a negative result, a celestial happening, and political and pandemic revelations

The crescent moon Wednesday night with that faint pinpoint of light straight above being the planet Jupiter. Saturn was above and slightly to the left  of Jupiter but too faint for my phone camera to pick up. They're getting closer with the conjunction only 3 days away on the winter solstice when they will be lined up to appear as one big bright star.

I got my test results late Tuesday afternoon...negative.

We went to Costco Wednesday late morning. I figured Tuesday or Wednesday would be the least crowded days. Wrong! It was packed when we got there, long register lines all the way down the aisles but by the time we got our goods and headed that way it had cleared out so only two people ahead of us at the register.

And yesterday was my volunteer day. The guy whose wife was positive was there when I first got there but they must have asked him to leave because not long after he was gone. And then I went over to Pam's all the way across the street! to check out her new Tuff Shed storage building which they delivered and then put together on Tuesday but it got dark before they finished, were supposed to return Wednesday, were supposed to return yesterday, are supposed to be here today to shingle the roof and finish (they were and did). Then off to the grocery store where I spent far too much time for the few items on my list, unorganized going from one side of the store to the other several times, and then walked the dog, did the dishes since they had reached critical mass, shelled nuts for an hour and a half, cleaned up the kitchen again after dinner, went to bed at 9:30 with my book.

Today the big plan is to take the accumulated newspapers to the vet and fill the bird feeder now that I got the giant bag of birdseed from Costco.

Since my days are pretty blah and boring, I guess I'll get political. The nation is continuing to be under attack from the Trump administration. It has now come out that his coronavirus pandemic team's goal was to get as many Americans infected as possible as fast as possible for herd immunity and the 300,000+ and rising death toll was just the price to pay and they have been quite successful as over a million Americans are getting infected every week. Now Governor DeSantis of Florida and a few other republicans have decided that they are smarter and know better than the scientists and doctors who developed the two dose vaccine and are saying that the first shot is sufficient to provide protection and that way twice as many people can be vaccinated, meanwhile millions of doses of the vaccine available to the US sit in a warehouse waiting for the Trump administration to tell Pfizer where to send them and some states have been told they're only getting half the doses promised. Why are they dragging their feet you might ask? Well, Moderna's vaccine is due to be given emergency use by the FDA any day now and guess who has invested in Moderna? So, yeah, it's all about what's best for Trump as always.

As if that's not bad enough, we all know that Trump fired the pandemic response team left behind by Obama and Biden and we are experiencing the result of that, but Trump also decimated the cybersecurity department leaving only the unqualified behind and basically opening the door to Putin's hackers who have been tromping around in our government systems, including the nuclear weapons agency, for 9 months. The few experts left have no idea what all they got into, how far, how deep, how many other back doors they installed, or what national security secrets they got access to. And just like Trump had nothing to say about the revelation of Putin putting bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan, he has nothing to say about this cyber security attack. It would not surprise me to learn that this was all arranged in one of Trump's secret meetings with Putin. And how did the Defense Department react? They canceled all meetings with Biden's transition team until after the holidays.

Trump himself is quadrupling down, insisting he won because he got more votes than last time, egged on by his advisers who, every time Trump starts to show signs of acceptance, convince him (easily enough as he doesn't seem to grasp the concept that the person who gets the most  votes wins) that he did indeed win, while certain other political hacks are calling for him to declare martial law to remain in office and threatening to object when the EC votes go to Congress for ratification. So this is all he is focused on, fighting to keep a job he hates, doesn't really want, and barely does. In the meantime his neighbors at Mar A Lago have filed suit to prevent him from making it his residence, which legally he can't do.

And the republicans in Georgia have gone bat shit crazy filing more frivolous lawsuits that keep getting thrown out to reverse Biden's win in that state as well as to suppress the vote for the Senate run-off election. They are pissed that the republican in charge of the election there has added more drop boxes and want them removed or at least locked after dark. He's making it too easy for  black people to vote! So while they're fighting to keep control of the Senate, they're busy eating their own.

Later the same day...

