanted, including the color. I emailed the place in Maryland and told them that if they beat the price of the one in Georgia, I'd come get it.

(Note: if you are car shopping, be aware that the internet sales manager is usually paid differently than the run of the mill sales guy. He is usually paid a salary, with a small commission per vehicle sold. The normal sales guy usually gets a percent commission on every car sold. Therefore, it is NOT in his best interest for you to get a good price. The internet guy doesn't care how much each car sells for - his money comes from the volume of total cars sold. This is important.)

My timing was not accidental - the 2011 models have been out for about a month so they have incentive to get the 2010's off the lot. After some dickering (I'll pay this. This? No. This? No. THIS? No. I think we're done here. Fine. You'll pay that? Yes.), I caught a ride up to Maryland to pick her up. More dickering - three hours of it - at the car lot made me very glad that I decided against trying to trade the Jeep in at the same place. FINALLY after all papers were signed, the finance guy asked me what I did and I told him that I was an SQE. When he asked what that meant, I told him that meant that I spend all day forcing people to do what they said that they were going to do. His response? "Oh. Well, that explains today." Yup. Then I had the keys and I just had to remember how to drive a stick shift. Through Baltimore. At 5:00 on a Saturday. Yay! But we made it, and I haven't actually stalled it yet.

So, my shoe budget has been severely curtailed for a while, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE my shiny new XTerra!

So What Is A Cubit, Anyway?

2010-10-01T21:14:00.001-07:00

We've had A LOT of rain here... like 15 inches in 5 days. Everything is flooding. The drive to work (approx 33 miles each way) has taken two hours each way every day this week. Right now, it's pick your favorite weather advisory - all of these are currently active: thunderstorm watch, tornado warning, flood warning, severe weather watch, tornado watch, coastal flooding watch, wind advisory... and I might have missed one or two.

Yesterday, I left work at 5:00 based on a friend's recommendation that if I didn't leave then, I would be staying in town for the night. The road was mostly standing water and at one particular intersection, it was over a foot deep and rising fast.

What is currently amazing me is how nonchalant everyone is about the situation. Everyone who's been here a while has told me that it hasn't been this bad since [Hurricane] Floyd came through and then they go on to regale me with tales of their cars being under water and standing on their cars and still being chest high. These are the same people who freak the f*ck completely out over even a mention, a mere HINT, of snow. This is baffling to me.

I live in one of the town's historic districts, and while I chose it because I love the houses, it occurred to me that the house has stood for over a hundred years - odds seemed good that it'd survive whatever comes next. This theory proved correct yet again. One problem with this theory: I didn't really take into account getting TO and FROM my nice dry house. That has posed more of a challenge since it is situated on the only high ground - which means that it is surrounded by low ground.

As a matter of fact, last night was quite a challenge. I ran over something while sloshing through a bit over a foot of water and it shredded one tire and scuffed up another. I have no jack in my Jeep. I spent three hours sitting in my jeep in the pouring rain, waiting for the tow truck. That was awesome. So today I spent some quality time at the tire place, replacing two tires. (And having to do that TODAY with what I'm doing this weekend makes me all kinds of happy!)

In the photo below, you can kind of see the water thru the raindrops - the field is completely flooded, so is the drainage ditch and there was about four inches of standing water on the road - for several miles.

This is normally a fairly small little river. It's swollen to more than 3 times its normal width.

At this point, even the ducks are soggy and irritated. My plan is to cuddle in with some hot cocoa and work out the plans for the ark that I'm going to build in my (not flooded yet) backyard. So what is a cubit, anyway?

My Idiot Cat

2010-09-29T23:09:00.000-07:00

... got stuck in the sleeve of my jacket today. It's been raining for four days here and so I've been wearing a nylon windbreaker back and forth to try to keep from looking like a total drowned rat. Because the coat was wet when I got home this evening, I draped it over a stool in the entry to dry before I hung it up in the closet.

Twenty minutes later, there arose quite a clatter - a prolonged, suspicious rustling noise coming from the entry. Upon investigation, I found this:

At first, I thought she was just playing with a zipper or something. Yeah. No. So I scooped her up and hauled her (and the dripping wet jacket) off to the couch to investigate. She got herself jammed but good into that sleeve. While she squawked and bit at me (because clearly this was my fault), I tried to jam her furry little body back into the sleeve. No dice. I finally managed to pull enough of the end of the sleeve loose enough to get to the snap that holds the end shut around my wrist (or the Peanut's middle). Once I had the end loosened, I held up the sleeve and shook it gently and the Peanut slithered free.

It's been a while since she pulled something this boneheaded, but this is the cat that, as a kitten, spent some quality time at the vet's because she ate my couch. And rocks. Several ink pens. Assorted leaves, twigs, bugs and other outside detris. Any flower she could get her teeth into. Several toilet paper rolls of toilet paper. Paper towels. A paper clip.

She falls down the stairs on a fairly regular basis 'cause she gets to the landing, turns the corner, catches sight of her tail, freaks out over that thing following her down the stairs and attacks it, then rolls down the rest of the staircase.

And so on. She's very affectionate, but she's never going to be one of the great thinkers of the cat world.

A Very Cool Little Dot

2010-09-29T00:22:00.000-07:00

Just really neat.

And the making of:

My Little World...

2010-09-26T15:53:00.000-07:00

is still a bit up in the air.

Things kind of crashed in July. I wasn't all the way home from my former workplace that day and the production manager at my [former] just in time supplier called me and offered me a job. And I said no, 'cause I want to go home. Later, the quality manager at the same company called and offered me a job and I said no, I want to go home.

A couple of days later, the quality manager called back and asked if I'd come work for them as a contractor until I was ready to move. Um. Okay. So, I started there at the end of August as a quality engineer, helping them put together FPAs (first part approvals) for their new biggest customer.

My first day there was the most surreal day of my young life. I'd been the customer for nearly four years. It was strange, but everyone was super friendly and really honestly happy to have me there. They're really good for my ego - they offer me a job nearly every day.

I interviewed for a place a couple hours out of Chicago, that I really wanted... and didn't get it. But, it was a FANTASTIC weekend with friends so that was cool.

Now I'm torn. I have an offer here for supplier quality engineer, which is what I've done for the past 7.5 years. They'll give me receiving inspection, so I'll have minions. I'll also be backup for the Quality Manager, and I really think I can make a difference. But, it's still in this area, and it's about 32 miles each way. They've got about a month to get shit done or their shiny new customer may drop them like a hot rock.

I'm still in the running for a job with another former supplier back where I want to be near Chicago. It's a customer quality job, in the headquarters, getting responses in order to make sure the customer is happy. Not my ideal job, but I LOVE the location and the company has another division in renewable energy that I'm very interested in.

I'm still applying to things in Ohio, but the job market there is not booming so I'm not very optimistic there.

So I'm back to working 60+ hours a week, and not really being sure where I'll be next month. But, all's okay here.

Regarding Earl.

2010-09-02T17:57:00.001-07:00

Huh. Cool.

2010-08-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

It takes so very little to fascinate me.

Witness:

I am completely captivated by toilet paper rolls.

And post it notes. I love post it notes.

Paper tape is totally art.

I like crayons too.

I think this guy is nuts and he'll probably be dying soon, but he does some of those things that I've considered trying to talk my brother into trying:

http://www.popsci.com/mercuryfish
http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2010-08/cool-hand-theo

And finally (since morning comes way too soon and I need to toddle off to dreamland) another take on Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance:"

G'night, folks,

I Hate People, Reason 42948570 - updated!

2010-08-23T17:51:00.000-07:00

Have you seen this? If you know this woman who this woman is, turn her in. The cat was rescued, 15 hours later, by her owners - more information available here.

UPDATE: They found her. Her name is Mary Bale and now the poor thing is under police protection to keep all the crazy cat people from killing her. Her mother says that she "loves cats."

(Have you ever noticed how many people who like cats are completely barking mad over them? One woman told me, with complete seriousness, that her little angel would NEVER kill a bird because they had a conversation, and she explained... to her cat... that birds were good, so her cat only killed spiders. Okey dokey.)

Latest Progress with Pottery

2010-08-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I showed what I've been up to in the studio. What with work, traveling for work, vacation, playing elsewhere and whatnot, I haven't gotten to spend as much time as I'd like playing in the studio. But I do have some more finished stuff. (I have about a metric ton of bisque waiting to be glazed too. Here SOON I need to spend some time getting that finished, especially if I end up moving at the end of this month.)

I finally managed to finish a couple things that I've been sitting on for MONTHS. The poppies, the little owl plate and the goldfish are all actually from last fall and I just wasn't in the mood to finish them. The poppies in particular just needed me to fire them and then clear glaze them. I just forgot about them until I cleaned off my shelf and discovered them lurking in the back. That's one bad thing about having the top shelf - I can't see up there and I lose things.

I've been working on mugs and handles lately. When I first started throwing, my first couple of handles went really well and I listened to everyone whine about handles and thought, "What is their problem? These things are easy." Yeah. Shows what I know. Handles suck. So I've been practicing. A lot. I still have a long ways to go.

This one is getting better. Of course, I put a handle on there and it ended up being HUGE so I carved half of it away with a knife. It's still big, but better than it was. I don't really like the painting, so I may reglaze it. We'll see.

The handle kind of sucks on this one, but I'm thrilled with the way the glaze came out. It was totally worth all four days!

Another lesson learned: when dealing with more than one clay color, stay AWAY from ruffled rims. I am very fond of ruffled rims, and not just because they do a very nice job disguising uneven edges. They're pretty and I like them. But, in order for these marbled clay pots to look their best, you have to either 1) use a rib while it's still on the wheel and scrap off the top layer or 2) sand the living snot out of it - for HOURS - to remove the layer of slip and show off the marbling. If you ruffle the rim, you sand. By hand. For hours. And hours. Blech. But, it did turn out pretty cute.

One of the potters in this area does some REALLY cool stuff. She's actually the one who taught the Raku workshop that I recently attended. One of her trademarks is to put a pretty little flourish on her pots and I really like the way it looks. So, I had a couple of little bowls go wonky on me the other day and I tried her flourish. They turned out kinda cool, I think.

I'm still playing with texture. This isn't quite where I wanted to go, but I'm getting closer.

Based on something that another lady in the studio did, I started experimenting with painting with underglazes on top of glaze. The flowers turned out pretty much exactly as I hoped they would. I'll be experimenting further with this method, especially over other colors of glaze. The magnolia bowl won best in show at this year's annual pottery show at the studio, netting me a nice gift certificate to the store.

We got some new glazes to play with, so of course color experiments must follow. Some were brand new colors and I'd never seen them on my preferred clay (Highwater clay's little loafers). This is Pam's Blue glaze. Not bad, but not really what I had in mind either. Further experimentation is needed.

I love, love, love the creamy matte. It's a dip glaze for us and it's just really great. My favorite combination with it so far is with gunmetal green and tournaline, like this. But I'm also interested in how it combines with other colors as well. These were okay. I like the Pams Green (third one) the best, I think. The bowl that I tried the orchid and eggplant on was really thin, so the eggplant kind of gobbed up a bit. It's not bad, but I'm not thrilled with it. My fault - I applied the glaze too thickly.

And lest you think that all pottery works out well, I fussed with this ginger jar and lid for AGES - trimming and sanding and cooing over it. And then, I screwed up and glazed it with the wrong damn color and now it's ugly. Also, the lid doesn't fit worth a crap - it warped in the kiln. *sigh* Lids are worse than handles. Confounded things.

Lately I've been playing with collaring - taking a tall, straight cylinder and making the top smaller. It's tough, but I'm getting there. One major thing with collaring is that your rim usually ends up wonky. If you don't have enough to just cut off, you start getting creative. So, I'm doing a lot of pitchers right now... which also helps with that whole handle thing. The first one reminds me of a chicken for some reason, although no one else seems to see it. I love the second one, and will be desolate if it dies in the kiln.

I'm also finally working my way into larger balls of clay. I'm very comfortable centering and throwing up to about three pounds of clay. Over that, and it all goes to hell. Lately though, I've managed a couple of things that were nearly five pounds. Yay! Big bowls! Yay! One problem with that is that the glazing starts getting EXPENSIVE, so there's probably not a lot of huge things in my future - I can't afford it. I've got a bunch of stuff in the bisque fire now, that should be ready for my next visit. Once of them is my first attempt at a chip and dip bowl, so more pictures will be along shortly!

The Last of the Peaches, FINALLY

2010-08-12T15:25:00.000-07:00

The final peach canning adventure o'the year: peach honey

When I was peeling and cutting up all of those peaches, I saved the skins. I also saved the bits that I cut out from the center that had pit bits on them. These have been sitting in the fridge waiting for me to reclaim my kitchen from the last peach project.

Today, I put that whole bowl full of peach stuff in my largest stock pot on the stove, covered it in water and let it gently boil until I had peach juice. Then I used cheese cloth to stain out all of the big chunks.

Waiting...

Yuck!

Peach Juice!

