Trust me, it's no one you know.

I decided to transform a pile of crushed glass and some rods into bones and bones into an arm, and a hand, and a useful tool of scratching delight.     I have to say, making the parts was the easy bit, even if it did turn out I should have checked an anatomy book before hand.   So yes, I know the upper arm should be one bone, not two, and had I simply felt myself up, I would have known that.     Oh well.

Ready for assembly

It turns out that assembly wasn’t going to be the cake walk I thought it would be.   For one thing, it’s the cooler time of year here, so I was worried about errant drafts causing cracking.     I mean let’s face it, cold weather’s hard on the bones right?

Shake?

The first time I tried putting this together, I dropped it three times, then on the fourth, when the upper bones broke off, I put everything in the kiln and headed in, I’d had enough.

The next night, though, I finally got it all together.    Out of frustration came inspiration and I would up constructing the pieces slightly differently, and in such a way that was far far simpler over all.   Live and learn.

It's trying to escape!! Turn the kiln to "cremate"

I have to say though, I’m quite happy with the way the piece came out in the end.    About the only regret I have is that the thumb’s just a little off from where I wanted it.    But, it’s quite functional, so I’m not going to dwell on it.

I so wanted to pet the cat with this.

I do hope the recipient loves this.  It was a lot of fun to make except for the dropping and cursing part, but otherwise it was fun and I think I’d definitely try another one.

See? The thumb's too far up the palm. I was a little worried about the palm cracking in the cooler temps, so I was rushing.

The messy back bench/storage area

Well, the fates decided to give me a kick in the rear.    At the bottom of our hill is a company that makes modular rooms, and a couple times a week they put out scrap wood, which local woodworkers stop by and pick over for who knows what.    It happened one day I noticed a fully constructed door frame down there.    I figured it would be gone fairly quickly, but when my wife and I got back from an outing with the kids, it was still there.  Ehx-cellent.

Not so ‘ehx-cellent’, I soon found out why it was still there.   Weighing probably 100 pounds and being about 8 feet long, it wasn’t exactly easy to transport.  Luckily we had the minivan with us, and we were able to finagle it up the hill.

They say door frame, I say bench frame (picture by my wife)

Now I had a lovely base for a new bench, but that means pulling everything out.  While I have everything out, I may as well insulate and drywall too, right?   Ah, it sounds so simple.  Now would be a good time to mention that a heatwave that had just begun.

Day 1

It's all out!

Nothing like a 90 degree day to hang out inside confined space, in and out of the sun.   But dangnabbit, I got it all out.

This was the result of day 1 of renovation hell.

How did all this fit in there?

The important pile, my raw glass: boro (33), 104, flat stock Bullseye, and pulled wine bottle glass

I worked during the night as well, and many cups of water and ice coffee later, I had the drywall up.    I’d like to add, I’m terrible at putting up drywall.  Normally I’d research what I should do first, but I just sort of winged it with this one; not my best plan of action.  Plus, I wound up leaving half of my shop lying out in the backyard overnight.   Luckily we live in a decent neighborhood.

Day 2

While my wife and kids were off to the local community pool, I worked out in the hotbox to install the new bench.   By the time I got it in place, it was late afternoon.    I wound up quickly moving everything back into the shop just to get it off the lawn, but I’d have to come back out another night to get it all in it’s place.    Even with the air conditioner going out there, it was quite the endeavor, but I managed to get it done.

Day 3-ish

I wound up calling out sick the Monday following, laid up with the effects of dehydration; migraine headaches, nausea, exhaustion.     I chugged water and slept part of the day, hiding out in a darkened room.   Hydrate folks…I thought I had enough going in, but it turns out I wasn’t even close.

A few nights later I managed to get out to my shop after the kids were in bed for the massive task of cleaning up and getting everything put away.   I had a sales event coming up at the end of the week and needed to have the shop operational.  Working into the wee hours, I managed to get it all together.

Nearly a place for everything and everything mostly in it's place

I'm not always this organized, trust me

Nearly all the glass is together now. The Bullseye frits and powders are still on the other side of the room; it's safer that way.

Future home of the boro frit shelves. You'll notice I didn't bother painting.

I still need to put up my shelves for my collection of borosilicate frits and powders, but at least the flameworking bench is usable again.   That half of the shop will be a project for another time, once I buy a sports sized water cooler.

Believe it or not, this was after I had tidied up the extra glass I had out

First off, I applaud you for opening your hearts and homes to your canine members of your extended family.  I know pets are good for your well being overall, so good for you.

But please keep in mind, not everyone loves everything about your pet.   Cute as little Rex/Fifi/Bilbo is, please keep him or her off of my lawn.

Specifically, keep his poop off of my lawn.