Well, I dawdled too long and failed to get the newspapers to the vet which closes at noon on Fridays. I did, however, fill the bird feeder, take the box of books that a neighbor gave us a year ago to the little library across from the post office and they all fit! And as the floors in the lower part of the house had also reached critical mass I swept. Took the staghorn ferns out for a good watering as well as the bird of paradise which has sent up two bloom stalks (it always wants to bloom late fall into winter), watered all the plants inside, walked the dog and that's it for me. I put on my comfy I'm-not-leaving-the-house-again pants, I'm going to grab my book, and occupy the couch for the rest of the night.

I'm behind on reading all your posts and I may or may not try to catch up but I'll be back around tomorrow.

And in case you were wondering, this is what the fire spike looks like after the flowers fall off.

 

more progress and a different houseguest

Monday dawned with a clear blue sky and I planned to do some work outside but by the time I got my errands for the day done...garbage to my sister's house (because we don't have garbage pick up here in the county, you have to pay extra so I just bag it up and take it to Pam's), recycling to the drop off station, and accumulated newspaper to the vet... and got out there to do some weeding in the afternoon it had clouded over and it was overcast yesterday as well though it's still warm, was supposed to rain but hasn't really. Cold front came in last night a little early since it wasn't supposed to get here til today and it's overcast today.

Rocky got the last of the sheetrock work done and sprayed the texture yesterday so next on the agenda was selecting a paint color (white to pick up the white dots on the 'flower' trim tile – done, though I still have to buy the paint) and buying the tile/grout/spacers (planned for Thursday). Also needed to decide finally on the flooring (done – going with the roll vinyl). 

Now it's just incidentals...light fixture, glass shades, faucets, grab bars, soap dish, baseboards (which I'm thinking might be stained to match the vanity and cabinets), and door and window trim (maybe the door and window trim too).

It looks like the kids may not be moving in after all, at least not right away. Their septic system was put in Monday (yay!) and they are concerned about the two dogs and three cats being left to adjust to a new place all by themselves and since they now have a flushing toilet and a battery powered light they're going to camp out for a few days and see how it goes. Plus s-i-l Mike is working nights for a few shifts and needs a quiet place to sleep during the day which won't be here until the bathroom is finished. Their bearded dragon Gypsy, though, did move in since she has to have electricity for her warming lights and hot rock.

Today is the 5^th of the 6 watercolor classes and I have no idea what she plans for us today. And yoga tonight. If I don't forget like last week and if it's not pouring down rain.

same stuff, different day

I laid everything out on the kiln shelf and there was still room enough for another pansy so I made another one yesterday. 

I have no idea what I am going to do with them. The fungus/lichen I have a plan for. I guess we'll see how they come out, maybe I can turn them into some sort of jewelry.

I have nothing of interest to say. Yesterday I did the dishes which had piled up and sanded down the last dry feather base and made the second pansy and picked up pockets full of pecans on my various strolls through the yard and set the sprinkler out to water the azaleas under the pecan tree that lost all those branches earlier. They get a lot more sun now.

Today it's raining. Woke up to a trembling dog who could hear the rumbling of the approaching rain before I could. The thunder has stopped now but the rain continues, the good kind of rain, not torrential, not a sprinkle, but a good medium rain that hangs around and soaks in and does not overwhelm the gutters. That seems to be a rarity these days.

I'm having to limit my social media/news/human input again as it just either makes me sad or pissed off or hopeless or raises my blood pressure or makes my afib kick up even on the medication. No need to reiterate it here as I'm sure everyone is well up on the continuing travesties of this administration. I can't do anything about it except vote and I can't do that til over a year from now. Expressing anything but pro-Trump to our Republican representatives and senators just falls on deaf ears. Even if they agree privately they won't come out against him because they are afraid Trump will turn on them in his vindictive way and of course he will. And that makes me even more hopeless that so many of our elected officials are cowards that refuse to stand up for what's right because, OMG, Trump might give them a demeaning nickname.