I'm actually not sure how much sugar I added to the juice. While at the peach shed, I also bought a jar of peach syrup. OMG it was sweet. Holy crap. I couldn't taste the peach at all, it hit the taste buds and the only things running through my mind were - SWEET! NEED WATER! GAH! Pretty much just like that. So I used a cup of it in the spiced peaches, and the rest of it (probably about a cup) in the honey.

The theory is that this will thicken as it cooks down, and maybe if I'd have just added sugar it would have. This did not. I went from the stock pot being 3/4 full to less than a 1/4 full and it was still really runny. So I added a package of pectin. Still runny. *sigh* Fine. Be runny. I packed it in the jars and put them in the water bath (wiping down the rims before adding the lids, of course) and it's still not thick. The package insert in the pectin said that sometimes it takes up to two weeks for jam to thicken, so I guess it's not impossible that it'll thicken in the jar...?

At any rate, this concludes this year's adventures in peach preserving. We'll see if I ever do this to myself again. This will partly depend on whether anything I've put up is actually edible... Right now, looking in my cupboard at the jam, the spiced peaches, and the honey, I'm feeling very capable and proud of myself!

Wordless Wednesday: ZZZZZ...... What??

2010-08-11T17:09:00.000-07:00

Again With The Peaches

2010-08-07T01:16:00.001-07:00

Today's canning adventure: spiced peaches

When I was growing up, Del Monte sold glass jars of spiced peaches. They were hard to find and only available around Thanksgiving and Christmas. My mom LOVED them. We, her beloved children, were lucky to get one to split between the two of us. Last summer, when friends brought South Carolina peaches back, I started thinking about making my own.

This summer, I have three big baskets of peaches to consume.

I went surfing through the internets, and found a few recipes that were helpful but none that seemed exactly right. So, I ended up making my own road.

My recipe:
~50 peaches
~3/4 cup lemon juice
2 cups apple cider vinegar
~3 cups sugar
12 cups water
1 cup peach syrup
1/4 cup mulling spices

The very first step is preparing your jars. Wash in hot soapy water, rinse and then put jars in water bath and boil them for 20 minutes or so. Wash and rinse lids, put in a small pot, boil for 5 minutes. (I set up a TV tray next to the stove, and covered it with towels. Then I left the jars in the water bath until I was almost ready for them, then pulled them out (empty water back into bath to avoid having to refill bath) and set them right on the tray.)

The first steps - boiling and peeling - are the same as before. I wanted 6 quarts of peaches, so I peeled about 50 peaches. From what I've read, whole peaches are the Southern tradition, but I'm a displaced Yankee so I pitted and sliced mine. Put the lemon juice in a LARGE bowl. As you slice the peaches, drop them into the bowl. Stir occasionally to ensure all peaches are covered in the lemon juice. (If you prefer, you can probably also use that fresh fruit stuff to keep them from discoloring. I just happened to already have lemon juice.)

Add vinegar, sugar, water and syrup to your LARGEST stock pot. Wrap mulling spices in cheesecloth and add to pot. Bring to a boil. Boil approx 5 minutes covered, uncover, boil another 5 or so minutes, add peaches and then simmer until peaches are soft (~20 minutes). Note - I had to remove liquid when I added the peaches to avoid overflow so be careful.

When peaches are about ready, pull jars from the water bath, line them up on your work surface and add 1/4 teaspoon of mulling spices and 1 teaspoon sugar to each jar. Fill jars with peaches, using jar funnel and slotted spoon, then top off with syrup, leaving about an inch of headroom. Wipe off lips and threads of jars, add lids and rims and the process in hot water bath for about 30 minutes.

Yield: 6 quarts.

Getting there...

Hidden Posts

2010-08-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

I'm horrible about edits. I start a post and then wander away and leave it to languish, then start another post but don't want to publish it until I get the one before under control and really it's just a viscious cycle.

So now that I have some time on my hands, I'm going back and completing some of those posts.

Since I'm sure John Q. Public is just out there waiting for my next gasp of wisdom, here's what I've managed to finish lately:

August 2, 2010: Peaches, Peaches, Peaches (Canning and dehydrating, oh my!)
July 18, 2010: A Delicious Weekend (A wonderful weekend with friends!)
July 13, 2010: Recovered? (A rant about my "vacation.")
July 3, 2010: Vacation! (And I'm off!)
June 28, 2010: Raku! (I finally got to do the raku firing that was postponed from February.)
June 21, 2010: I Did Not Die. (My latest adventure in Mexico.)
June 6, 2010: Glitters + Glazing + Blueberries = YUMMY Weekend (Fairly self explanatory, I'd think.)
May 31, 2010: Fossil Festival (The annual Fossil Festival in Aurora, NC.)

Peaches, Peaches, Peaches

2010-08-02T00:13:00.001-07:00

You remember this part of "Forest Gump?"

Right now, that's me, except with peaches. OMG.

I've made pie. Cobbler. Milkshakes. Smoothies. Daquiris - oh my!

I've boiled. And blended. And purayed. Chopped and infused various adult beverages. And I'm not quite half way through the darn things. I'm happy to note that the *ahem* digestive side effects from eating too many blueberries do not apply to peaches. (Good, 'cause THAT was... disconcerting.)

Not one to suffer alone, here's a closer view of making my own peach leather AND my first ever attempt at canning.

First step: sorting the peaches by my feeble ability to tell ripeness.

Some were perfect just to snack on, or for immediate use in milkshakes and smoothies.

The steps begin the same way for most of the processing. Step one of these recipes is always "peel and slice peaches" like it's really THAT easy. Three hours later, I've got peach goo in my eyelashes and my kitchen may never recover. You'd think there'd be some way to phrase that to warn a person what was coming! Sadly, they are correct in that the easiest way to peel a peach is to boil it for a while, shock it in cold water and then scrape the VERY slimy skin off the peach. These peaches were not as ripe as they could have been. The good part was that I had a couple of weeks to dawdle around and get them processed. The bad part was that they weren't as sweet as last year's peaches, and the skins did not just slide off most of them. It was a battle. So far, I think I'm winning but the war is yet over.

So, boiling:

Blanching (or shocking):

Skinning:

At this point, we have options, depending on what we're doing. I tackled peach leather first so that is where we go next.

Cut up in blender: (I love my blender. That thing could chew up a car if I asked it to, and - best part - it's got low, high, off instead of 40 buttons whose function completely escape me. LOVE my blender.)

My bananas were REALLY dead, so the first batch was only peaches and honey in the blender.

Make very sure that you have oiled the trays to the dehydrator 'cause this stuff is STICKY. I used a light coating of Pam and then smeared it around for a while with my finger to make sure every spot was covered.

About 10 peaches mostly filled my blender. For the second go-round, I also added one ripe banana per blender-full. (Best is about one day past when you want to eat it, for me anyway. And it makes a huge difference - with banana tastes much better to me than without.) I have six trays for my dehydrator, but one of them doesn't have the fruit leather plastic tray. For the first batch, I used a piece of parchment paper (also oiled) and it worked fine. It took approximately 3.5 - 4 full ladles of puray to fill each tray, and each blender full filled 3 trays. When I got overenthusiastic on one tray, I used a turkey baster to suck it up and move it.

I set the temperature at 135 degrees and let it go. This dehydrator is several years old so that may have something to do with it. Also, I'm in the South in the summer so the humidity is hovering around 85% but these took all of 18 hours to dry all the way. (When it feels dry to your touch and there are no shiny spots, it's done.) Once the peach leather was done, I ripped it into pieces (each approximately 3" x 4"), piled them up about an inch high on waxed paper, wrapped them, put them in a ziplock freezer bag and put them into the freezer. They'll keep pretty much indefinitely in there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I also filled ice cube trays with puray and froze them. They're living in my freezer in a bucket waiting for a daquiri party. There are about as many peach daquiri recipes as there are people who drink them out there. If you would like help getting started, here's a good one:

(Note: I use 2 cups of peach puray cubes instead of the 1 cup of peaches and 1 cup of ice, and I'm out of brandy so I skip that part. Don't buy superfine sugar, just put the sugar in the blender first and pulse it a few times. Presto! Superfine sugar!)

1 cup frozen peaches
1/4 cup lime juice
1 1/2 ounces light rum
1 ounce peach schnapps
1/2 ounce apricot brandy
Dash of pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon superfine sugar
1 cup crushed ice

Combine the peaches, lime juice, rum, schnapps, brandy, vanilla, and sugar in the blender until smooth. Slowly add the ice with the blender running and process until smooth. Serve in a chilled glass.

Makes 1 serving.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And for my next adventure: canning.

First up: Peach jam with brown sugar and rum. I found the recipe online here, and (being me) altered it slightly.

The boiling, shocking and peeling remain the same. Then I cut up the peaches and put them in a large bowl. I wanted 12 half pint jars, so I used approximately 36 peaches. (Figure 4 medium sized peaches in a pound, and some of mine were a bit scrawny so I went a bit over. I might have snacked a little as I worked too.) I worked in batches, boiling about 7 peaches at a time. I cut them up in a size similar to that for an apple pie. My reasoning was that there were a few peaches that I cut bad spots out of and then peeled without the boiling - I cut them up more finely in the theory that they'd all get done about the same time. I didn't have light brown sugar, so I used dark. And my lemon juice came from a bottle in the fridge.

It was getting late, and I was getting tired, so my measurements got a bit fuzzy at this point. (Also, I subscribe to the Swedish Chef cooking methodology. Bork! Bork! Bork! So all measurements are approximate!) AND, calculations were involved as I ended up with 11 cups of peaches. *sigh* So, 3.67 cups of brown sugar, 11 tablespoons of lemon juice, and somewhere around 0.75 cups of rum (Captain Morgan's spiced rum) went into the bowl with the peaches. I stirred it, covered it and left it on the counter while I went to bed.

The most important part of canning is preparing the jars. No sense in wasting all that effort and potentially poisoning yourself if you can avoid it. I'm still working out how my new dishwasher works, so I washed the jars, lids and rims by hand in hot soapy (yay, Dawn!) water. Then I put the jars into the water canning pot, and the lids into another small pot of water on the stove. I boiled the jars for about 20 minutes, and the lids for about the same. I left both in the hot water until my jam was about ready to pack and then I pulled the jars out and set them on a towel covered TV tray right next to the stove.

(The water bath pot is HUGE and ate two burners of my stove. This is the first time - possibly ever - that I've had all four burners on at once.)

The next day, I put the peaches on the stove and brought them to a boil while my jars and lids cooked away on the other burners.

The recipe says to cook until the peaches become translucent. I have no idea what they're talking about - that never happened. I cooked them until even the biggest chunks were soft and cooked. Then I added 3.67 cups of granulated sugar and boiled it rapidly. BE CAREFUL! This stuff is like napalm and it spits! (Only two of the burns from the flying jam bombs blistered...) I tried two or three times to get that "wrinkle, not run" thing that they talked about and it didn't really happen. I used a digital candy thermometer and went up to 225 degrees for a while, got sick of being spattered with burning pain and called it done. I decided that it looked too chunky to be proper jam, and REALLY wished for an immersion blender. Then I pulled out my potato stomper and squished the peaches 'till it looked more like jam to me. I let it cool on the back burner for a couple of minutes and then stirred in about 0.75 cups of rum and let it boil for two minutes.

Then I used a ladle and the funnel and filled the jars. I had exactly enough for 12 half pint jars. It's better to be lucky than good, I think.

From there, I wiped down all of the jar lips and then used the handy dandy lid grabber magnet that came in the canning set (with the funnel, jar grabber, and air pocket destroyer thing) to snatch the lids out of the hot water and drop them on each jar. Then the rims went on - using towels to keep from burning myself even more. Then all the jars went into the water bath.

The recipe says to process for 15 minutes, but all of the others that I looked at online (and there were MANY) all said 30 - 35 minutes, so that's what I went by. I started the timer when I noticed the water was boiling, so they did process for a bit longer. Then I checked them when the timer went off and the damn water wasn't boiling. I had other things to do, so I got ready to go, turned the stove off on my way out the door and let them sit in the water bath overnight. The next morning, I pulled them out and put them back on the towel covered table and let them cool completely. All 12 jars sealed, so that made me happy.

Walmart sells the pretty quilted half pint jars and the normal ones for the same price and the pretty ones come with a nifty little label. So, if I do this again, I'm going for the pretty ones.

All of this effort is SLOWLY paying off.

Adventures in canning spiced peaches to follow.

What Do You Know About Moving Companies?

2010-07-29T13:26:00.000-07:00

The only thing holding me here was the job and that's gone, so I will be as well before too much longer. My lease went to month to month well over a year ago, so I don't have to worry about breaking the lease.

I am currently in a 12 room house with 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. The guest room is essentially empty as the bed in there is inflatable, but the smallest bedroom is the equivalent to a basement and is stuffed with all manner of crap - luggage, tools, files, holiday decorations, you name it. My current plan is to move home, where my grandmother's house is standing empty. Her bungalow is MUCH smaller, but it has a basement and a garage.

I'll be downsizing a bit, but this is my stuff and I'm not willing to lose most of it. So, right now I'm thinking that it makes no sense for me to rent a truck myself. I don't really have friends here, so I'd have to hire someone to load the truck and I'm not sure a truck that I could drive would be big enough. Also, have to buy boxes, paper, tape, etc to get everything packed.