I assure you, if I wanted poop on my lawn, I’m perfectly capable of putting it there myself, or getting a dog of my own.  But alas, I prefer my property poop free.  It’s one of the reasons I don’t have a dog actually.  I’d prefer my children be able to play on their own property without fearing sliding into home poop instead of home plate.

I’d also like to remind you that the town has both a leash law, and a law regarding not picking up after your dog, both of which are $25 offenses if I recall.

So I’ve returned the poop to your side of the road.  I hope you kept the receipt.

Love

-Me

Well, $95.00 later, the minimum charge, our plumber had drawn two lines on the watch glass and said he’d be back Wednesday or so.    That sounds bad, I know, but actually he’s doing the right thing from an investigative standpoint.   He said it’s one of two things; a bad valve in the feeder pump, which while still not the price of a cup of coffee is cheaper than the other problem, or the other problem which may be a pinhole leak in the heating coil in the tankless heater unit.    So he shut off the water to the feeder, drew the two lines and said call back on Wednesday to let us know if the level had gone up.    $95.00 happens to be the minimum charge from these guys, and that was for 30 minutes.

I’ll pause for a moment here.  Yes that’s horrid.  Ideally I’d rather see it top out at $60.00 for the time and actual work done.   But, this guy shows up when he says he will, does a good job, and even often shows up earlier than expected and his office calls ahead to let you know that’s the case.

So anyway, guess what?  The water level’s gone up.

$hit.

There’s not a whole lot for someone that age to actually participate in, but there are some rides accessible to him, and we had already paid for the tickets, and I love roller coasters, so we went.

But I hate lines.

I’m extraordinarily impatient, this is hardly a secret.  Since I hadn’t been to the amusement park in about 6 years, I splurged and dropped $80 for the platinum Flash Pass.

A Flash Pass is a little doohickey made by a company called Lo-Q that allows you go virtually stand in line.  But it’s so much more.    There are three levels:

• Regular: Stands in line for you, but for the same amount of time you might already be stuck there.   But you can roam the park in the mean time and it buzzes when it’s your turn to ride.
• Gold: Still stands in line for you, but let’s you jump some undisclosed portion of it, reducing the amount of time you’ll be waiting.  Again, you roam, you get buzzed when it’s time.
• Platinum: Let’s you reserve a spot in line and cuts out 90% of the wait time, AND allows you to ride the rides twice consecutively without waiting again.

The cost for these ranges from $31-$80.   Guess which one I dropped the money for?  [psst...check the title of this post]

Given I was going to split my time between taking the little one on rides and spending time with the family, and also trying to go on some really awesome rides, it was worth the splurge.  On average the time between reserving and when I was allowed to arrive for my time was less time than it took me to actually get to the ride.  In a phrase, “boo yah.”

I have to say, I was more interested in the time savings, I wasn’t looking for the consecutive riding powers, and I didn’t use them.    It’s bad enough to run past all of the folks who’ve been waiting for over an hour in line, jumping in front of them and having your fun.  It’s worse to make the folks behind them watch you make them wait even longer.

But it’s an awesome power to have if you want it.

My only complaint, such as it is….only ONE ride operator asked if I was going to take a second trip.  The folks over on the Flashback ride asked.  So either’s there’s a “learning opportunity” (in HR parlance) for that operating crew, or the rest of the park.  The platinum holders are noted by a wrist band issued that show’s you’re one special and well funded guest and he was the only that made note that I had one and inquired as to whether or not I planned to go a second time.    My hat’s off to you good Sir, bravo.

That’s not to say I’m knocking the rest of the park staff, they did a great job.   One interesting thing I notice far too often, was that every other train on the Bizarro ride was held up when at least one guest had to be ejected from the ride because they didn’t fit inside the restraints.   Interestingly, to me at least, most of the folks I observed being shown the exit weren’t necessarily obese.  In many cases they simply had stocky football player builds, but weren’t necessarily ‘fat’.    The restraints are designed to accommodate x height and y weight, and to keep the occupant safe given the physics of the ride within those constraints.   But perhaps Six Flags and ride manufacturer Intamin should embrace the opportunity to develop for a niche market, but hopefully while not being branded as enablers.

Otherwise, we had a fantastic day at the park.   The park was clean, most of the other guests were well behaved, and our youngest had a great time on the rides he could partake of.   He was quite relieved to see me at the end of the day where I was willing to pick him up and give him a lift back to the car.  He was asleep on my shoulder before we got to the car in the parking lot and slept the entire way home.

********

One downside of the day….

My wife and I stopped at a McDonald’s on the way home to get an unsweetened ice tea, one of their much touted Caramel Frappe’s, and two McDouble’s as a quick snack since we had eschewed must of the usual amusement park junk food (yay!).