Oh, maybe I do have something to relate. You might remember that last May I saw a couple of guys traipsing across the back end of my property and headed across my neighbor's property and to the road at the end of my street where their car was parked. When I went out and asked if I could help them it turned out that they had bought the 12 acre field behind us and they were checking it out though they hadn't decided what they were going to do with it. The only clear access to the field is from business Hwy 59 (also called Richmond Rd.) which borders one end of the field. The other end is bordered by the street that my street ends at and is a complete dense and tangled mess of trash trees, wild grape vines, briars, poison ivy, and who knows what all. This is the area that I call the wild space that ends at my property and it is constantly trying to encroach. One long side of the field is bordered by all the backyards of the houses on my street and the other long side is bordered by the Tee Pee Motel (now defunct again as the owners elected not to fix up the freestanding teepee rooms after the flooding from Harvey) and the attendant trailer park. So a couple of months ago one of my neighbors related that he had been stopped by an asian couple (the two men above were asian and only one spoke english) who were parked at my end of the street as he started out on his evening walk. They had bought the field and wanted to put a trailer (or maybe it was a manufactured home) on it and did he know what it would take and how they could get access to their property. So Gary gave them the rundown...they would have to put in a bridge over the ditch, either the business 59 end or the wild space end which would entail clearing a path, they would need water, a septic system, and electricity. They didn't seem to understand why they couldn't get access through someone's property from our street and they pointed to the drive through my crazy neighbor's empty lot, except for her storage buildings, that gives perfect access to the field as her property and mine are the only two on the street that aren't fenced in the back, well my absent neighbor's property on the end is effectively fenced by the wild space.

All this is leading up to yesterday morning. I looked up to see a familiar white car parked on the street and a man and woman got out and headed across my neighbor's property and mine so I went out and talked to them. I was friendly but I let them know they were crossing over private property. We chatted for a while, only she spoke english. She didn't mention putting a trailer on the field but she did say they wanted to plant a garden, grow vegetables and fruit, that we would be neighbors. Sounds great I said. She wanted to know what it would take to accomplish it, did I think any of my neighbors would sell their property so that they could have access to the field. That's a big no. I don't understand why they are so fixated on getting access from my street or even setting up whatever they plan at my end though I wouldn't want to live at the other end with the constant traffic down business 59. I do understand why they wouldn't want to clear a path through the wild space but the far end of the field just needs a bridge across the ditch. Anyway, I told her they could probably get electricity easily enough off the poles at the trailer park and perhaps they could get city water from the fire hydrant line at the wild space end even though we're in the county, not in the city limits, but that would entail clearing a path. They could dig a well and would need a septic system. Did I know how much that would cost? $7000 - $9000 each. Anyway, they left and I assume headed to city hall or looking for the county offices.

Well, the rain has stopped for now and it has brought in more cool weather having dropped 14 degrees since I got up this morning. Looks like I'll be wearing my long yoga pants for class this evening.

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.

time to get with the program

Well, it's happening again. I'm being dragged kicking and screaming from my little cave into the modern world. Marc finally followed up on his threats of getting me an iPhone. I was happy with my little flip phone. It was uncomplicated and did what I needed it to do...make phone calls, text, and tell me what time it is. Plus, it fit nicely in any of my pockets. And since I don't carry a purse, and we all know how mostly useless pockets are in women's pants, this is a big deal.

I haven't activated it yet. Right now I'm making a list of all the phone contacts in my old phone since I may have to enter them all in by hand on the new phone. But even if there is a way to magically transfer my contact list, it's not a bad idea to have a list of phone numbers elsewhere other than the phone.

I'm guessing hoping that I can transfer all my data from the iPad to the iPhone via my iMac. iYiyiyiyi!

So long little purple Lazer. It was a good run.

our small effort at improving the economy

We went on a little shopping spree today but only came back with about half the things on our list.

things we didn't get:

pavers so I can work on my back patio some more

place mats and napkins

shower curtain

men's lounge pants

women's shorts

things we did get:

towels

men's and women's pants

men's shorts

sunglasses

unfinished 5' cabinet and counter top

Here's my future cold work station:

It's going to be on wheels so I can move it outside when needed.

We also stocked up at the liquor store and the grocery store (for items our local store doesn't carry).

Got back in time to see this:

Before we left to go to the closest shopping plaza we made a quick trip to the library. I'm reading The Book Thief and I've had it for over three weeks I'm pretty sure and I'm only about 3/4 of the way through but I want to renew it and pay my fines. So when she scanned the book she told me that she couldn't renew it because there was a wait list for it.

I scooped it back up. “I'm not going to turn it back in then,” I told her.

Uh oh. Too late. She had already scanned it in and the computer knew it was back but she did something and gave me til Tuesday (an extra day since they're closed Monday) since I assured her I would finish it this weekend.