Update (before I even published...): I've talked to several different moving companies, and packaging places and any number of other things. It's looking like my best bet, financially and mentally, is to pay to have professionals come in, pack it all, load it all and drop it off in Ohio. I'll be out of North Carolina, all going according to plan, before the end of August. Right now, I'm thinking that I'll try to organize things by long term, mid-term and need it now since Grams' house may be a pit stop on my way to a job somewhere else.

And, I filed for unemployment today. As it happens, NC has a form for "I resigned so they wouldn't fire me" and that goes to arbitration. Now I wait for two to nine weeks, and I can appeal if they say no.

Baby Steps

2010-07-28T22:39:00.000-07:00

I file for unemployment tomorrow. My uncle is a very high ranking person at a very large company and he's given me some good tips on how to fight if my company tries to deny the claim. He's going to get a couple of names of lawyers for me, from his HR people - the ones that they hate going up against, just in case.

I'm helped in this in that the organizational announcement went out today that they are not replacing me. I'd heard that the idiot was on the new plant manager's cost cutting team, and I was the highest paid person in the department so there's that.

Wish me luck with the bureaucracy.

Gobsmacked.

2010-07-27T20:42:00.000-07:00

I got fired today.

Actually, I put in my resignation to save them the trouble of firing me.

This has never happened to me before and right now, I'm wandering around my house cleaning. I don't know what else to do. My brother tried, via text, to get me to get back the resignation letter in time but it was too late. I was totally gobsmacked and didn't even think about unemployment, so the idiot managed to fuck me again.

There's been political BS going on, and I knew the idiot had an agenda, but in his typical two-faced swine kinda way, he told me in our last one on one that I was a top performer. This was pretty much completely unexpected.

I have no idea what I'm going to do. I was not prepared for this, and money is going to rear its ugly head soon.

I'm going to go cry now.

A Delicious Weekend

2010-07-18T18:22:00.001-07:00

This weekend has been wonderful!

A while ago, I watched one of those "Treasures in America" shows on the Travel Channel, and mentioned to P that I'd like to try digging my own. Next thing I knew, she'd planned the entire weekend, right down to pricing hotels on the internet. Clearly this was something she was interested in as well! (This is some interesting stuff on the local North Carolina gems that I found online.)

So, P and I left work early on Friday and were at her house before 4:00 pm. We loaded my stuff into her truck and then she and I and her partner J hit the road! After a brief stop at an Army Navy surplus shop for a camp shovel and a pit stop for dinner, we checked into the Microtel in Stateville, NC. I was quite impressed with the Microtel - it was clean and the rooms were really well designed.

Hibiscus at the IHOP

Saturday, we were up WAY too early in the morning. We checked out of the hotel, had breakfast at a convenient IHOP, ran through the drivethrough at Dunkin' Donuts for my coffee fix and were on our way again. By 8:45 AM(!), we had arrived at Emerald Hollow Mine in Hiddenite, NC.

The Greeting Committee

Headquarters

Once you are there, you have three choices. For $5, you can sluice. This comes with one complimentary bucket of dirt. You can buy additional buckets for $2 each. For $8, you can add the creek to your adventure and for $15, you get the "combo pack" which also includes hiking up the hill to "mine" your own dirt. You can bring your own equipment or rent theirs. We chose the combo pack for all three of us, rented equipment and we were off. First we chose our shovel from the barrel, grabbed a bucket and headed up the hill. We found a spot, filled the bucket with dirt and then lugged the MUCH heavier bucket back down the hill to the sluice.

That early, they weren't too busy so all three of us were able to sit together and sift through our bucket and we found... nothing. Discouraged but not ready to give up, we cashed in our tickets and claimed our complimentary buckets. We each found different shiny things and were well satisfied with our "free" buckets. J was content to remain at the sluice, so she bought another bucket and P and I went back up the hill. (In addition to the $2 buckets, there are buckets for sale for $5, $10, $25, $50 and $100. The more expensive the bucket, the better the haul. I'm still not sure if they seeded the buckets or if they just took the dirt from active veins.)

While sluicing, P noticed that the color of the dirt in the complimentary buckets was a different color than the first bucket that we'd hauled down the hill. On our next trip, we scouted around for that color of dirt and found a large bare spot on the top of the hill. Just walking around, we found a number of gems on the ground and snatched them up. This time WE seeded the bucket before heading back down the hill. We sluiced through that, and were glad of the roof over the sluice as it POURED briefly. They made fun of my flashlight, but I was the only one that could see what was in my screen while the thunder was booming! Then we snacked on food we'd brought with us and decided to explore the creek.

To get to the creek, we hiked down the hill through the picnic area. There were LOTS of people and the creek was very stirred up. Basically, we tromped into the water, shoveled a bunch of the bottom into our screens and then tried to find a perch on shore to sift through it. I wasn't as into this - there were too many people and you couldn't see what you were doing under the water at all. I caught more snails than anything else.

It didn't take long before I had abandoned the water and was chasing the local fauna around. The dragonflies were beautiful! They had irridescent green/blue bodies and jet black wings... and they were fairly friendly.

Once P & J had also tired of the creek, we went back up to the sluice. We were all getting pretty tired by that point, but P and I really wanted to go back up the hill and see how "our" bare spot had fared from the hard rain. We went up and found more shiny rocks but the thunder started booming again. We scurried back down the hill, loaded up with truck and were just climbing in when the rain started pouring down again.

The worst part of the whole weekend was the drive from the mine to the hotel. OMG, I CRAVED a shower. I looked like I'd rolled down the hill. It rained harder than I think I've ever had to drive through before and made it even more fun. We finally got to the hotel in Charlotte near the airport and finally, FINALLY, I got to jump into the shower. All of us were starving, so after we were clean, we met my aunt, uncle and cousin at the Hickory Tavern in Concord. The food was pretty awful, but we were starving and the company was good. From the restaurant, we went to my aunt and uncle's house, met their puppy and chatted for a while. It was good to see them but I was exhausted. We headed back to the hotel, and I was asleep before 11:00.

This morning, we checked out of the hotel, ate at Shoney's, stopped at Dunkin' Donuts and then drove down past Gaffney, SC to Chesnee to Strawberry Hill Peach Shed. We loaded the truck down with seven baskets of peaches - four for them and three for me - and headed home.

Gaffney's claim to fame:

The weekend's haul:

A Bucket of This

And Three Baskets of This

I'm sleepy, mildly sunburned, full of peaches and quite happy with my weekend. Hope yours was wonderful too!

Wordless Wednesday - Hello, World!

2010-07-14T21:47:00.000-07:00

.
.
.
.
.......
.....
...
.

Recovered?

2010-07-13T19:11:00.001-07:00

Well, not really. But I'm home, and REALLY happy to be here.

I packed up and left on Saturday. My original thought was to leave on Friday, after work, but that never works out and I'm just sick of rushing around and making myself crazy trying to leave now now now. Screw that. I'm on vacation, I'll go when I'm good and ready. Of course, if that were totally true, I'd have probably stayed home. The cabins aren't very clean, they don't have air conditioning or decent lighting or comfortable seating, you have to bring EVERYTHING with you... The woods are FULL of poison ivy, mosquitoes and ticks... It is HOT... The water is HOT and really dirty... I don't care for fishing, I enjoy skiing for about 20 minutes, I can't park myself in the sun for hours on end... This is just not my idea of a good time.

That being said, I really needed a vacation from here, and I REALLY needed some family time. So I packed up everything (including the kitchen sink) and away I went.

I have no idea what this bug is, but I found it on the hood of my jeep when I stopped for gas. I pried it off as gently as possible and put it in a bush by the gas station.

I arrived about 5:00 am on Sunday morning, the kid at the gate had no idea what was going on but there was a ranger still around who gave me my key and off I went to the cabin. Usually, to unload into that particular cabin, we back the vehicle down the gravel hill almost to the door but I was pretty convinced that I wasn't going to be able to do that quietly and there was no point in waking up the whole cabin area that early so I just hoofed it up and down that darn hill four hundred million times. *pant* *gasp*

Here's some perspective what everything looks like. It's about a mile from the gatehouse at the entrance of the park to the cabin area.

My cabin:

My brother's cabin and the cabins that the Amish were staying in:

From my cabin down toward the lake:

The dock, in its current configuration:

The lake, from the dock:

We do swim from the "beach" by the cabins but typically, we take a boat to the swimmers beach, where there's sand and a gentle slope.

I have no idea what kind of bush this is, but the butterflies LOVED it. So did the bees, and there were enough ball-like blooms to keep everyone friends.

Note the bee sipping from one side, and the butterfly on the other.

It doesn't show really well here, but this butterfly had a dual set of wings, and could hover like a hummingbird. Really neat!

I tromped about a foot from the path to get these pictures, and found a tick on my thigh when I was finished. Not venturing from the path puts a damper on my adventuring!

The shore is all rocks - the best skipping stones you've ever seen in your life. I am by no means a champion stone skipper, but even I can manage 7 or 8 hops with these flat, thin, smooth rocks!

A wander along the shore uncovered treasure... Blackberries! These weren't ready, but I found some further on that were quite yummy.

Anyone home? I didn't find the spider, but the web was interesting.

Continuing my trend, I found some interesting remains to poke at as well.

And, of course, the most prolific native flora.

This is the third year that we shared the cabin area with Amish on vacation. They arrive in (as my brother calls them) "Yoder toters" - the huge conversion vans that they hire to get around, towing sizable trailers. There are several related families and they stay in two cabins. They fascinate me 'cause hey, they're normal people! Who'd have thunk it, right? And watching an Amish gentleman sit in a camp chair, drink a beer out of a can and chatter on a cell phone is the trippiest thing ever. They bring two fishing boats with them, with all of the bells and whistles. And then we have the Amish electricity - they run extension cords from the cabins down to the dock to charge the fish finder, the troll motor and other electronic goodies on the boat. This nearly gives my dad (the master electrician) a stroke every year.

In addition to the butterflies, mosquitoes and ticks, there other bugs. MANY MANY other bugs. Some were cool, like the cicada that hatched on the wall of my porch and the imperial moth that was on the door another evening. (It was larger than my hand and while it looks dull in the dim security light, a flashlight showed that it was yellow with pink and cream markings - really beautiful!)

I did not take pictures of the millions of white bugs. (They look like mosquitoes, but they're fuzzy and white and don't bite. They do, however, die by the THOUSANDS and coat every surface under a light. This is why the bedspread stays on the bed - to catch them and keep them off the sheets.) Or the ants. Or the beetles, silverfish, roaches, house flies, earwigs, etc.

Some quality time was spent on my brother's boat, lounging, skiing, tubing, sunburning the living crap out of myself...

My new best friend:

Friends drove down on Friday, and we managed to get into the water for about 10 minutes before the storm rolled in... And then it poured for several hours so they took their cranky toddler and went home but I enjoyed the thunder and the relief from the heat and humidity! The storm made quite an entrance.

It was clear for Saturday, when we packed up and headed out. This picture doesn't do it justice - you could see the sun sparkling on the water through the trees.

Check out is 10:00 on Saturday. I got up at 8:30, and was completely packed and ready to go by 9:20. My parents took HOURS. We were supposed to have brunch on the way out. I sat and waited for them (because they kept insisting that they were done except for odds and ends) until we finally left the cabin area at 10:30, and they still had to get the boat on the trailer. So, the plan was to meet at the marina. At 12:15, I called them because the cook was putting away the breakfast stuff. My mother decided that she wanted to take a nature walk and that we would wait. Gah! So it was after 2 pm before I managed to get on the road to come back here.

But, after several years, Mom has finally figured out that it's her and not the rest of us. She told me that she remembered things perfectly but that she was wrong. No shit, Sherlock. On July 3, she decided that Dad and my brother were going to come down and swim instead of Dad showering and getting ready to go out for their wedding anniversary. So she sat down on the dock and waited for them until after 6:30 - when they were supposed to leave for dinner at 6:00. If dad says anything to her, she gets really snappish and bitchy and he's just given up, so instead of going down and getting her, he just made a sandwich and waited for her. She went up to the cabin, all pissed off 'cause they never came back down and she didn't believe him until she went and checked with my brother and got the same story - no swimming, you were supposed to go up and get ready to leave. She's been doing stuff like this for YEARS - usually to me - and she is always absolutely convinced that she is right. There's a quote somewhere about a woman who is frequently wrong but never uncertain and I'd swear that person knows my mother. Anyway, she's got a doctor's appointment next week and she's said that she'll ask the doctor about it.

All in all, I came back here more on edge than when I left. We had more than one talk about this place not being someplace I'd ever go on my own and why my parents are so insistent on coming back year after year after year after... So we'll see if we come back next year. If we do, I'm going to do what my brother and my parents did this year and bring an air conditioner down with me. I'm also going to bring down lamps. And maybe a chair. Or maybe I'll retreat back to the comfortable cabin a mile down the road. But this is the only real vacation I get in a year and I'm not going to subject myself to this again.