I’m not sure what the complicated part of this order was, but at 6:30 at night you’d think this would be a fairly easy order but alas, it was not.  I received my iced tea in a timely fashion, but apparently the McDouble’s and the Caramel Frappe are a complicated thing for McDonald’s employees to construct.  I’m a bit confused about this.

The drink is essentially made by a machine which near as I can tell doesn’t even require literacy.  From what I can see from the drive through window (thank you corporate level standardized set ups), the worker merely has to push some pictures on the screen to have a drink happen.

The McDouble’s are two slabs of meat with a piece of cheese, ketchup, and some onion bits between bread, and given McDonald’s core business is the hamburger, I was quite astonished that I pushed the employees to new heights with my order, however we found ourselves having to “pull forward to the corner” to wait for our food.  It took so long, in fact, that I found myself going inside to find out what the hold up was.

I have to wonder if McDonald’s has gotten a bit ahead of itself with it’s menu and away from the fast food, assembly line, concepts that made it the corporate behemoth that it is.  It’s gotten so bad that I’ve actually been to one outlet that has two spaces in their parking lot specially marked with signage for waiting for drive through orders that go awry.

The food’s largely unhealthy anyway, perhaps I should just avoid them.   Happily, in recent months I’ve cut way back on my visits.

That’s OK though, we weren’t looking for tribal history.  My wife and I went just for dinner, possibly a drink, and a little window shopping at the on site mall.

My chief complaint however, is that the casino smells like ass.

I’m assuming this isn’t by design, since it’s fairly rare for a business to intentionally want to make their space smell like stale farts.   But the problem is that the entire casino, even the smoke free casino, smells of stale cigarette smoke.  Stale cigarette smoke in turn, smells like butt.

I’m not an expert on the scent of derriere, but I can assure you, the place reeks.   It’s noisy as all get out, as all casino’s are but the smell is something you wind up taking home with you.  The only place that didn’t reek of smoke was the area around Todd English’s restaurant, Tuscany, which instead greeted it’s customers with the chlorinated stench of the indoor waterfall.  Given their prices, you’d think you could have a meal without a complimentary side of chlorine.

The trip wasn’t all bad.  There’s a Starbucks, so I was able to get coffee, which my faithful readers will know is good for everyone.   Over near the Chihuly sculpture there are these gorgeous beaded mural panels adorning the ceiling.   And for the most part, the buffet (to be pronounced boo-fay for maximum effect) wasn’t too horrible, though a little pricey at 16.00 per person.   Oddly, the one thing the unwashed masses don’t have ready access to is the soda dispenser, which is probably the least expensive thing served in the ‘restaurant’.

So I’d like to offer my suggestion for a name change to just throw it up front.   Perhaps they could just call it “Mohegan Ass” so people know what sort of takeaway to expect.

Oh, and for those of you wondering, no, I didn’t get a chance to try out the zombie dancing they advertise as one of their activities for patrons, but maybe next time I can visit with a small posse and we can give it a try.  And no, that’s not Kristen Chenowith, but it is her understudy from Wicked.

and heading back to the house.  Normally I do a solo act, so it was really nice to have such an awesome co-pilot to help out and keep me company.

But on to the business end of things…

Weather wise, it was pretty darn nice.  Mostly sunny, but windy as all get out.  I do believe that our location in an urban canyon had quite a bit to do with that, but I travel with some cement filled PVC pipes that I had lashed to the legs.  I did try something new later in the day that I believe helped; I

Hey baby, wanna buy some glass?

hung the weights from the tent corners with bungees.   I’m not an aerodynamics engineer, but my guess is that having a flexible tether meant that as the tent corner lifted the weight descended slightly holding it down.  Regardless, I didn’t feel a need to hold onto the rails as often.   My table signs, however, they got tossed back into the boxes.   Mysteriously, the only thing lightweight thing that didn’t try to go airborne was my business cards.  I did hear of at least one tent that went skyward and almost came down on someone.   Glad it wasn’t me.  Oh, and I lost 2 glass pieces to the wind, more on that in a moment.   As my plastic Visa/Mastercard sign started to lift off the table, my wife made a pretty good joke, “In

Holding down the fort. Literally.

Worcester, Visa/Mastercard takes you!”  OK, I found it amusing.  After a day of gusty wind, jokes were helpful.

Monetarily…the day was a bit of a bust.   There was a $50 table fee and I made 6.00 over that before taxes, so I came out 2.50 ahead.  But I also lost 40.00 worth of product to wind induced gravity, so really, it was a bad day for sales.   There were a lot of people, and a lot of people interested in the product, but not a lot of buyers.  I’m not really sure what if anything would have really helped matters along.   I didn’t put prices on most things, so maybe folks didn’t want to ask, but my pendants, aside from one, were all a perfectly reasonable $20.  Glass pens (inserted ones, not glass nibs) were 10 a piece, bottles $10.00, etc.  Fairly low really, but most folks didn’t even ask.   In case you’re wondering, most of my items were “de-tagged” for a home show I did and I didn’t bother to put them back on.