In my eternal optimism, the same optimism that makes me continuously tell people they will have their work sooner than they ever get it, I convinced myself that I will finish it sooner rather than later and I should pick out another book as long as I was there.

Here's me trying to pick out another book:

I ended up with Bel Canto by Ann Patchet. My main criteria was that it not be 550 pages which seems to be a length I've been stuck on.

next post: it's a freakin' miracle

in response to the rain and shop talk

This morning, walking the yard, I noticed the gifts that the rain last week brought, as if the rain itself was not enough of a gift.

yellow rain lilies

not exactly a fairy circle, more like a fairy conga line

miniature amaryllis

We got home early yesterday evening after spending 3 ½ days in the city getting the glass logo sign for the bank finished. I had ordered the glass, an oval, before I left for the residency and when we finally picked it up, it did not fit the art work from which I had made the pattern. Neither did they return the pattern so I had to make another one and try again. Only this time, I made two patterns, one to give the fabricator and one to keep to check the glass against. We picked it up Monday and it fit so while we had had months to do the job, we actually ended up with only a week since they wanted delivery by the end of the month. Installation is set for next week.

I'm almost done with the full size art work for the other little job we have, a window between the master bath and the closet. It used to be an exterior window before they added a huge closet onto the house.

Their closet is bigger than my bedroom. And it is crammed full of clothes. She has a floor to ceiling cabinet with just all her purses in it. She must have 50 purses and an equal number of shoes. Maybe more. Why do people acquire so many clothes? So they can wear a different outfit every day of the year? And it's not just her. He has an enormous amount of clothing as well.

Marc and I could fit all our clothing in 7' of closet space. Winter and summer combined. And we could probably get rid of some of those.

I do have a design sketch to do for a new job but the other proposals aren't moving. There was some movement on two of them earlier but neither has responded to my reply last week about what they needed to do to get things moving.

Ah well. Back to business as usual. But that's OK as I'm ready to get back to the casting work which I haven't had time to work on for nearly a year.

back in the saddle

Well, the visits from the grandkiddos are done and so I've been back to work this past week.

After that relatively pleasant week during the last visit, highs only in the low 90s, it's back to being summer out there. Hot sun, hot wind, short forays outside, the AC has been on non-stop lately instead of turning it off for a few hours every morning so it's been easy, or rather, easier, to stay indoors and attend to work things.

I wrote two proposals last week, revising one after getting more feedback. The first, we may or may not do. It's a budget request for a dividing wall and a wall mounted piece so the agency that made the request may not even have the job yet.

The second one, though, I think we have a good chance of doing. This is for the glass wall and doors of a conference room and jobs from this design professional usually do happen.

I also finally got the pattern drawn, an oval, for the glass for the current commission, a wall mounted piece of their logo for a local bank. We did a couple of them about 7 years ago when they first opened. Now they have a new branch.

We've also been preparing the next four 'boteros' for casting. Three molds are made and the last wax is set up for the mold. Hopefully we'll be casting those soon. Today I plan on doing the volume measure on the molds so I know how much glass each one needs.

Still need to finish the peach box. I've made a new latex reproduction mold for the peach pit feet because I wasn't really satisfied with the waxes I pulled from the first one. The main hold-up, however, is the casting of the peach inlay. I only get one shot at that and I want to do a test or two with the colored powders and frits so I need to make a couple of quick clay models roughly the same size and shape.

OK, I can see everyone's eyes glazing over now.

off to a running...meander

It seems the rest of the business world is not in as big a hurry to get on with the business of 2013 as I am. Or at least the people I need to be dealing with. So my grand plan of jumping right in sort of fizzled. Can't get any of the things accomplished on my list until Friday and Saturday.

I guess I'm not really too upset at getting another couple of days to poot around. I do have a lot of computer stuff to take care of like finishing the update to my website and sending all the pics I took of the mountain wall in progress to the commercial art guy at Invesco who is going to make a video of the piece.

We did go to the next big town over yesterday and got a marker board and a new desk chair since mine has been in the process of discentegrating over the last two years and the back fell off of it over Thanksgiving. So I did get some stuff marked off my list!

new marker board to keep track of all our work

new chair/old chair

catching up

I seem incapable of finishing a blog post these days off. I have a couple I started but then got distracted and then it was the next day. Plus, I've been working more days in the antique store, covering for my sister.