Vacation!

2010-07-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

I'm off! I'm off! I'm off!

I was going to link to last year's post but, um, I never actually published it.

We'll see how this year goes - I'm in the cabin area this year. Mom and Dad have a cabin, so does my brother and so do I. Last year, by the time I knew I could go, the cabins were booked so I stayed in a different cabin a mile away. THAT cabin was fantastic - hot tub, fireplace, air conditioning, towels & sheets provided... And he was friends with the owner of a local winery. I was in the hot tub with my friend and one of us mentioned that we just needed wine. He was mowing the trim and heard us, and went and got us several bottles! LOVED that cabin. But it's amazing how far away one mile is when everyone else is someplace else.

So this year, I'll be staying in the much more primitive cabin with everyone else. Mom and Dad bring their own air conditioner down, and if I could justify the expense to myself, I think I would too. Also, these are basically hunting cabins, so nothing is really provided. But, it's a week away from here!

I'll be back next weekend. Happy fourth!

Raku!

2010-06-28T23:49:00.001-07:00

Remember how excited I was, and how I couldn't wait and then they postponed it and I was so sad? Well, we FINALLY got to do the raku firing. Ideally, this doesn't happen when it's 98 degrees outside, with high humidity, since you're playing with fire and need to be covered in long pants (all natural fibers!) but I'll take it whenever I can get it!

Raku pottery uses special glazes and a particular firing technique which creates an oxygen reduction. This brings out the metallic colors of the glazes and you end up with pots that can look like gasoline spilled on blacktop - irridescent and metallic. I love the look, but there are some things to be aware of. This is a very unpredictable process. If your walls are not even, or sometimes just because, the pot can explode from the thermal shock. It is pretty much impossible to predict what your pot will look like after. Even the most dependable of glazes can behave erradically in the kiln, so if you're a control freak who needs to KNOW what your pot will look like when complete, this is not the process for you.

Also, raku is NOT food safe due to some of the more toxic elements in the glazes. We mostly dipped with some brushing to add the glazes, and we were outside in a very well ventilated area. Some people use airbrushes to spray the glaze on. If you do this, you MUST use a very good respirator CORRECTLY. (Someone in NC was seriously injured this year when she installed the filters incorrectly in her respirator - her lungs were seriously burned from inhaling the chemicals in her glazes and she almost died.) Unlike typical pottery, the reaction is not complete so it is necessary to seal your raku to keep the colors vibrant. I'll be using grout sealer, per my instructor's recommendation.

The first step, of course, is to have bisque. You must use clay capable of going to cone 6 and it must be a robust clay to stand up to the thermal shock. I shared a sleeve (25 pounds) of Highwater Raku clay with P. It's a bit more groggy (more sand) than I've gotten used to, so throwing it was interesting. This is the bisque that I had ready to go for the firing.

P picked me up, with coffee ready, and we were off around 8:00 am. The studio is at the instructor's home and is located about an hour away. Once we arrived, we greeted her German Shepherd, refridgerated everything for lunch (we'd decided on potluck, so everyone brought something) and headed to the studio.

As with any firing, the first step is preparing the bisque. She had compressed air to clean the pots or you can wipe them down with water to remove any dust. Then wax the bottoms to keep the glaze off - I dribbled a bit on one pot and once the wax is on there, you can't get it off without refiring so I used a brush to splat wax here and there on the pot. (Sometimes I think that I haven't necessarily gotten better at the pottery, I've just gotten better at making my mistakes look intentional.)

Second step: glazing. Chose your glazes so the colors and textures compliment your pot. Or, if you have no idea what the colors will look like, slop them all over the place and have fun!

Step three: loading the kiln. This is the first step that is a bit different for raku. As you must pull the pots quickly from the kiln, you load them with an eye to getting them back out. (For an electric kiln, the pots stay put until cool so you can pack 'em in there pretty much any which way.) The kilns we used for this were lowered down over the stack of bisque, so planning became even more important - you don't want to not have room for the kiln to be lowered. Once everything is stacked and ready, the kiln was lowered into place and lit. (These were both gas fired kilns.) Then we waited forever.

While we waited, we shredded massive amounts of newspaper into a large trash can. We also made "gaskets" by completely submerging 8 - 10 open sheets of newpaper in water. These we set to one side for later. We also got the metal garbage cans ready for the next steps. We emptied any ash out, covered the bottom of each garbage can with sawdust and a handful or two of the shredded paper, and made sure we knew where the lids were.

Step four: pulling pots. When the glazed pots were ready, we pulled on heavy fire gloves and grabbed long handled tongs. The kiln was raised. (The main kiln was rigged with a concrete block counterbalance, which made it MUCH easier than the secondary kiln. That one required us to put a rod through the handle on the top, and two people raised the kiln up and over. Both the guys lost most of the hair on their legs, and I was fairly convinced that my pants were going to catch on fire.) The pots were glowing red hot, and the heat was incredible. We reached in with the tongs, grabbed a pot, and put it in a metal garbage can. The paper people then threw several handfulls of shredded newspaper into the can, then another pot, then more paper until the can was about 3/4 full. Then the wet paper gasket was placed over the can and the lid fitted over that.

Step five: burping the pots. After everything sat for half an hour or so, we lifted the lid and introduced more oxygen into the garbage cans. Once the fire flared up, we added more newspaper if needed and shut the lid again.

Step six: into the water. Everything sat for another hour or so. (And we took the opportunity to go off and have lunch - YUMMY. P made an amazing apricot cheesecake, I made marinated cheese and a fruit salad, there were sandwiches, pasta, veggies and dip, more fruit - everything was REALLY good!) After we ate, and dragged ourselves back to the kilns, we used the tongs again to root around in the trashcans and find all of the pots. We put them into the water to quench them and they stayed there until they were cool enough to handle.

Step seven: out of the water. Once the pots had cooled, we fished them out of the water and rinsed them off. Some of the colors look even better if you scrub them with Ajax and a scotch bright.

Step eight: sealing. At some point, I will take my pots and seal them with grout and tile sealer. This keeps the colors from fading.

A separate part of the program was to be smoke painting. To do this, you put unglazed bisque in the kiln, heat it 'til it's glowing red, pull it out and immediately use feathers and horse hair to add designs to your piece. Once it's like you want it, let it cool and then polish it with several coats of wax. I tried this several times and failed miserably. I had one piece close, but I didn't realize that if you refired it to heat it up, you lost all previous attempts. Darn it! So, I ended up glazing everything 'cause smoke painting is currently beyond me. Part of the problem was that you have to work REALLY fast, and with 8 of us milling around, the pot was cooled off before I even really got to it. I'll need to play further with this.

And here are all of the after pictures. All in all, I've happy with how they turned out and with the whole experience. I definitely want to do it again one day!

I Did Not Die.

2010-06-21T22:43:00.000-07:00

Hooray!

The trip started with my typical karma - at 10:30 pm Sunday night, I got a text that my 6:40 am flight was cancelled. The message from Delta was: "not to worry! We fixed it! You're on the same flight in two days!" It took nearly 3 hours on the phone to get scheduled on the next available flight out on Monday, you know since I was supposed to be there on Monday. As it was, I flew out of another airport several hours later so I missed the supplier meeting on Monday entirely. I arrived at the airport in El Paso around 10:30 pm Monday night, took the shuttle to the hotel and fell into bed.

Tuesday morning, we met in the lobby at 4:30 am to drive to the Juarez airport for the flight to Chihuahua. The driver got stuck at the border and was an hour late picking us up, then drove like a maniac through the town. We actually hit a man on a bicycle - we took a corner too fast, and he didn't look before he tried to cross the street. He hit the hood, his bike went one way, he bounced down the windshield and hit the road. He picked himself and his bike up and hobbled over to the side of the road. The driver asked if he was okay, he kinda waved and we took off. We did make our flight...

Should you find yourself in Chihuahua, I completely recommend the Soberano Hotel. It was a Westin hotel and is now apparently not. The rooms were beautiful, the bar was first rate, the lobby is gorgeous and there's really cool art all over the place. Also, they have a little gift shop where you can buy postcards and the hotel front desk will mail them for you. That is where these pictures were taken:

Also in Chihuahua, go to eat at a restaurant called "Barriga's." It means "fat belly" and you'll feel that way after you eat. So so good. They make REALLY good margaritas there too, and it's where I was introduced to my latest favorite tequila drink: 1921 creme de tequila. So very yummy! The service was fantastic too.

Wednesday was spent traveling from Chihuahua to Reynosa. You'd think it'd be easy, but no, you have to fly down to Mexico City and then back up.

Sigh. I'm happy to report no ill effects from the fresh fruit cup at the Starbucks in the Mexico City airport. Once we arrived in Reynosa, a supplier picked us up, jammed us into his pick-up and drove over the border to McAllen, Texas. We stayed at the Embassy Suites there. Those are nice hotels, but I was on the first floor, which is handicapped accessible so I didn't have a bathtub - the whole bathroom was the shower. Given the poor placement of handles, trays and such, and the very slippery floor, I'm not convinced that it was anything less than a death trap for anyone unfortunate enough to need the accessibility. Also, the soap is very demanding, and frankly, I don't need that first thing in the morning.

Dinner was someplace that the shuttle from the hotel would take us, and it was good. They made margaritas with DeSoronno, which were yummy.

I spent an hour and a half on the phone with the airline because it occurred to me at some point that my plane tickets home would take me to my town, instead of the one over an hour away where my jeep was parked. The nice lady on the phone assured me that it was all handled...

Thursday was the audit, which was weird for me 'cause the audit had to stop for a couple hours while the building shut down and the whole place gathered in front of the projection screen to watch the Mexico vs. France world cup game. I'm glad Mexico won.

We got back to the hotel after 9:00 pm and my coworker wanted to catch the end of the basketball game so we headed out to Buffalo Wild Wings. If you are ever in McAllen, Texas, DO NOT go there. The service was AWFUL. I ordered a strawberry margarita. After three requests, and an hour, had passed, the girl brought out the drink - it was syrup in a glass. They had that super sweet mix that some places use to make frozen margaritas, but they couldn't figure out the blender or whatever 'cause she told me that they couldn't do frozen drinks. Oh-kay... The food was cold when it finally arrived, she never did get a drink order right. At one point, I resorted to scrawling "WE REQUIRE SERVICE" across a paper towel with the sharpie I keep in my purse and sticking it as high on the wall as I could reach. Then she completely screwed up our bill and had to redo it THREE times. Gah!

Friday, I flew from McAllen to Houston on Continental with no problems. The Continental lady told me that she couldn't check me in for my other flights but said it would be easy to do in Houston. I didn't realize how HUGE the Houston airport is - I've only gone in and out through the international terminal. Holy crap. First I walked about a hundred miles to the tram. Then the tram dropped me off four terminals later and I walked ANOTHER hundred miles to a specific gate, where I caught a bus to ANOTHER terminal and then I walked about another fifty miles to the gate... and all of this without ever once spying anything to do with Delta - it was all continental. As it happened the only Delta guy I found told me that I had to go all the way back - and thru security - to the ticket desks to get the ticket reissued. He didn't have time to help me. So I spent another hour on the phone with Delta getting it fixed. I finally got my boarding passes - although needing boarding passes when I was clearly on this side of security completely confused the gate person who printed them for me. Then I flew to Atlanta, and then onward to my final destination. Whew!

While in the air somewhere over the States, I noticed the clouds marching along in formation. It fascinated me - as far as the eye could see, orderly lines of clouds. Weird!

I noticed a large contingent of biker-looking guys in the airport, looking much more somber than I am used to, and when I went out to the jeep, their bikes all had large flags attached to the back. When I was pulling out, I understood. They'd brought someone home on my flight, and the bikers were an honor guard to escort the casket. As tired and cranky as I was, I didn't mind waiting at all.

I was as grateful to have the Garmin on the trip home as I was the trip there - I'd have NEVER made it without her. They have hidden that airport well but the Garmin was up to the task!

I was SO glad to be home! Yay for sleeping in one's own bed!

Final thought - if you have an iphone, look into the "dial zero" application. It is a directory and instructions on how to get your hands on a real live person when you call a company for something. In my case, I might STILL be in Houston without it. Not only does it have listings by company, but it's got comments on each listing. The Delta number was only getting me an automated response - "We're sorry but call volumes are super high and we're eating donuts so you can't hold or leave a message. Just call back, maybe you'll be the lucky one!" click. buzz. - but someone in the comments had left the Spanish speaking number. Here's the irony - all of the people working the Spanish speaking number speak English AND no one ever calls it so you get right through. So, thanks to that app (I love my iPhone!), I made it home!

Don't Wanna

2010-06-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

I leave tomorrow for Mexico. I'll start in Juarez, hit Chihuahua and end up in Reynosa. If the drug lords don't kill me, I'll be back on Friday night. I DO NOT WANT TO GO. Not even a little.

And just to add insult to injury, my plane leaves at 6:30 am tomorrow. Yay! I need to pack and stop at work to grab the paperweight (aka laptop). Wish me luck.