Greetings Professor Falken, would you like to play a game?

There was plenty of interest on my chess sets too.  Interestingly, a lot of the folks interested were younger, 20′s and the like.   It was nice to see.   Unfortunately the sets were priced at $200, and $150.   I didn’t honestly expect them to sell today and I brought them as showcase pieces, but still, it was nice to see folks liked them.

So all that’s the bad news.   There is good news though.

Back in the second half of last year, a customer bought 2 of my drawer pulls from me at a show.  I had them mostly as a sample for custom work, but it was a slow show, so I sold them.

Drawer pulls on display

She expressed an interest in maybe wanting more for her kitchen cabinets, but I figured I’d never hear from her again.

Today she turned up.

And she’s still interested.  She’s so interested in fact that she took one of the pulls to another glass artist asking if they could do them, but she said she was swamped at the moment.  The customer wants 26 drawer pulls AND her downstairs neighbor is interested in some too.   So she’s got my card and she’s going to get in touch with me about sizes, design, etc.  While I didn’t earn much today, there’s a pretty good order coming on the off season.

One of the most fondled items today was my drawer pulls, and this generated a lot of business cards heading out into the public meaning there’s the potential for more orders to come.

Also, I met a very nice woman who has recently opened an artisan consignment store in one of the nearby towns and was interested in having some of my glass in her boutique.  While I’ve heard some nightmares about consignment situations, this actually has a pretty good feel about it.  She’s going to send me some information on her shop.

And….I met another woman who’s organizing a jazz festival in a couple of months out in Springfield, MA and was looking for some unique artists to sell at the show.   She’s going to be in touch with me as well.

So financially, the day was a bust.  But I reconnected with a former customer who’s was tickled pink to find me at the show, and I got some good networking connections.  Sometimes those can be the best kind of shows.

I could have done without the sunburn though.  I guess sun screen and a floppy “emergency” hat are going on my gear list.

More pics below:

The big table

Marbles, marbles, everywhere

Wine stoppers, bottles, buttons, and pens

Layout by Gillian, later destroyed by Mother Nature

Only the iced one is mine, honest

Oooooooh, pretty! Yeah, I made that.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean this as a how to.   But at the moment groups like Al Qaeda are more like a herpes infection than a devious adversary.    We’re fed the line that if we don’t stamp out grumpy people then grumpier people will fill the void.   Guess what?  That’s going to happen anyway.

The lack of evolution in their tactics suggests that their command structure truly has been distorted, if not broken.   Consider that the main domestic threats communicated to the American people continue to be:

• Threats to airplanes
• Threats to New York City
• Threats to landmarks on holidays

Call me crazy, but if I’m going to rob a bank, I’m not going to use the most heavily fortified door as my means of entry.  So why are these these still the main targets that we hear about?   Sure, occasionally the TSA in conjunction with XYX as part of a joint effort of the PDQ catches some guy trying to light his underwear on fire on a plane, but that’s about it.  Granted there may be more that gets caught/prevented before it makes the news, but I seriously doubt the number of incidents is really that high.   Any governmental agency is eager to justify it’s budget in the eyes of the American people, and therefore would happily crow about successes.

Which brings me back my original question, why haven’t the tactics changed?    The most insidious threat to US soldiers has been the IED, effectively a coffee can full of nails and some form of explosive.  This has been the most effective tactic employed, so why aren’t there phantom road crews “filling potholes” on main roads in the interior of the country?  Why aren’t there fake road crews “repairing” bridges?    Most of the bridges in the US are in disrepair anyway, I can’t imagine it would take much to create a disruptive hole during rush hour traffic.

Why are major landmarks still targets?   Sure, it’s showy to take down a skyscraper, but it’s just as effective to take out a nursery school in Kansas.   Using large scale targets only inconveniences honest people with heightened security.   Make them scared to go get their morning caffeine fix at Dunkin Donuts, now you’ve got their attention.

Someone might chime in that in the FBI we have one of the world’s best explosives forensics teams, and that may be true.  If I were to buy C4, detonators, and a triggering switch, I imagine they’d find me pretty quickly.   I assume if I bought 55 gallon drums, nitrogen laced fertilizer and a hundred gallons of diesel, that would set off some bells.    But what if you get 6 people to buy each of the ingredients of a lesser bomb on their own then combine them?   There’s no pattern to catch, there’s no warning, there’s just a mess.   So while we have one of the best teams to go in after the fact, on a preventive level there’s not much they can do to stop a more intelligent attack.   It’s the lack of an intelligent attack that we’ve yet to see.

Let’s hope they never wise up.

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