The girl with angel wings cried, silent, fat tears that slipped down her cheeks and splashed on her pretty pink dress. She trudged just past me, plopped down on a bench and sighed.
It makes sense, but I'm having trouble believing it: My kiln failed because I left the garage door open. As you might have read, Skooby-my-Skutt bathtub kiln died right at the start of an important pate de verre firing last Saturday. Since I'd bought him a brand new controller not four months ago, I was pretty unhappy about it, and left a flurry of HELP messages with Skutt. "Hmmmm," said Perry-the-Skutt-kilngod when he called this first thing this morning, "I read your message(s) and I've been thinking about what might have gone wrong. Do you have a voltmeter?"
Well, that's the last of the blueberries. Last Wednesday night I stripped all but the last few dozen berries off the bushes in back; I left those for the birds. It was kinda sad, even though I got two months of fresh-for-the-pickin' blueberries and shouldn't really complain. But blueberry picking became a welcome routine this summer: I'd work hard all day then, when shadows got long and the light went golden-warm, I'd pick up my little brown colander and head for the blueberry bushes out back. I'd spend a half hour or so tickling blueberries, gently stroking the fruit so that only the ripest and sweetest dropped into the colander.
OK, so I'm canceling my Vonage subscription today. I wish my parents could cancel THEIR VoIP service and get some reliable phone lines. And if what I'm seeing about Skype is any indication, I won't be the only one going back to landlines and mobile phones. Don't get me wrong--I see all the advantages of VoIP service and I know [...]
Significant reward* if you're the first to correctly identify this: In part II, I'll give you the story behind it. *A drink with me next time you're in glassland. I'm buying.
The newly renovated garage studio is starting to look like a weird kiln store; Oliver Wendell Kiln finally joined his brothers in the garage this afternoon (with a great deal of assistance from his chauffeurs). It's taken nine months to get him here so I kinda feel like I gave birth to a giant space heater today.
OK, glassists: What's the first thing we learn when we start working with glass? CAREFULLY LABEL EVERYTHING! Right? Sigh.
It is--at last--a cool grey day in glassland, not quite raining but wanting to, sweet relief from the last month's desert heat. I'm on the way home from an afternoon of errand-running, partly to get things done but mostly to feel the back-to-normal, tad-too-chilly northwestern air moving through the open window of my car. I pull up to the light only halfway in the world; my brain's musing studio tasks and content projects while NPR drones in the background. The reporter mentions the Cash for Clunkers program, and I finally notice I'm behind a clunker.
I'm moving through Powell's big downtown bookstore in a wierdly dreamy, deja vu kinda way, strolling the stacks and digesting the day I've had so far: making art, viewing art, and needing art...or rather needing to get real artistic, real fast, to make sure Ernie Monstrocat has a GOOD home.
I think the birds put out a contract on me. Warnings haven't worked, and they've decided it's time for more drastic action. And fast--before blueberry season is over. You see, I've developed a real taste for the blueberries ripening in my backyard--four bushes' worth of gloriously huge, sweet berries. The birds tell me they have prior claim and they've been waiting all summer for their berries to ripen...just as I horn in. Worse still, I'm taking all the ripe ones, and making big, smacking "mmmmmmmmm" noises when I do it.