Glitters + Glazing + Blueberries = YUMMY Weekend

2010-06-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

I am, in spite of the knives and the engineering degree, occasionally very much a girly girl. I love shoes, my toenails are nearly always painted. And I'm very fond of jewelry. I don't wear rings - I spend too much time crawling around inside machines for that. But I love earrings and bracelets and necklaces. So I left work on Friday at 4:15 to run "errands." My errand was actually to run over to a jewelry store that was closing to look for bargains on shiny things. Ooh, I had a good time and it was all 75% off. Yay! I used most of my play money, so I'm off the auction circuit for a while. It was totally worth it.

From there, I went to the studio and glazed for a while. (I once again had so much bisque to glaze that until I got it under control, I wasn't allowing myself to make any more.)

Saturday, I glazed ALL day. I got to the studio, with my typical Dunkin' Donuts coffee order, around 11:00 am and was there until nearly 7:00 pm. But, I finished 15 things! Now, I can't WAIT for the firing to be done. It was a bit odd - they're renovating the studio so a wall was missing when I got there. I think it'll be really nice when they're done with it. Right now, though, it's weird. Anywho, these are the before pictures. The mug has taken 4 days of glazing. Stupid grid. But it should be pretty cool when done. I experimented some more too - I dipped bowls in alabaster glaze, and then used underglaze watercolors to paint the flowers, and the confetti, on over the glaze. Then I clear glazed them. We'll see how it turns out. *fingers crossed*

After I left the studio I went home and finished planting my annuals. I hope they fill in fast - they look kind of scrawny now. The problem is that I'm still on Ohio/Chicago garden time. Everyone here planted their annuals a month ago, so I ended up buying the flowers no one else wanted. Poor little things. Maybe they'll recover.

Sunday, I went to the studio for an hour or so then went to pick blueberries. The early crop is perfect right now. Of course, I hadn't driven there on my own before so I got a bit turned around and took the wrong road. It was a nice drive, and I saw wild turkeys in a field so that was cool. I got myself turned back around and got to the pick it yourself place. It was a bit warm, but really beautiful.

And, I found another old gas pump.

All in all, a very delicious weekend!

Fossil Festival

2010-05-31T21:16:00.000-07:00

Yay for Memorial Day Weekend! For all the normal reasons, of course,

but also because that's when Aurora, North Carolina throws its annual Fossil Festival! My friend P and I go every year.

This year was quite a bit smaller than last year's, and several vendors that I was looking forward to seeing weren't there. Also, it wasn't quite as well organized - no one was keeping track of the parking and we ended up trapped when people parked behind us, making three rows. But we still had a very nice time.

Our first success (and biggest of the day) was talking to one of the regular vendors regarding some really nifty rocks.

It's basically layers of coal with fossil ferns and other plants smashed in between. P and I were equally enamored of them, and asked the price. He kept giving us lower and lower prices, until we asked how much for all seven pieces. We got all seven (and the box to carry them in) for $40. Yay! The vendor, T, told us a secret - he's always more willing to deal on pieces that are heavier. Nothing like hauling rocks around to make one appreciate a bargain. (Next year, I'm moving in on his fossilized wood!) She had a favorite, which was REALLY cool so she took that one and I got the odd piece. We hauled our loot back to the car and moved along.

[When we got to my house later, and divided the seven between the two of us, I was reminded that several people have compared the two of us to those little gophers in the Warner Brothers cartoons - "No, no, I insist - you go first." "Oh I couldn't! Well, if you insist." We make me laugh.]

For the festival, Aurora closes its main street so it's like a festival/street fair kind of event. We wandered at will, and found other treasures, like fossilized sand dollars.

Then, nirvana! An air conditioned building, and the best of the shiny rock vendors. I went just a bit nuts this year. So shiny!

Fluorite. These pictures do not do justice. This piece looks like a miniature geometric city of the future. So very cool...

The tag called this calcopyrite. I'd never heard of it before, but it's a field of pale grey crystals, with indigo/purple/violet/navy crystals scattered randomly. Also much cooler in person.

Then I saw this. Oh my. The lady didn't take credit cards, so I basically jogged a mile to the nearest ATM and back. This is a softball sized piece of celestite. The crystals are palest grey to clear with lots of inclusions in them and it doesn't matter how you turn it - the inclusions cause every crystal to have rainbows trapped inside. Absolutely stunning.

We scrambled to get our shopping done since the auction starts at 3:00 and most of the vendors pack up before then. This year, we skipped the auction - it's all vendors and museum representatives and while the prices are very reasonable for what you are getting, a strict hobbyist like myself doesn't stand much of a chance. Then we tried for food. OMG. I just wanted french fries. That's it. We stood in line for well over an hour just to be told that the idiot ran out of potatoes. How the hell do you RUN OUT OF POTATOES at a booth selling french fries?!?!? And then, don't even update the damn sign so people standing in line KNOW to go somewhere else? Oooh, I was not happy!

Instead of eating french fries (growl), she got a hot dog and we moved to one of the mounds of dirt. The fossil museum exists because of the phosphate mine. After 9/11, the phosphate mine is not open to the public, but they take basically their leavings and pile the dirt up in spaces marked out by the museum and then you can dig around for free and keep anything you find.

I plunked myself down and dug in. P went wandering off and found another food booth and got me french fries. She's a very good friend. After food, life was much better and we rooted happily (like a pair of gophers...). P has the ability to spot sharks teeth. It's just one of those things. She'll walk around, looking down, and spot several of them. I am a bit more hands on. And by that, I sit in the dirt and dig. And shift. And dig some more. I enjoy it. Of course, the scale of our hunt is slightly different as well.

The penny is shown for scale. The visible tooth is one that P found. The others are the "micro teeth" that I find so attractive. I'm so quite fond of the teeny tiny fossil shells.

We hunted about for a couple of hours and then headed for home. It was nearly 100 degrees, and high humidity and we were outside for several hours, so we took a pass on the winery this year. We both just wanted to get home, shower and find an icy beverage. Here's what I (and P) found in the dirt this year.

And this is an old gas pump that just struck my fancy. We have one at home, and I just like them.

The big sand dollar and the orangey-ist of the fern rocks will be going to my mom on my next trip home. Thanks to this festival, we're both growing quite a collection of fossils and shiny rocks.

At the end of the day, I was sunburned, windburned, hot, sweaty, broke and quite happy. It was a very good day! Next year, you should come too!

Porch Anole!

2010-05-27T19:48:00.000-07:00

I have a hibiscus that lives on my porch every summer and in my library every winter. I have an anole that lives in the hibiscus. Every fall, I worry about accidently bringing the anole inside, and I shake the hibiscus and try to make sure that no one's home when it comes indoors.

This winter, I found a dessicated little lizard corpse in my storage room upstairs, and was sure that I'd murdered my porch anole. I had this whole scenerio in my head where he's dragged inside, chased mercilessly by the cats and limps off to die in the equivalent of a basement. It was tragic.

That scenerio happened to some poor little guy, but I still have a porch anole! I've been trying to capture him on camera for a couple of weeks, which has been a comedy of errors, but today, today! I succeeded! I wasn't quick enough to catch him displaying, but maybe next time.

And then he sauntered away - he wasn't nearly as panicked as LAST time I chased him around the porch. Maybe one day, I'll be able to maul him the way I do the treefrogs with their cute little suction-cup toes!

UPDATED: Not gecko. Anole. I've had this little guy stuck in my head since I read this article 'cause he's SO pretty! I love the eye color!

The Music Of Nature

2010-05-23T01:27:00.000-07:00

You've probably heard Lang Elliot's work even if you have no idea who he is. He is widely considered the major force in recording birdsong and is the primary bird song recordist for the Eastern Stokes Guide. He and some friends have put together a blog of nature music - birds and frogs and other fauna. It's the perfect antidote to a gloomy depressing day.

I stole this video from his blog. You should check it out here: The Music Of Nature.

Church Fail

2010-05-18T22:54:00.001-07:00

From the same town that brought you this, comes this little goof. U, V, what's the diff, right?

Assistant FAIL

2010-05-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

All of the salaried employees in my factory share one administrative assistant, and unfortunately, ours sucks.

Let's call the dear thing Gidget. Gidget is not just sullen, inane, sly, lazy, entitled, and bitchy, she's stupid and yet oddly convinced that she is capable and entirely deserving of the better-than-you attitude that she wields with such clumsiness.

Keep in mind that my mom was a secretary, so was my grandmother - both of the old school, shorthand taking, absolutely capable of running the company single-handedly sort. My last company had several admins of the same vein - they were bright, capable people who were almost scary in their ability, knowledge and efficiency so it is true that my expectations were high. (I make a point of making friends with the admins immediately 'cause they can either make your life much easier, or make your life hell.)

I've never have to work so hard in my life to get along with someone as with Gidget. And in the last couple of months, she's screwed up even more than usual. A few examples of her recent antics:

1. In spite of having the approved travel request form for three weeks, she didn't make my travel arrangements for my recent trip to Mexico until the Friday before I left. (I left the next Tuesday.) She only made them then because I asked her about them with the plant manager standing there. She whined the entire time because she "felt sick" and wanted to leave early and couldn't because mean me made her do this travel stuff. Because of her delay, the company was charged nearly $1000 more for my airfare. (We have to have her make the arrangements for us to travel, I'd be so much happier doing it myself.)

2. The charge card that she used for my hotel reservation was declined, so after calling and emailing with no response, the hotel cancelled the reservation. I found this out when I tried to check in and they had no rooms. They must have suspected that there'd be more to the story, because they had the emails and phone log in a folder behind the desk - so I KNOW they contacted her about it and she did nothing. End result: alone, in a taxi, somewhere in Mexico, at midnight, traveling to another hotel room for the night. Not only did she not do anything to help me, she never even apologized for getting me stranded. (Again. This isn't the first time her screw up has resulted in me stuck somewhere.)

3. I was in the process of bending to corporate will and getting a corporate card for this trip, so the airfare went on the ghost card. (The ghost card is a corporate credit card basically without a name attached for the admins to use as needed.) When one does an expense report, all of the charges for the trip have to be included, including charges on the ghost card. When Gidget bought my air tickets, she had to email me the itinerary since it was in the ghost card profile. When I did my expense report, I asked her to please send me the invoices for the airfare - I couldn't get into it since it was on the ghost card. She sent back an email telling me to follow the link she sent me (to the itinerary). I dug it out of my email archive and tried, but it had expired, so I sent her the link and asked her, again, to print out the e-invoices. She sent back a 5 MB email full of screenshots of the website, with big red arrows on where to click to get into the invoice, completely disregarding that it was IN HER PROFILE and I could not reach that page. I almost sent back screenshots of my own, but managed to restrain myself. So I walked across the entire factory to her desk and pointed to her name on her profile. She proceeded to walk me through the entire process that she'd just sent screenshots of, like I'm the idiot here. Then, after she's AT THE SCREEN with the invoices, she went to close it and then got all upset when I tore into her and told her to print it, which was what I asked for originally. She still believes that she was right and I was wrong.

4. Our volume is way up (yay!) and our factory has been working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week for months. At the recent incentive meeting, the plant provided a pizza lunch for everyone to thank them for the extra effort. (And they deserve it - the lines have been making their numbers EVERY day, and keeping quality very high - they've been doing an extraordinary job.) Gidget was responsible for ordering the pizza. That's all she had to do. Call and have the pizza delivered. She figured 2 slices of pizza per person, for 280 people. There are 7 slices in a large pizza. She ordered 20 pizzas. Just think about that for a second. For the math impaired, that's a quarter of what she should have ordered. So the assembly supervisor jumped in his car while a couple of the engineers called every pizza place in a 10 mile radius and collected every available pizza in the town to feed the plant. We asked them to each take one piece and then one of the other supervisors made a second run to pick up enough for seconds for people. Gidget did nothing to assist in the setup or teardown for the lunch, or the tearing around actually getting the lunch. Her facebook status was something about how hard she worked on this lunch and what a great job she did.

5. One of our buyers had his boss decide to postpone his scheduled trip to China - he had nothing to do with the situation. She got mad at him because she had to move the reservations, so she intentionally picked the most expensive ones and his cost center was charged an extra $2000.

6. I had the CEO and other upper management of one of my suppliers come in for a huge meeting. A month in advance, I booked the room and asked her to arrange the lunch. They were arriving at 10:00. At 9:00, she sent a decline notice for the room - she'd bumped me out of the room with an hour's notice for a routine internal meeting. When I told her I needed the room, she said everything was booked, and it wasn't her job to find me a replacement. (Actually, that is pretty much exactly her job.) I had to go to the plant manager to get my room back. And then she ordered 2 fewer lunches than she should have, so two of us had to wait until the restaurant delivered two more. Then I found out that it was actually 1 fewer but she decided she was entitled to lunch so she took one.

And so on...

Stupid, incompetent AND an attitude - what's not to love?

