12. and bust again

Alix over at Casa Hice asked me this after one of my more recent posts on this thread and I’ve decided to answer it here:  Do you love what you do? Or do the deadlines and demands stress you out?...I’d have to say that mostly I love what I do.  Although there were several years in there (as described in this post and the previous installment) that I pretty much hated it.  It was nothing BUT stress during those years.  Now, though, now I do love it.  I love to make things, to work with my hands, to have an idea and construct it.  Mostly I am happy with the result, sometimes all I see are the flaws and sometimes I amaze even myself.  But it’s not usually the end result that I work for.  It’s the process.  That said, it can get stressful when I have more work than I can do and make everybody happy about how long it takes them to get their job.  It is also stressful when we don’t have enough work...will a job come in before our meager savings run out?  When I was younger and we didn’t have any work, I would make cold calls to designers and architects to sell ourselves.  I really hated that and eventually quit doing it.  If things got desperate, then I’d just go out and get a job.  Haven’t ever had to do that yet but there was a year or two when I actually applied for a job.  Funny thing though, when you have been self employed doing something so specialized for as long as we have, you basically become unemployable unless, of course, you want to work at Walmart or a fast food joint.

My friend John Kurman’s recent post on Random Walks is sort of about this same thing...fun/not fun.  While working this past week, spending the last four days laminating about 550 jewels (of which a little less than half had already had dicroic glass glued to it and ground smooth) to the window behind the altar of a chapel we had lots of visitors pop in when they would notice us working.  At one point during the week, a lady came in and asked me if it was fun.  Fun?!  Lady, this is work, I'm up on a friggin' 12' ladder!  But now that it's done?  Yeah, it was fun.  Well, maybe not fun exactly, as Reya said (see comments below) satisfying.

so, continuing (and as usual, if you are new here or haven’t yet read the whole story, click here and read from the bottom up)...

By 1992 (our kids were 15 and 13 by then), the bottom was falling out of our lives.  Our first employee, the one who had taken over all the actual sandblasting, and Marc never did really get along and the tension between them became worse and worse over the years until he finally quit in the middle of a big job, 5 floors of an interior wall system that surrounded the central elevator shafts.  And on top of that the stress was doing both of us in.  One day I found myself yelling at one of the local designers who had come by to talk about a job we had done for her that had a small problem.  Marc and I were constantly at each other’s throats, were on the verge (maybe even over the line a little bit) of the three ‘Ds’...drink, drugs and divorce.  We were taking weekends away from each other (this is when I started the river guide gig). As soon as we finished that last big job with the help of a friendly competitor, we basically quit.  We let our other two employees go and took a year off while we repaired our lives.  That year turned into nearly two before we were finally able to go back to work in earnest.  Every penny we had left from the big money days, we spent those two years and in the ensuing years while we started our business back up.

bejewelled

The jewels and colors are much more apparant in person than in a photo.

I am woefully behind on my reading and may not catch up, rather I will join up further downstream.  This has been a killer week.  Our estimate of three days to finish the altar window for JWUMC was so wrong.  Actually, it took us two days to apply the jewels.  The first day we did the bottom two quadrants and only needed to use the 8’ ladder for some of it.  The second day it was supposed (key word here as the weather was better yesterday than it was today) to rain so we did not come prepared to do the two upper quadrants and we worked on cleaning off the excess adhesive and did not finish.  Today we did the last two quadrants working on a 12’ ladder the whole time.  The tube of adhesive was being balky (something kept stopping it up), the patterns were a pain to get up.  We finally ran out to get some sandwiches and a new tube of silicone and eventually finished about 7 PM.  Needless to say, I’m tired.  Tomorrow we will go back and finish cleaning up the bottom two quadrants which shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours (she says cause she is so good about estimating the time it takes to do ANYTHING).  Then we are going to try to beg off til after Easter so we can get going on the next job that we are already behind on.  

I hope tomorrow night finds us at home for the weekend.  Saturday we will have the g’kids.  We may stay at the country house next week while I get the full size art work for the next job finished. 

It hasn’t been all work and no play though.  Last night we had an evening out.  We went to a friend’s for dinner and socialzing with another couple, the two couples being some of our favorite people to hang out with and because of the different streams of our lives last year, it’s been quite a while since we all got together.  We had a really good time.