Today we drive into the city to dole out the gifts to the grandkids and daughter and SonIL. They all left on the Saturday before Christmas to go spend the holiday with Mike's brother and cousins and also Sarah's cousins on Marc's side in Dallas.

My SisterIL had called us the week before christmas asking us if we were planning on coming since the kids were, they would love to have us visit, but we declined. We had just finished the mountain wall and the last thing we wanted to do was take a four hour drive to Dallas and a four hour drive back. Besides, we were dog sitting and I had to work at the store.

So here are my two incomplete posts:

Sunday, December 23^rd...

I have been puttering with the best of them today. Or maybe more like a butterfly and flitting from thing to thing. I picked up a couple of handfuls of pecans and got most of the fallen leaves out of the garden intending to go back and tend to it after I ate a late breakfast.

The garden is in sad shape since we haven't been here to take care of it and the few days of the week we were in residence about all I had time for was making sure it got watered. It's not weedy but all the fallen leaves had blown in and there was a heavy mulch around all the plants. That's a good thing for flowers but not so good for food plants because it harbors food plant eating bugs. Everything except for the broccoli, I think, has aphids and pill bugs and some kind of little bitty back beetle. It's a mess.

But by the time I was ready to go back out a strong wind had come up and although the temperature is in the mid-70s, it's no fun being out in it. So I am entertaining myself indoors today. I've made one stab at washing the dishes from yesterday. That being my chore I'm constantly confounded by how fast they pile up and there is just two of us!

I have other tasks I am entertaining like juicing three bags of meyer lemons that my friend Kathy foisted off on generously gave me when we went to pick up our stuff from the open house.

I also want to photograph the individual little pediment pieces I cast for the open house. That involves cleaning off and setting up a suitable area and unpacking them all from the box they are in which sounds like a lot of effort. Maybe I'll just aim for getting them unpacked.

And I need to go over to my sister's house and check on the cats and while I'm at it I'll go by the store and get my book which I inadvertently left yesterday when I closed up. It's handy having keys to the store.

Thursday, December 27^th...

Today is Marcmas around here. That's how we refer to Marc's birthday. It's cold and overcast, drizzly and rainy out there and will warm up some but it will still be colder than the 65˚ we keep the house. We slept late, snuggled in bed, and are still in our lounging clothes.

I'm not working in the store today and the dogs go home this afternoon. Probably we will take them home so they will be waiting there for my sister when she gets in. Usually she just picks them up on her way home from the airport but I think we will go to a movie later. That's always our fall back birthday gig.

I can't believe it's been over a week since we finished the 'big job' and I have not lifted a single finger towards cleaning up my drawing desk, computer area, and work table. Actually I made a bigger mess when I brought the drill press in to make a little teacup bird feeder for my sister. And one for me. It's still sitting here on the end of my work table. The drill press, I mean.

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Well, we did not get to see the Hobbit after all. We arrived for the 3:45 show to a full parking lot and adults streaming in. Why aren't all these people at work?! Anyway, the ticket seller was kind enough to tell us that it was pretty crowded in there and it would probably be difficult to find two seats together, so not wanting to watch a nearly 3 hour movie on the first couple of rows or separated, we put it off for another day. Instead, we rented Rise Of The Dark Knight from Redbox and watched that. It was terrible BTW.

So, off to the city we go.

well and truly done

We are well and truly done with the mountain wall. The four panels are cleaned, covered with protective film, and stacked waiting for pick up. With the holidays and businesses having days off and the end of year madness, Henry, from the glass company, and I decided to put off pick up and installation til the first week of January. Whew! I can't be available for the installation til then anyway.

After my last post I kept the composite picture of the mountain on my computer screen all weekend, pausing to look at it with a less critical eye every time I passed it. By the time it was time for us to head back in to the city to do the last touch-up, I was happy with the overall piece. I think it's going to look really good. I still don't like installations, but at least I don't have to deal with that til next year.

We actually finished everything up last Tuesday. Wednesday I was in the best mood. It didn't hurt that it was a beautiful temperate day. I took advantage of it and did what little holiday shopping I intended to do. Well, except for the three grandgirls. The twins are getting new mattresses and the youngest is getting cash. We'll do that when we go in on the 28^th for our gift giving.