In an admittedly political maneuver, she's a friend of mine on facebook. (I have a special "work" list for these things so she's very limited in what she can see.) She spends her days on the phone to her sister, and updating her facebook status on her iphone. I know - I see all of her updates when I get home at night. She spends a lot of time playing bejeweled. She was already on my last nerve when she started posting things that I found to be really unprofessional. You know, like this:

My friend P is the manager of the test lab at my company, and she has a group from the Department of Energy coming in for a VERY IMPORTANT MEETING next week. In addition to managing a department of 10 people, she is project manager for several critical task forces that we are currently running. End result - she needs Gidget to be the admin and handle a lot of the arrangements for this meeting. Gidget has NOT been cooperative, and P and I have spent some quality time lately comparing notes on her.

Our plant manager is leaving, back to his home country, and we're getting a new one. I heard Gidget on the phone the other day, telling someone how tired her brain was 'cause for three and a half days ALL she'd done was work on the agenda for the new guy's week long visit. Seriously, she hasn't answered her phone or an email all week. And, she hasn't done anything to set things up for P's DOE meeting next week. This includes little niceties like letting the visitors know where to stay, how to get to the plant, how to get back, etc. Every company that I've ever worked for has had a packet of information for visitors (important suppliers, interviewees, guests from other factories, etc) that includes things like this.

So at lunch today, I was laughing to P about Gidget's latest facebook post, about something else she should be doing but has no idea...

And P turned red and then white and through her clenched teeth, informed me that Gidget was talking about HER voicemail. And told me that she hadn't gotten an answer to the voicemail, so she'd sent an email, and got back "check google maps" as a response. Huh. Maybe like this:

So, incompetent and proud of it! Win win!

I'm hoping the new plant manager will take one look at her and send her packing. We'll see. In the meantime, I have another trip to Mexico coming up - this time to Juarez and Chihuahua. With her at the helm, and the drug lords packing, what could possible go wrong??

How We Wreaked The Ocean

2010-05-05T17:47:00.001-07:00

What we need to do is stop breeding. Why can't people see that we are overpopulating what is really a tiny little rock?

Star Wars Day!

2010-05-05T00:00:00.001-07:00

Did you celebrate? I did. I once again forced my coworkers to celebrate one of my odd little holidays. We were lazy about it though and had bbq and fried chicken delivered.

Anywho, MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU!

Wordless Wednesday - That Explains Everything

2010-04-28T20:53:00.001-07:00

The Kiln Gods Are Happy.

2010-04-02T13:49:00.000-07:00

My friend and I went out at lunch yesterday and picked up the latest treasures from the last firing. I've very happy with almost all of it - this was a good firing!

These were actually in the last firing - P has been experimenting with wedging different clays together. She is much more into this than I am, but it is pretty cool.

These are the coffee mugs. My boss' boss snatched the first one out of the box and kept it. I'm quite fond of the one with dots, myself, but I think I need to work on BIGGER coffee mugs.

The set of four bowls came out well also. I haven't completely convinced myself that it's a set per se, but I love the speckles!

I also got back the three bowls that I started and basically finished in one weekend. I am particularly happy with the way the fuchsia bowl came out. Yay!

There was one casulty - this looks cool from this angle, but the glaze ran like a river and puddled so there are chunks of the bottom of the bowl missing on the other side. *sigh* I was afraid that I'd put too much of the blue rutile on and I was right. Better luck next time...

I have a couple of things currently in progress. Note to self - NO more rippled edges with marbled clay. You have to sand for YEARS. The poppies have been sitting on my shelf for months, I finally added the last details and put them in for bisque firing.

And this is what I had my friend M doing at the studio when she visited. She has no interest in clay so I had to find something to entertain her. I gave her underglazes and a tile and asked her to paint me a dragon. After it's bisqued, I'll clear glaze it and then hang it on my wall.

I Need A Weekend To Recover From My Weekend...

2010-03-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

Thursday - M got here, landlord started fixing the fence that's been broken for 2.5 years - with much banging and bothering of the cats. As soon as she got out of the car, I dragged her off on a walk / geocaching adventure and we found two caches less than half a mile from my house that I've been meaning to find for over a year.

Friday - she wandered - and found a zoo nearby that no one here even knew existed - while I worked. After work, to the studio! For wine! And painting! Then to dinner, where we froze in a draft and had to send dinner back 3 times before they finally got it right.

Saturday - breakfast WAY too early at IHOP (I'm convinced that a single molecule of syrup can - and does - make an entire building sticky. How does that work, physics??) then to Shackleford Island. We were here last year as well. I love the beach and the water, she loves the wild horses.

I found toadstools growing in the sand on the beach - which seemed very strange to me.

Why am I so attracted to dead things on the beach?

I am fascinated with visual textures. Sooo cool.

And why can't I just enjoy the place without even noticing all of the detris that no one else seems to pay any attention to? Witness - hauling 3 trash bags of litter and sand out with us. A best friend is someone who thinks what you're doing is probably pointless and stupid and STILL brings another trash bag and pitches in... on her vacation. Seriously people, plastic beverage containers are EVIL and must be stopped. Also, keep better track of your flip flops.

I took the opportunity to chase some birds around. I took two pictures of the pelican, so close together that they're the same picture except for wing position, so now I can flip back and forth between the pictures on my computer and make the pelican fly!

We ate at Finz - food and bait in one convenient location! - and then headed home for Parcheesi, wine and her fudge. She makes the best fudge ever. Yummy!

Sunday - another day of up-too-damn-early and then to the store and then off to go horseback riding on the beach. It was wonderful but my horse was slow as molasses in January and wouldn't move for anything. A N Y T H I N G. Made me slightly nuts. If you go, do not request Sarah - the rest of your party will be miles ahead of you. It's a beautiful ride, but really quite desolate.

There are also wild horses roaming around at Cedar Island. They let us get pretty close, all things considered.

Also? Saw dead dolphin on the beach. If I hadn't have been about 400 feet off the ground, I would have investigated further.

(When we got back, I dismounded onto the tailgate of a full size truck, and it was a large step down from the horse to the truck. The mare was half Belgian and HUGE.)

To get to Cedar Island, you drive FOREVER and then, in the middle of nowhere, there's this huge, beautiful bridge. It was surreal.

Then we headed to Texas Steakhouse for dinner, primarily because they were open in my small Southern town on a Sunday and headed for home. M needed to replenish her stock of Spanish moss, so we ventured out to the cemetary and found fireworks! We zipped over to watch them then came back and fell asleep.

Today - she left at 7:00 am. I zoned on the couch until I was late for work. So very tired... So far, not as sore as I thought I'd be, but things are a bit uncomfortable. Now, to bed to try to recooperate enough to make it through the rest of the week.

Pots, Bowls & Mugs - Part 2: Incoming

2010-03-17T21:43:00.001-07:00

The latest finished stuff is here, in part 1.

These are my shelves at the studio. Note all of the stuff in process on the top shelf.

I've been on a mug kick lately. These four are ready to glaze. I had a bit of a problem with the handle on the last one, so it went into a later bisque firing.

President's Day Weekend was a very good one for me - I got Monday off - yay! - AND Deb had things to do in the studio. (She's got a key and I can stay as late as she does - I like days when she has things to do.) So I spent all of the long weekend playing in the mud. A result of that - these bowls were thrown, trimmed, carved, sanded, painted and ready for bisque in one weekend. Next thing you know, I'll be a production potter!

As with the mugs, I've been playing with sets of things. This is my first attempt at a set of four bowls. If I glaze them all the same, they'll certainly look like a set, right?

My friend P has been fascinated lately with combining contrasting clays to get a marbled effect. These have the added benefit of easy glazing - dip it in clear and you're done. Of course, if you are like me and don't think to use a rib to clear the slip from the piece as you throw it, you get to spend about four years sanding to bring out the color variations. *sigh* Since she's been kind enough to actually wedge the clays together, I've played a bit too. It's interesting, but I'm not nearly as into it as she is.

And here is where I am now - I have so much to glaze that I've stolen another shelf. I'm not allowing myself to throw anything else until I get this under control.

(Of course, by the time I actually get this published, I'll hopefully have a bunch more in the pipeline. The never ending story...)

Pots, Bowls & Mugs - Part 1: At Home

2010-03-16T21:29:00.000-07:00

This is all the stuff I've finished recently. (Brace yourself - this is a bit overdue and things have piled up.)

Here are pieces that I carved and then painted:

Yeah, I started this one last year, got it finished and then forgot it on my shelf until nearly February. I'm not late, I'm early for next year!

I have a stamp with a similar image, and I ended up liking my hand carved version better than the stamp.

I did another bowl with similar squiggles, but I dyed them dark again a lighter clay. That was a huge amound of work. For this one, I painted a bowl with red underglaze and then carved the squiggles out. The clay is white, and it shows through quite nicely.

Lilies, also from before Christmas - the season was hectic and they got buried. I kept thinking I was forgetting something...

I'm pretty proud of the way this one turned out, so these pictures follow the pattern all the way around. I carved the ribbons over and under into the clay and then painted them once the clay dried. Then I bisqued it and clear glazed it.

This one is kind of a hybrid - I carved out the strip and then brush glazed it. The jasper and the deep firebrick react to each other in ways that are unexpected and pretty cool.

These are just bowls - most of them are color experiments with new glazes. I made most of them in one day during the empty bowls charity push. I'm a bit unhappy - these were all round when they went INTO the firing, but slightly warped when they came out. *grumble*

And these were thrown by another lady in the studio and she didn't like them. I rescued them from the trash can and played with the glaze a bit.

Next up: Part 2 - All of the stuff that is currently in progress.

My raku firing got postponed indefinitely due to a lack of people. *sigh* Sadness. But, I have finished all of the bisque for it and set it aside so I'm ready whenever the instructor is. Now totally works for me...

Another Frame Job

2010-03-14T21:55:00.000-07:00

This is from SamSarah Designs, called "I Will Always Be A Wildflower." The buttons are from Just Another Button Company. I finished the stitching in April 2008, put the buttons on last fall and finally got it framed last week.

Things have been a bit slow at the framer's and she had it finished for me in a week. Yay! It is now hanging in my entry.

And HAPPY PI DAY TO ALL! My pie for the Pi Day Celebration at work tomorrow is in the oven now.

Wordless Wednesday - MY blankie!

2010-02-17T19:12:00.001-08:00

Blizzard 2010!!!!

2010-02-13T21:57:00.000-08:00

It actually snowed here yesterday. They said it was going to, and I didn't believe them. Coworkers bailed to run to the store for the essentials (beer, bottled water, bread, milk, and toilet paper) and I laughed. Then at some point Friday evening, I peeked outside my chamber door to find... it was snowing!

I checked again around 3 am to find that we actually had accumulation.

Then I peeked outside on Saturday morning and found actual snow! Here, in coastal North Carolina!

My Jeep was not amused.

Well trained little Northerner that I am, I went out and shoveled the porch steps and the sidewalk. Everyone else's sidewalks were just tromped down, which bothered me quite a bit. When I got to the studio, I muttered about it and got laughed at - no one here shovels. No one here even owns a snow shovel. By the time I left the studio, around 5 pm, the snow had melted from the roads and the sidewalks. *sigh* That was time well spent. I could have spent more time on my snowman.

I do wish I'd thought to take pictures of all of the snowmen around here. Every yard (including, I must confess, my own) had at least one snowman. It was like we'd been invaded. Some of them leaned a bit, and they sported an interesting assortment of headgear and accessories, but they were EVERYWHERE. No matter how different we all are, sometimes you just have to go play in the snow.

But enough of this silliness, it's time for Spring. Bring on the warm weather!!

In The Kiln Now...

2010-02-07T20:51:00.000-08:00

My friend P has been doing some neat things with leaves at the studio. She's made some neat coasters that I really liked, but I've been so busy at the wheel that handbuilding just wasn't going to happen. Then a few weeks ago, another coworker let us borrow his kids for an afternoon in the studio. Neither of us were crazy enough to let them loose on the wheel, so we had handbuilding day in the studio. This was my chance!

We have a large new slab roller at the studio, which is quite cool. We rolled out sheets of clay, handed over a bunch of cookie cutters and let the kids come up with whatever they wanted. While they played, I did too. I used a round cookie cutter, and then pressed a variety of leaves into the clay. The leaves burned off in the bisque fire, leaving an impression. Fuzzy leaves are the best. Then I painted them with rust oxide and then rinsed it back off. It stayed in the cracks and crevices, highlighting the leaves. Anywho, these are the car coasters I made.

These are all in the kiln now. The first three should have gone into the kiln before Christmas, but I got distracted and forgot them. The colored ribbons and the tree are now covered in clear glaze. The lily will be blue and will hopefully look kind of watercolor-ish. The red one was also covered in clear glaze. I should pick them up on Friday, along with the several other things now glazed.

A Feathered Favor?

2010-01-27T20:46:00.000-08:00

I've already babbled a bit about the raku workshop that I'm going to attend at the end of February. But wait, there's more! The lady teaching it wants us to bring one bisqued and burnished piece so we can try smoke painting. Isn't that a great phrase? I get all sorts of nifty imagery from it. Smoke painting. Cool.

What it really means is that you take bisque, get it really hot in a kiln and then burn the sh*t outta your fingers putting horse hair, pet fur/hair and or feathers on the pot. It burns in very quickly, leaving patterns behind. (I stole this picture from here. The scratchy lines are horse hair. The feather looking thing is, well, a feather.)

