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
----------
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.