Whenever we work on big projects like these two walls that have kept us busy for the last 4½ months, I tend to lose my grip on all other activities. It doesn't happen all at once, gradually letting things slip. My posting has gone way down, my reading of blogs and commenting as well. I am single minded, focused on the work. I expected to do a new post when we returned home Wednesday evening but now, here it is Friday and I'm just now composing.

Well, that's not entirely true. I was working on a post about the latest shootings and the whole gun proliferation thing in this country, about how we worship violence but to tell you the truth, I'm sick of it. I've read so many really excellent essays on the subject, the knee-jerk 'more guns is the answer' responses that display so much ignorance of what it is really like to be in the middle of a situation like that. Perhaps I will still publish it down the road though it needs a lot of work.

So now, the end of the world has come and gone, once again. And I still feel fine. Another blog post that didn't get written. Or the one on christmas trees.

The good thing is that now the time of the long nights is over. Even though the winter solstice marks the beginning of winter and we will have our coldest days in the coming months, those days will be growing longer and the nights shorter.

We are dog-sitting for the next week while my sister visits her daughter and grandchildren in Albuquerque. It will be a quiet week with no demands on me. A week in which I get to putter around, doing or not doing whatever I want. Resting. After the new year it will be back to work on the three jobs we have waiting with another confirmed and another possible. So it looks like next year will be business as usual at least for the first 6 months.

That's about all.

I'm still here.

wherein I'm reminded how much work it is to have work

first mountain wall panel, with black cloth behind and stencil still covering the clear portion, uncertain over whether or not it's finished

Three days in the shop is about all we can take. This week was not as productive as we have been. It was cold for one thing and I don't work well when I'm cold. Then we realized we had left the stencil material for the last panel at the other shop so there was a delay while we went back and got that. Then we dithered for most of the day over whether or not the first panel was finished. We touched it up about four times (it has to be incremental because there is no erasing, if a tone gets too dense, it stays that way). Finally we just took it out and removed the dusty protective film on the back and still dithered about it so I barely got started on the last stencil. That was day 1.

Day 2 in the shop, getting adjusted to the cold, we draped black velvet behind the first panel and could see very clearly then, finally, that it still needed some touching up but the next panel was already in the sandblast booth so we recovered the clear side with the protective plastic film and Marc got started on the carving for panel 2 while I worked on the stencil for panel 4. Ah, but then another delay. The regulator on the sandblaster, which hadn't been working well from the get go finally just quit altogether and had to be replaced.

Day 3 wasn't much better. The people from Invesco are very excited about this project and decided that they wanted to document its making so at times a guy comes out to the shop and takes pictures and short stretches of video while we work. That's kind of fun and we will have a great promotional tool at the end, but it does slow things down while he is there. And then I had to leave to go pick up our cast stuff that was left at our home town gallery as they are retiring at the end of the year so by the time I got back, I didn't have enough time to finish the last stencil. We wanted to get all the carving done on the second panel this week, but didn't accomplish that either.

We're trying to get done by the middle of December. It seemed doable last week. Now, Thanksgiving is next week and we will only work for two days in the shop but we should be able to get caught up and finish the first two panels. That will give us 3 weeks to do the sandblasting on the last two panels. Still seems doable.

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Making a living as an artist is hard work. Not just the brain part where you are thinking of what to do and how to do it or the promo part where you are calling people and making presentations to get work but the actual physical part of fabricating the project. I'm always amazed at how many people don't actually comprehend that.

I have a proposal out and it has been accepted though no money has changed hands so far. This is for a project that is for 4 panels 30” x 40” with very specific imagery, photographs of people that they didn't send until the end of October, that to tell the truth I'm not really sure how I'm going to manipulate the images in a way that I can actually do the work, and the client is moving into the space mid-December. I explained to them that we were quite busy on another project and we would not be able to start until after the first of the year at the earliest.

Yesterday I got an email asking me if I thought I could have them installed by the end of the second week of January. Seriously? They think I can manipulate the images, do the full size art work, get the materials, do the fabrication, and have them installed in two weeks? It'll take me longer than that just to get the art work ready.

This is the part of having work and being busy that I don't like. Unreal expectations on the part of the clients. Parties scheduled before the work is commissioned. Attitudes that art is not really work and we ought to be able to just knock this stuff out. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, that they truly don't know what's involved in producing a one of a kind piece of art.

But two weeks? Really?