The burnishing part of the process is going to be a royal pain, but I'd like to do one or two just for the experience. I have PLENTY of fur from the fluffballs, but I do not have a source for feathers.

Anyone have any that they'd be willing to share? Or know of a good cheap source for natural feathers? I'd really appreciate it, and I'll trade pottery for them!

Today and Yesterday

2010-01-24T00:08:00.001-08:00

This is one of my current projects. The clay is still fairly damp - it's the right consistency to trim. After I finished trimming it, I painted on several coats of red underglaze and then used something sharp and shiny to carve squiggles into the clay. This particular clay is little loafers, which is white when fired. The plan is for the bowl to be red, with the white lines showing.

I'm so very proud of this bowl. It will break my heart if something happens to it. It's huge, for me, at 6" or so across. It's also thin and even and not lopsided! I love it so! The first picture is as thrown, the second is after trimming. It's bisqued now and waiting for me to figure out the glaze. So pretty...

I threw this one on the same day. It's a nice bowl. I have no idea what colors to make it yet. Something happened during the bisque fire - there's now a chip on the foot. Grrr. But, it's a minor problem.

And here are some of the things I finished ages ago and never posted...

My first squiggles bowl, from September. The clay is called desert buff and it fires to a very nice oatmeal color. I carved in the squiggles and then dyed them with rust oxide. The rust color darkened to black in the kiln.

Here's the completed zebra dish. It's kind of shaped like a bathtub. The clear glaze is kind of gobby and my orange dancers faded out so I'm not thrilled with it. I do like the little zebras though.

This is how the squirrel vase turned out. The red in him faded away, leaving him a black squirrel. Kent State University, in Kent, Ohio, is known for their black squirrels so I've decided that he's a Kent squirrel.

A lot of the glazes that I use are from Coyote. Their site also features a really cool gallery of things that have been done using their glazes. I REALLY liked the sun bowl done by Terri Baldin. (Go here, it's the third one down.) This bowl was my version of her idea. I used mottled blue by itself, and it came out a bit dark. Next time, I'll also use Oasis.

Given the stack of bisque on my shelf, I'll have more to show soon. Actually, it may take a while. I signed up for a raku workshop, which has me ridiculously excited, and I'm busy making things from raku clay to have bisqued and ready to go by the workshop at the end of February. Do check out the video on raku - that, in a significantly more amaturish fashion, is what I'll be doing soon. The artist that is having MY workshop takes another step and quenches the pot in water after pulling it from the sawdust. This means that I have to use a clay that can withstand some serious man-handling. I REALLY hope stuff turns out! So excited!

Wordless Wednesday - Truth in Advertising

2010-01-20T20:58:00.001-08:00

Somewhat Overdue...

2010-01-08T20:50:00.001-08:00

Happily, thanks to the small wall heater and 2 space heaters, the studio wasn't freezing tonight. Yay! And we had cherry lambic, which made it even better. That stuff is so good. I have to import it from home - I haven't found it anywhere near here. The upscale grocery has the small raspberry, but not the cherry, or the apple. It's okay - friends supply me when they visit, so I'm good to go for a while.

Here are the finished pieces that I picked up from the studio right before Christmas. There's one more purple bowl, but it has to be re-fired. We have come to the conclusion that there are significant heat fluctuations in the kiln, and if your piece ends up in some areas, you are probably going to have to re-fire it. It's annoying and one day I may commandeer the kiln for a day and figure it out but for now, some things just have to wait longer to come home.

This is a bowl that I originally threw in June. I did a lid for it, and spent HOURS making daisies and painting them only to have something explode in the kiln during the bisque fire and shatter my lid. That was my first important lesson in not getting attached to things before they are actually finished and in your house. The bowl spent months languishing on my shelf, waiting for me to get over it enough to throw away the shards of the lid and move on. It's not particularly fabulous, so I had no problem experimenting with it.

I don't know quite what I was thinking with this one. I love the goldenrod shino and I should have left well enough alone. I'm not fond of the way the stripes came out. I will probably end up donating this one to the empty bowls charity event in February.

OMG, this one was a pain in the keister. I used a fork to make even gouges in the damp clay and then painted the stripes. Then, after the bisque fire, I used wax to keep the glaze out of the stripes and dip glazed it. It took FOREVER. Note to self: NO MORE STRIPES.

I've been playing around with textures and the way the glazes behave on them lately. You can get some really cool effects if you have some idea what you are doing. The teal middle of this one has deep vertical ridges carved into the clay. The effect turned out pretty cool.

One of the ladies in the studio came up with a glaze formula that is just beautiful. It has an aurora aborelus effect that I really love. This bowl is me playing with the colors somewhat. It turned out okay, but I like hers better.

I did a larger one very similar to this one a while ago, but with green and someone said they really loved it. So, I did this smaller one except now I can't remember who I'm supposed to give it to. *sigh* It'll sit on the mantle with everything else until I figure it out.

This is another bowl that I bisqued months ago and it hung out on my shelf while I pondered how to glaze it. I goofed while trimming and removed a chunk of the rim that I didn't intend to remove. The only way I could think to fix the mistake was to cut chunks out the rest of the way around and make it have a jagged effect. Now, I like it and will probably do it on purpose to something else.

These next two were another color experiment. I threw them from the same clay on the same day and was curious how much of a difference I'd see with different application methods. The first one was dipped in glaze first, allowed to dry thoroughly and then brushed. I did the opposite on the second one. I love the super shiny finish on the first one, but the color on the second.

This poor thing got shoved to the back of my shelf and forgotten. Then I cleaned and found it, squished against the wall. It was round when I threw it, honest! This is another color experimentation - we just got a red into the studio and we were all dying to know what it looked like. This particular red looks better on the dark clays.

More to come soon!

Wordless Wednesday - I'll Help!

2010-01-06T21:35:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

2009-12-30T22:06:00.001-08:00

In spite of the freezing fog, frigid temperatures and semi-crazed drivers, I made it home safely. Yay!

Christmas was good. I drove straight to mom and dad's and arrived about 11:30 am. My brother came over around 12:00 and mom got up around 12:30. We sat and chatted and ate until around 5, then tore into the presents. I ended up falling asleep on the couch so my Christmas ham dinner was at around midnight.

My treasure this year is the cobalt blue kitchen aid mixer. Oh, I loves it! I've been asking for one for ages and was about to break down and get it myself when Santa Mom decided that I'd been good this year. Mom also sponsored a draft horse in my name at a shelter here so we get to go on a tour and maul the animals at some point. That'll be nice too. I miss spending time with horses. It's ironic that I found a shelter to volunteer at outside of Chicago, but can't find anything in rural North Carolina. They exist, but people (as usual there) don't follow up worth a hoot and I haven't managed to connect with them. Grr. I'll try again shortly. Anywho, I used to volunteer at the place we'll be touring so it'll be good to see some familar faces and also what they've changed since I was there last.

This week has been a whirl of social activities and catching up with friends and family - something every day. Yesterday was particularly great - I went to breakfast with a group of friends from college. Around noon we freed up the table and moved to my friend T's house. I ended up leaving there around 4:30 in the afternoon. It's the first time we've all been together in probably 10 years and I'd forgotten how much fun we all had together. My sides hurt from laughing and it felt really good to realize that we can pick up right where we left off, in spite of marriages, divorces, moves, children... you know, life. We will not let so much time go by before our next gathering.

I have a bunch more stuff on the agenda for my visit, and some things that I know aren't going to happen - the time always goes faster than I think it should.

Special bonus - my aunt and uncle got a wireless router for Christmas, so my iphone is already set up for it and my laptop will be as soon as I retrieve it from mom and dad's. Yay for having use of my own computer! (My uncle is a solitaire JUNKIE and spends HOURS on their computer playing. I expect my aunt to acquire her own computer shortly.)

Anywho, whatever you end up doing, be safe this New Year's Eve and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

All Is Bright

2009-12-24T14:59:00.000-08:00

Nothing is calm. I'm running around here like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get ready to leave for home. Cards? Mailed. Shopping? Done, as of about 2 hours ago. Laundry? Last load's in the dryer now. Kitchen? Clean, except for sweeping the floor. Cats? Box scooped, water fountain cleaned, food out, more litter and food purchses. Check. Wrapping? In progress now. Packing? Um. That's next. Loading? After packing. So much for leaving before dark.

I set the alarm in my iphone last night. The one thing I really don't like about the iphone is the alarm. If someone calls and you miss the call, or texts, or if you have an app that sends alerts, that supersedes the alarm. So, I missed a call since I was asleep and therefore my alarm didn't go off until I woke up and looked at the phone and cleared the missed call out. Very helpful. So I'm running about 5 hours behind. I've decided that I probably needed the sleep.

I picked up 11 things that were glazed and finished yesterday at the studio. So, one of these days I'll manage to post all of my finished stuff. One day... It's going to be after the fourth 'cause that's when I'll return here.

The lights are someone's house a few miles from here. I was on my way to work on Christmas shopping and stopped for a quick look. My pictures don't do it justice - they have several acres of decorations. I think my favorite is the cannon that "fires" an explosion of lights. Very cool.

Well, I'm off to run around in circles some more before heading out. Have a wonderful Christmas! (And any other holiday you may be celebrating!)

Science Geeks Unite!

2009-12-23T23:00:00.001-08:00

Um. Okay.

2009-12-21T22:01:00.001-08:00

Am I the only one weirded out by this ad?

His eyes, they follow me...

Maybe It's A Communication Problem...

2009-12-20T01:03:00.000-08:00

Like one of you is an idiot.

I read this post by Jenny, the Bloggess - which made me laugh so hard I nearly snorted an oyster cracker out of my nose. I don't recommend it - it burns. So, then I went thru the comments and one of them referenced this article about some spy flap 'cause of a pretty flower on a coin.

And that made me think about a coworker's HILARIOUS story (we'll call him P) about being lost in Poland during a recent business trip. He went, by himself, to Poland from Germany to visit a supplier without a cell phone. Also without speaking the language. In a rental car that needed gas... fuel... petrol... whatever they call it over there. Without a map. Or the address of the company he was going to visit. Because he'd decided that Poland was small - smaller than Rhode Island - so of course he could just drive right up to the company 'cause they only have one road or something. (Truly, this man is the testosterone version of me sometimes.) And he got REALLY lost and couldn't find anyone who spoke English and he wandered in circles in Poland for hours. He went on to say something about finding a McDonald's that was attached to a Shell station and it was like a Heavenly light bathed the gas station and the angels sang because of course they would totally speak English there 'cause that was like American soil except in Poland 'cause we have fast food places attached to gas stations everywhere - that is OURS so if they have one, they must be us. Well, except that they aren't and they didn't (speak English, that is) and he nearly added something NOT gas to the car but was thwarted by the weird non-dispensing pump, which they apparently put on there to stop ignorant American tourists from ruining all of their cars with the wrong flameable liquid. Then he saw the sign on another pump with Pb in the ghostbusters no-ghosts circle thing and somehow made the leap (that I probably wound't have in a million years) that is was no Pb, no lead, UNLEADED so at least he had gas to wander around in circles some more. Somehow he made it back over the border to Germany, called another visiting American coworker (we'll say "R.") and went out for a beer. What he did not do was let the company (ours or the supplier) know that he was back and okay so the supplier called the company who freaked out and called everyone including the border guards on both sides of the Poland/Germany border. Someone called our admin here in the States, who called "R" on his international cellphone. The admin was freaking out over the missing "P," and got the answer, "no, he's not missing, he's right here next to me."

And that made me think about being in Mexico and being completely confounded that the pay phone didn't take quarters which struck me as being insane, until I remembered that we haven't yet taken over the entire world and their coins do not equal our coins.

I have no idea where I was going with this post, and it's 4:30 in the morning and I'm sleepy so I guess the moral of this story is to never let me travel anywhere alone. And Jenny rocks.

Peek-A-Boo

2009-12-14T23:28:00.000-08:00

You say octopuses, I say octopi... And either way, they're pretty cool. Scientists were shocked to recently discover that they can use tools. Why are scientists so frequently surprised by the natural world?

Anywho, check this out for the story, and cool octopus video.

Holiday Hours!

2009-12-07T22:58:00.000-08:00

The studio is open on Sundays until the New Year! Yay! Which means I have to go to the store now 'cause I'm probably not going to get any laundry done until then. This started last weekend, so I spent Saturday and Sunday at the studio. It was awesome, but I got nothing done. *sigh* Oh well. Maybe next weekend...

I've got scads and scads of stuff to share, but for now these are the two things I picked up today.

The black footed bowl turned out okay. I LOVE the green one. I'm so happy with it!

So Sleepy...

2009-11-06T18:24:00.000-08:00

Holy smokes, y'all, it's been over a month! I've been around, reading blogs, but I'm spending so much energy at work that I mostly come home and collapse into a heap.

The pottery is coming along. I've got six things from last Saturday to trim. I think one is dead - the bottom is too thin and I think just getting it off the bat will kill it. The others might make it though.

