short stories # whatever

Well, for good or ill the next two molds are in the kiln. Now to reassemble the mold for the box itself and add glass. I had planned to use billets (solid slabs of glass) instead of frit (crushed glass) to fill that one for a couple of reasons...I don't have enough of any one color in frit that I would want to use and I do have billets in two colors to choose from. Were the mold all in one piece it would have been no problem. It may still be no problem. We'll see.

heading up to casting temperature

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The reason I didn't get any work done on the stick mold Wednesday is because I had my follow-up appointment after the ablation for the flutter. I've been keeping track of the instances of irregular heartbeat (the afib) over the past 5 weeks like I did the preceding months only these were just little flips that would happen for a short time or off and on all day but they gradually lessened and then skipped a day and then skipped a couple of days until the last week when I didn't notice anything at all. I had maybe 3 or 4 episodes during that time of what I consider afib but they were less severe, lasting for a shorter period of time. The doctor looked over my list, said we may have to do the afib ablation since the medication was controlling it but not preventing it altogether but let's see how it is in another 3 months, what's happening is not life threatening and I'm protected from stroke as long as I continue on the holy fucking cow this shit is expensive eliquis. With my Medicare and supplemental policy's online pharmacy it's costing me about $85 a month. If I had no insurance at all and had to buy it over the counter it would cost over $400 a month and I wouldn't be taking it. It's still pricey at $85 a month and did you hear that that horrible man in the White House has appointed Alex Azar, ex-president of Eli Lily who tripled the price of insulin, as the new HHS secretary who has voiced his opposition to lowering drug prices to oversee...lowering drug prices. Anyway if the doctor hadn't suggested waiting, I would have. The condition is so much improved and I feel so much better and even if this is as good as it gets on the medication, I'm good with that. It's going to have to get as bad as it was pre-ablation for the flutter for me to consent to the afib ablation.

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Last week I was contacted via email from my website by a gallery which does the four major art fairs including SOFA (Sculptural Objects and Functional Art) which we did for 3 years back before the great recession with another art gallery. She praised our work, wanted to showcase  it, they've received awards and pride themselves on their relationships with their artists, etc. and please reply back and she would have her partner and show producer get back with me with more information. So I looked at their website. They list 70 painters, 12 multimedia artists, there are a couple of other categories, and sculpture with 10 artists only two of which seem to work with glass. I responded but I told her the truth, that I would like more information but that I wasn't very prolific, that the work was time consuming, small, all one of a kind, and pricey and that I wasn't in a position to incur any costs beyond shipping my work out. Some of the galleries that do those art fairs want their participating artists to help bear the cost of doing the fair as well as getting a percentage of the sale of the artist's work and I figured I would just head that off at the pass if that's what they had in mind by 'more information'. We'll see if they contact me again, so far, not.

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My iMac is old, probably 10 years at least and it's got some foibles, mainly, the upper left hand corner gets really really hot which sometimes makes it slow but which has also fogged up a portion of the screen in that corner. I have to put it to sleep regularly so it will cool off. It's been a problem for at least a year but it used to happen only now and then. Now it happens every time it's on and active. And a month or so ago my fancy little bluetooth swipe up/down/sideways mouse stopped moving the cursor and last week or so it started doing something else weird mainly on the FB site. After FB loaded the screen would go white. I could refresh a couple of times to get it visible again but sometimes I just had to put it to sleep and wait til it cooled off. Then it happened to my blog. OK, this is bad. Not the blue screen of death...yet, but can't be good. The last time my computer died I lost everything on it, all my pictures, some apps, documents, etc. because I didn't have an external hard drive for backup. I still don't or didn't. Monday I asked Marc to research external hard drives, he went out on an errand and came back with one so now, at least, if I get the blue screen of death I won't lose anything because it's all backed up. Yay! I do need a new computer, have needed one for a while but what with the heart thing and getting the truck repaired and getting the new gutters up, now is not a good time. Hopefully this one will last a couple of more months.

it's doesn't really show up so you'll just have to take my word for it

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You might remember last February the Texas Land Office started accepting applications for their homeowner reimbursement program for repairs from the damage caused by hurricane Harvey for those who spent their own money (not FEMA or other insurance money) and I spent two solid weeks filling out the application and running down all the supporting documents and invoices for money spent and money received from FEMA and finally got it filed, all nearly 90 pages of it. Finally, the first week of May they called me to come in and resubmit the 5 'proofs'...ID, income, ownership, residency, monies received from FEMA (because the TLO got a new computer program) completing phase 1. Phase 2 was to be re-submitting all the invoices for work done and materials bought and documents proving that those invoices had actually been paid. Apparently while waiting to be called in for phase 2 they changed the protocol and last week I got a call to set an appointment to re-submit only those invoices for work done outside the main structure...yard clean up, fence repair, out buildings repaired, off site storage and housing, etc. Since I didn't have any of that done he boosted me straight to phase 3 which is having an inspector come out and make sure the work was really done (because we faked all those invoices and bank and credit card statements?). So Thursday night I got a call from the 'risk' inspector for an appointment next week for him to come out and check the grounds and house for lead contamination and yesterday another call to schedule the damage inspector who is coming today! The guy that called for phase 2 told me they were looking to start dispersing funds by the end of this month so maybe all this effort hasn't been in vain.