So, here are a few pics of the first two quadrants of the job.  Today was the perfect day to get some pictures of the reflected light colors from inside because we were there after dark, but Marc turned out the lights before I got the pictures and I was putting stuff in the truck and I was ready for home.  Oh well.  Here’s a few pics of the first two quadrants at the end of the first day.

transmitted light colors

reflected light colors

work and other minor inconveniences

I’m composing this on the new computer.  It didn’t have to go back to the store after all.  Once we got back in the city and Marc had access to all his computer cables and other magic stuff, he got it to rights.  The new keyboard is so small, doesn’t have the extra little number pad on the right and the key buttons are nearly flush.  The new mouse is very cool also.  You can click anywhere on it and you can stroke it to make it scroll up and down or sideways as well.  I still haven’t transferred any of my stuff.  I’ll get to that in the coming days.

I’m also composing this at 1 o’clock in the morning.  I was very tired, ready for bed until my head hit the pillow.  Even now, my eyes are tired but I know that I still won’t be able to sleep.  It didn’t help that the snoring from the other occupant of the bed started up RIGHT AWAY!  How does he go to sleep so damn fast?!  I laid there for about two hours and finally got up to have a cup of tea.  Maybe that’ll help.

This month has been so busy and as usual I don’t feel like I have made nearly the progress I should have.  I’m not ready for January to be over.  I need at least one more week, two would be better.  Getting all those jewels prepared took so long.  But prepared they are now and we are going over to the church tomorrow to start laminating them onto the window.  I hope the weather cooperates since we have to tape the patterns to the outside of the window and there is no overhang.  Of course, rain is predicted for later in the week.  Once that is completed we can finally start working on the Catholic church.  They have been so patient, but like we told them, we were waiting on deposits all summer for these three big jobs and they all came in within two weeks of each other.  Unfortunately, theirs came last.

Because I am so busy, I haven’t had much time to blog and the next several weeks are going to be even worse, so if you have missed me, I’m trying to stay current on my reading but I’m not commenting much.  Later this month, Feb 17 - 22, we are teaching a 6 day workshop in Austin so besides trying to get work done on our jobs, I am having to prepare for the workshop...physically (getting all the stuff together) and mentally (trying to get my mind focused on the teaching part).

The art consultant still has not sent me the pictures of the glass wall in the chapel at the Oklahoma Heart Hospital.  But...I do have pics of the single panel we did for the gas transmission company that we squeezed in in January and which is the reason I am behind on my other work.  The art consultant is a repeat customer though and it pays to make him happy.  This one is 5' x 4' with silver and copper leaf accents.

Here’s a thing I have noticed.  On the old computer when I did a post I set the type at the ‘small’ selection and it looked about 12 point size but on the new computer, it’s really small, more like ‘smallest’ on the old computer.  So on this post, on the new computer, I set the type size to ‘normal’ and it looks about 12 point size but when I look at it on the old computer, it’s much larger, like the ‘normal’ setting.  What’s up with that?  What size does it look like on your screen?

object: texture and pattern

So, no one else wants to hazard a guess?

There were some very good guesses.  Some were right on and some were, if not exactly correct, so clever and so close.  I myself, had I not known what they were, would probably not have been able to guess more than a few.

Clear textured glass in my window.

Gourd.

Brick wall in the big room.

             

Ink on paper, a drawing I did of a leaf.

              

Coral.

Blown glass vase in a basket weave pattern.

Blown glass vase with a wire drawing embedded in the surface.

Wood inlay design on my china cabinet.

Crackled glaze on a ceramic box.

Striations or threads in a crystal egg.

surface: texture and pattern

It’s still winter despite our warm weather last week.  It’s cold out now, going down from a high in the mid 40s.  And windy.  That north wind bites.

Because it’s still winter, the outside is still slumbering so I was prowling around the house looking for an exercise with the macro feature on my camera.  I have taken a number of close-ups of the surface of things (except #10, it's actually the interior of something) and I thought I would pose a little entertainment.  See how many you can guess what it is.  I’ll post pictures of the actual objects tomorrow.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

does not compute

We have been thinking about buying a new computer for a while now.  The oldest, the one Marc uses, is an Apple G4 and is at least 8 years old.  It has several problems that could be fixed but we'd rather not invest money in a machine that old.  Our newest, an IMac G5 with a 20” screen, is five years old. 