Tomorrow is family day at work, so I have to spend a couple of hours there but I should be able to get to the studio by noon. We have a class tomorrow - salt and pepper shakers so that should be interesting.

I'm either hormonal, coming down with something or both. I'll be in bed by 10 tonight - which is unheard of for me - 'cause I'm just beat. And, I've teared up twice in 15 minutes - over a commercial, and upon reading that FC's snake found its way home. Clearly I'm sleep deprived.

So, sleep tight!

The Latest From The Studio...

2009-10-03T16:58:00.001-07:00

I got 5 things glazed and ready to fire today. Given how ridiculous I get about glazing, this is nothing short of miraculous. Here they are on the glazing shelf. They should be in the kiln cooking away right now, so they might be done by Monday evening.

This is how my squirrel looked after the bisque fire. I'm pretty happy with him - I think the shading turned out pretty well. I used clear for the glaze to protect the underglaze and to water proof the vase.

I actually threw this mug in July, and it's been sitting on my shelf waiting for inspiration to hit with the glaze. I broke my previous record for glaze colors by using 14 different shades on this mug, all in greens, blues and purples. I love the shape and the handle, so I really hope the glaze turns out.

The sunflowers bowl is for my aunt for Christmas. This is how it looked after the bisque fire - so far, so good.

I tried something new - yay for experimentation! - by painting latex over the flowers, like so:

After it dried, I painted the bowl with espresso bean (which is brown that breaks black), peeled the latex off the flowers and then used clear glaze on the flowers. I'm a bit worried - I did another bowl with espresso bean and the blue band in the middle disappeared. If my sunflowers poof, I will not be happy - but I will hopefully have time to redo it before Christmas.

A friend visited the studio the other day and called this one a bathtub. There is a distinct resemblance.

While it was still soft, I pressed stamps into the sides and ends. After it dried, I painted it with the underglaze. The irony is that I've been looking for something to use the dancer people stamp on for a while, but I ended up being much more fond of the little zebras on each end. These pictures show it after the bisque fire. I decided to give the clear glaze in the bucket another try and dip glazed this. We shall see...

The fifth thing was not actually something that I threw. One of the other members was cleaning off her shelf and was going to throw it away, so I saved it. It's a low bowl, plate thing that I think will be perfect for holding a large pillar candle. I dipped it in the green blue that P and I purchased, then brushed the top with gun metal green and dripped archies base over that. Gun metal green runs, and so does archies base, so I'm hoping for cool designs in the glaze. Chris (who owns the studio with Shelley) says regularly that "it's a crap shoot!" and he's right, but I will remain hopeful.

I have 2 things ready for the next bisque fire, and I'm caught up so Monday evening will be spent on the wheel.

The finished things that I don't really have a use for in my house live on the mantle in my dining room. The mantle is getting full. If there's something I've done that you are particularly fond of, let me know. If it's on the shelf, it can probably become yours.

Wordless Wednesday - What Am I?

2009-09-30T20:12:00.000-07:00

Random Travels Thru The Web...

2009-09-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

So, this is what made me happy today.

A Treesweater. Of course. I'd knit a sweater for my tree out front but it's about three feet in diameter and I'm just not that good at knitting. Also? It just doesn't get that cold here.

I don't know who Discover has doing their ads, but this one rocks.

Who knows who or what Blur is, but this struck me as funny too.

There are days when the only ball I can sink in a pocket is the white one, so this is just amazing to me.

RAWR! Zombie octopus chandelier will eat your brain! Or, um, light up your living room. Whateva!

As I looked at the piles of books surrounding me on the couch - that I've been too lazy to put away... for weeks... I watched "Hoarders" on A&E and now I'm feeling MUCH better about myself. While bare flat spaces may be scarse, they do exist, and I can see my floors so I'm okay. Right?

I'm okay, you're okay. How about a hug? Free!

So, happy Monday!

Baby Hummingbirds...

2009-09-26T23:51:00.000-07:00

These pictures are really neat. Check 'em out here.

Interesting Developments

2009-09-20T15:42:00.000-07:00

You know, it's not like I have a grand plan here. Mostly, I just float along, and end up wherever the current takes me.

In high school, I was considered "gifted" and therefore was allowed to participate in the Governor's Summer Institutes for the Gifted and Talented. They were summer camps ranging from 1 to 3 weeks long at various colleges around Ohio, each specializing in a different topic. I applied to Shawnee University's program to become certified in scuba. I was rejected for that, but they put me into the engineering program. Of course, I went anyway. A week at a college far from home and parents at sixteen? I will study anything you want me to, just let me go. When I got there, I learned that every single one of the 40 of us in the engineering camp had applied for scuba and were put into the engineering labs instead. We got intensive four hour lectures followed by two hour labs, homework, and quizzes the next day. The scuba kids played in a pool all damn day. I still firmly believe it was a trick. They didn't really need my math scores for scuba, did they? Of the 12 or so people I stayed in contact with, every single one of us ended up going into engineering in college. Coincidence? I think not.

My first "real" job came about because of a random post on a cross-stitching forum... something along the lines of, "I can fix this, I'm an engineer dammit." And one of my online friends replied back that she was hiring engineers, what sort of engineer was I? Several hours of interviews and a personality test later, I had a real job as a junior supplier quality engineer. I've been in supplier quality ever since.

So, yeah, no grand plan. I just bumble along, and so far, it's mostly turned out okay.

Well, the winds of change are blowing again and I'm not sure what to do about it, so my plan is to go with the flow and see what happens.

My boss (or, as I call him, the asshole) has taken a new job. Starting on October 1, he will be production manager in our factory. Also on October 1, his job will be posted. I don't really want it, but I can't think of anyone who is even as qualified as I am, and if I don't go for it, I have no right to complain over whomever the next person is. So, I'm going to go for it.

I've told my boss' boss (aka the idiot) that I'm going for it, and while he is hard to read, my odds may be better than I thought. I really thought that, since the idiot and the asshole hate me, I have no shot. But, the idiot informed me that he wants me to go to the next global meeting for my department - which is the job of the lead engineer, which is the job opening.

I pretty much have to apply - I can't complain that there's no room for advancement in the company and then not go for the one and only opportunity likely to come up. Also, it's the next logical step in my career, and will get me management experience, which always helps when looking for the next job. I have no idea if I'll get it - the idiot told me that he never gets many applications for jobs. (Partly, this is 'cause quality is a nightmare. Also I am not alone in labeling him the idiot, except my label is nicer than most. No one who isn't completely miserable where they are is going to apply to move into his department.) So I may well be the only applicant. Keep in mind that with the current economic environment, we are under a total hiring freeze, and all jobs must be filled internally. I know there are scads and scads of really qualified people out there who don't know enough about our company to run for the hills, but we aren't allowed to hire them. This greatly improves my odds of getting this job.

So, if I get it... probably not more money, 'cause as a degreed engineer, I make more than my boss now. But maybe I can negotiate for additional vacation time or something. The chance to do more travel, especially international. Direct management experience.

But, as much as I'd like to, I can't take a new job with them and then bail, so I'd be stuck here for at least another year. Our little department of misfits is NOT a walk in the park to manage, and will probably turn my hair even more grey. I have said, more than once, that if it were my department, I'd clean house, fire everyone and start over. Given the hiring freeze we're under, that isn't going to happen. I'd get to spend scads more time with the idiot. Oh joy. Of course, with the asshole leaving, that's going to happen anyway.

If I don't get it, I will have a new boss. As they are opening it up to international candidates, my new boss will almost certainly be German. He'll come in and change everything. I hate change. *sigh*

It'll be interesting to see how this works out. The asshole is a VERY political creature. He's quite charismatic, he's been in this area longer, and knows everyone, and made it pretty clear to people that they could be friends with him... or with me. It's one of the reasons that I remain so alone here. Now that he's out of my department, that may change. Of course, if you're the sort to be influenced by that sort of thing, we're probably not going to be that close, but it would be nice to be invited to the parties and things that pretty much everyone else in the factory gets invited to attend.

Another interesting tidbit - I told the idiot (during our two hour car trip aka bonding expedition the other day) that I was perfectly willing to go to overseas on assignment for the company. He was surprised by this, since the asshole told him that I wasn't. *sigh* Sabotage at every turn. So the seeds have been sown there too.

Wish me luck, and stay tuned for whichever direction I float in next...

Wordless Wednesday - Melaleuca, or Paperbark Tree

2009-09-16T21:38:00.000-07:00

Near Space Pictures... DIY for Under $200

2009-09-15T20:17:00.000-07:00

This is just cool. Two MIT students with a weather balloon took some kick @$$ pictures from near space. Here's their page - they'll be posting a how-to guide shortly. Isn't it nearly science fair season?

Moving Right Along

2009-09-14T18:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted what I've been up to in the studio. And, with the goings on in life lately, I haven't gotten to spend as much time as I'd like there anyway. But, progress has been made. The snowbell cup and the birdies were underglazed last time. Here they are as bisque.

Then I glazed them. I decided on just clear for the birdies, as well as for the red pot. Covering up weeks of painstaking detail painting is terrifying.

I also finished glazing the mug and pitcher. Here they are sitting on the shelf, waiting and waiting and waiting for the glaze fire (which finally happened yesterday).

My wine cup is now finished, and has been used a couple of times. The opal ran quite a bit, so Chris got to chip it out of the kiln, which made me popular, and the grapes didn't turn out exactly like I planned but all in all, it's okay.

My little squirrel is underglazed and waiting for the next bisque firing, which should happen this week.

My Labor Day gift to myself, after I ended up being too exhausted to attempt the scheduled trip home, was to spend all day Monday in the studio. These are all of the things I threw that day. One is hanging upside down on the bat 'cause my friend P decided to wedge clay on that table, instead of on the wedging table, and the pot collapsed from the vibrations from her banging around. We tried to save it, but I ended up throwing it away, and the lid that went with it on Friday. Wedging is like kneading really stiff bread dough to get any air bubbles out of it. It is especially necessary if you had something fail on the wheel and you're trying to reuse the clay for something else. All of these were made using clay that I spent an hour wedging back into shape. I save the failures and scraps, which were quite wet, and the small amount that I had left of a bag, which had gotten quite hard, and I wedged and wedged and wedged to blend them together smoothly. My forearms were actually sore on Tuesday!

Last Friday, I had to visit a supplier, and I didn't come back to work - I went straight to the studio. AND it was Art Walk, so the store was open until 8 instead of 6 which gave me an extra two hours to work on trimming all of the stuff that I made on Labor Day. Also, that plum saki was REALLY good and it's probably best that I had some extra time for it to disperse from my system.

I had to work last Saturday, so I didn't get any studio time. Poor little me. There are nine of us in the quality department, and we made up a calendar in January for Saturdays, since if production is running, they require a quality person in the building somewhere. Last Saturday was my turn. I think it's the first one for me this year, so I can't really complain - but I'm going to 'cause I really wanted to be playing in the studio!!

Tonight, I painted sunflowers on one of Monday's bowls for my aunt for Christmas. This went onto the shelf for the next bisque fire. Right now, I'm thinking that I'll glaze it in Expresso Bean, which is brown that breaks black. We'll see how it turns out after the firing.

Now that I'm looking at it, I probably should have done flowers all the way around it. *sigh* Too late now. If I don't like it, I've got enough time to redo it. I'm back to making bowls 'cause I have to do at least two bowls for a charity event. Restaurants are donating food, and we (the studio members) are making bowls. People will buy lunch, and get it served in a bowl to keep and all money is then donated to the local food bank. Okay, so the event isn't until February, but just the birdies took me a month and a half and - petty little twit that I am - I want people to want my bowls so I'll be carving and painting away on these the same way that I do for nearly everything else that I make.

And tonight, I also got to pick up finished things from the glaze firing yesterday. Whoot! I LOVE finally seeing stuff completely finished!

My snowbell cup... I'm very happy with it. The butterfly's rose faded to a very pale pink, but I wanted it to look like a watercolor and it does, so yay!

The red pot... I'm not thrilled with this one. All of the white markings on the carving I did inside the black band disappeared. The black ran a bit, which isn't supposed to happen, and the red looks almost pink in some lights 'cause of the bazillions of teeny tiny bubbles in the clear glaze. We are baffled as to where they came from.

And the birdies are FINALLY done. The blue darkened a bit more than planned, but aside from that, I'm pretty happy with them.

I also got back the most recent glazed things - my third coffee mug, and the pitcher. I experimented with the glaze a bit. After the dip in black, I brushed on the mottled blue, but in grades - so the first coat of blue came within an inch or so of the bottom, the second coat stopped about an inch above that and the third didn't go much past the rim. It would have worked out better if I hadn't have confused myself and forgot which grade stopped where and what I'd already done. *sigh* At least I know the theory is sound.

So that's what's new in pottery around here. P and I went together and bought glaze. We bought 10 lb of powder in each of two colors - green blue and lapis satin - and P spent part of her Saturday mixing them in buckets so we have experimenting with color to do. I still have 2 things from Labor Day's wheel fest to finish trimming and carving and painting so that's the plan for Friday and Saturday. Now to just make it through this week...