We are Apple people.  We have had nothing but Apple and Mac computers, ever.  Our first computers, purchased in 1987, were a MacPlus for us and a Mac2 for the kids.  Every 3 - 5 years we would upgrade.  We’ve probably had every version of Apple desk top computers there is.

I’ve sort of been pushing for a laptop because they are portable and we have been in the habit of traveling for shows and workshops, with the exception of this past year.  Plus, I like the idea of being able to get all comfy on the couch and still do my word processing and reading.  But Apple laptops are expensive.  You can get a desk model for about the same price.  Marc has been resisting the laptop.  He wants my old computer and doesn’t think I will be happy using a laptop all the time.  So we were very interested in the introduction the other day of the IPad which we plan to look at again in four or five months.  

So last Thursday, we went down and bought a new computer, another IMac.  A computer for which we tried to pay cash, or rather, by business check.  A business check on an account we have had for 35 years at the same bank in which there was plenty of money.  The check protection system refused our check even after they called us on the phone while we were standing at the check out to verify that we had actually written the check.  The credit card company, however had no problem in accepting the charge.  Probably because we had finally paid it off and they weren’t getting any interest charges.  

“It’s the curse,” he says.

Because we are trying NOT to use the credit card, preferring to pay as we go.

Well, we got it out Thursday night and set it up and started the whole process of getting it going and one of the first things it wants to do in the whole registering and setting up process is to transfer files and applications from the old computer to the new one and since we had them sitting side by side, we hooked them up and proceeded with the transfer which was a two hour process.  About halfway through I thought that we had probably made a mistake because it was transferring everything, a lot of which I did not want on the new computer.  

Well, it did turn out to be a mistake.  I found some really old stuff and the few applications I wanted to use wouldn’t open without first starting another application that the new computer couldn’t seem to find and none of my files showed up, nor any of my pictures.

No problem, Marc says.  We’ll just delete the hard drive and reinstall the operating system and applications.  In other words, everything that came already installed.  

Were that it was that easy.  We tried to follow the instructions in the little booklet that came with and when that didn’t produce satisfactory results, Marc consulted the Apple website (which we should have done in the first place) and found out that the information in the booklet is incorrect.  So while we have re-installed the operating system and the applications, our new computer will come on, but it can’t seem to find anything.  So Monday, we get to return it to the place of purchase so they can put it to rights again.  

I’d forgotten how aggravating it is to get a new computer.

“You know what it is, right?” he says to me almost smirking.

“It’s NOT the curse!”

it's broken, people

Schism I by Lydia Lynaug

The State of the Union speech is tonight.  We turned it off when the talking heads started analyzing the coming speech based on the color of Michelle’s dress.  seriously?  

Personally, I don’t think it makes much difference what the President says.  The two party system doesn’t work anymore.  We have outgrown it only no one’s really realized it yet.  My friend John Kurman over at Random Walks did an excellent post today, Wither America .  He has an interesting perspective.  Most people in the country don’t vote for either party, they vote for None of the Above (see John’s post).

This country is so deeply and irrevocably divided that even when you get someone who genuinely wants to do something to fix the underlying problems, it is impossible to actually do anything.  Immediately the party not in power spends all it’s influence and resources undermining the party in power.  And, if the politician strays too far to the center in order to attract support to actually accomplish something, then his own party arrays against him.  Good ideas never enter the picture because it’s not about actually fixing anything, it’s about being in power.  In this, both parties are exactly the same.

The thing is, if we as a people don’t rise above this division, then the people are going to be wishing things were as good as they had been in 2009.  2009 will seem like a picnic.  Because if this continues, we’re all going down.

I was telling Marc earlier that I think the only way to reconcile this country is to divide.  

“Oh, you mean like Pakistan and India?” he asks.

Well, I would hope we would be a little more civilized about it.

He thinks, though, that our generation will have to die before any compromise can take place, before the country can heal itself.  That the division, the schism that occurred in the 60s is too deep and too ingrained for us, the baby boomers, to be able to rise above.

A pretty sad legacy for the summer of love.