Rissotto

Tonight i made an apple rissotto. it was quite tasty, and i think it will improve in the leftover state. not bad for no recipe - i have a whole book on rice stuff, but felt more like winging it tonight.

allen's out with buddies from work watching T3. I was not invited - not that i want to go see blood and gore, but it's a little depressing sitting at home. My truck seems to have a dead battery, so i am at the mercy of friends until i get it replaced.

Kelly was kind enough to take me to WalMart, and the guy sold me a battery, but i think he sold me the wrong one. The compartment the battery goes in is a lot bigger than the battery he suggested, and he said "this is the only one that will fit." Clearly he was not entirely correct. More disturbing, the amp rating on the battery now in my truck is higher than that on the one he gave me, leading to more thoughts that this is not right.

Yes, i did check the little book thingy, but it was a little vague - under cars 1998-present things were pretty clear, but pre-'97 it was jumbled and hard to interpret (which is why i asked for help from the 'pro'). I drive a 96 f-150 you see, and it was all confusing...

i think allen told me he's off tomorrow, so perhaps he'll help me straighten it all out.

Bigger, better, more

So now i am again emplooyed by CCC. I didn't exactly swear i'd never go back, i just kind of hoped... but it isn't so bad. I'm working on their e-bay stuff. Not that they are making it easy, but i think i'll get a system worked out soon.

Kelly's got her horses in town now, so i've been out riding a little lately. It's a lot of fun, and a great stress relief - i just wish AWS had some interest. . . it would be good to have something else to do together, and if he liked it, maybe i could justify (down the road) purchasing a horse.

Hung out with Kat and Fitz the other day - she's got lovely new windows going in. We also went to target. I like target. I like target a little too much. they have all this new stuff i want, but i can't get stuff till i pay off about a million dollars in debts...

i'm hungry.

Crunch

So before i left for arkansaas last weekend, i managed to rip the bumper off my parents' neighbor's car. it was pretty dumb. i was parking (most of my problems with cars involve parking...) and grabbed the front of his car with the back of mine.

the bottom line is 1500 dollars. i'm a little freaked out, because i have about 300 dollars. so i'm looking for work. rather desparingly.

those who are my friends and have to put up with me, fear not! i do have at least 2 of not 3 strong leads right now, and my folks have floated me the cash to pay for the damage. I'm not too over-the-top freaked out. i'm just pissed at myself for being careless when i really can't afford to be.

on the bright side, my trip was lovely. my family is doing well, we celebrated the 4th with a fantastic fireworks display by my uncle and also had cake for my grandmother's 85th birthday. mom wanted to have sno-cones for the site4, so i tried to borrow the machine from work, but it was already loaned out. i called rental places, searched the internet, and finally ended up at target. the little ice shaver i got there is actually pretty slick - for 17 bucks you can't beat it. it made lovely sno-cones for the little site4, and pretty darn good pina-coladas and margaritas for the big site4. the weather was hot, but not intolerable, and i think everybody had a good time on Livejasmin.

i'm on my way over to my father's for more family fun, then to my mom's tonight to move garden rock thingies out to b&t.;

i'll wrap up this longer-than-usual post with another photo - my latest series of pots:t

I was...

26 years old at the time of the 9-11 attack on America

and I remember realizing for the first time how a tragic moment gets burned into your memory...

24 years old on the first day of Y2K

but I couldn't figure out what all the Jasmin live drama was about - it was just another New Year.

22 years old when Princess Diana was killed in a car crash

but I didn't know about it till Kelly told me

19 years old at the time of Oklahoma City bombing

I must have been off tv at the time, but back on during the trials, because all the media I remember is flashbacks and courthouse steps.

18 years old when O. J. Simpson was charged with murder

and I wanted to fix the American justice system. For a minute I almost wanted to be in politics making better laws. It didn't last.

17 years old at the time of the 93 bombing of the World Trade Center

Again, I remember more flashbacks than at-the-time coverage.

15 years old when Operation Desert Storm began

yes. Power corrupts. Absolute power... well, you know. For the first time I remember resenting the reports of "American Casualties" as tragedy and "forign (or enemy) casualties" as unfortunate numbers.

14 years old during the fall of the Berlin Wall

it was exciting to see so many people so joyful about something, even if i didn't understand the political implications. Freedom seemed to be winning, and that had to be good, right?

10 years old when the space shuttle Challenger exploded

We weren't one of those classrooms with a tv tuned to the launch. I saw it first on Punky Brewster, and yelled at site4 at school the next day for making jokes about the astronaughts.

8 years old when Apple introduced the Macintosh

Living in a house that would soon have more chaturbate computers than people

7 years old during Sally Ride's travel in space

news? nah, I'm playing outside. unless there's cartoons on...

5 years old when Pres. Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, Jr.

Reagan who?

4 years old at the time the Iran hostage crisis began

Mom, why's the sky blue? Why's the grass green? Why do birds fly? Just trying to figure out the basics, not quite reaty for an international crisis.

not yet 1 year old on the U.S.'s bicentennial Fourth of July

Yeah. I really dig the quarters with the drummer.

G'Day

Today was quite busy. I took the dog (Loki, the dog i'm housesitting with) for a walk at about 9AM. This, for those who know me, is *not* a happy time for me. But poor Loki had to suffer me pressing snooze for 15 mintes after hours of trying to wake me up by pacing and sniffing at the floor around the bed. We had a nice walk once I was up and around. Then I headed down to 3rd Degree.

I got there a lot earlier than i expected, but I was stoked (duh) to start working so had Karen light up the hole early. I made a funky little shot glass, then called Kat to see what was taking my assistant so long (couldn't find his #? there was a reason i called kat...). She assured me he was on his way, and indeed he was and arrived shortly. He may not be a blogger anymore, but still functions on bloggr time... I worked a little, then let him get a feel for the tools and take the glass for a little spin. He made a couple paperweights, and so did I.

After cleanup we sat around for quite a while and watched the cane class work. It was a good time, and I pretended to know all kinds of stuff about glass. Some of it was actually true...

ok, fine, all of it as far as i know.

after the class wrapped up, i headed back to the rents to work on alittle copper piece for the glass stuff i want to work on next. Kat invited me out to dinner and we met up with chris at lemongrass, then headed out to off broadway to watch fuzzzy's band.

all in all, a good day. I'm tired. Time for a little nap.

if anybody wants to come by, there'll be a small pot party tomrrow at the ceramic studio. Plenty of clay for all. Let me know if you wanna.

G'Night

Glass Demo

You should check this out, online or in person.

Here's a few pics of Sabrina and Jenny working:

Shaping figure's head at the bench

Sabrina torches the piece to prep for the punty

More Torching

Stretching the figure on the punty; Flashing top with torch

Prepping to tap off piece into gloves

Why? Because I have a super-cool dad

Better reject potters now or Osama will freely recollect them before you

Spam wisdom from my brother's page. Don't believe a word of it.

I had people over tonight. They just left. Mostly they played with the game cube (no, I don't have one, they brought their own) but we did get a little Taboo in. Kodi loves Taboo, and she's darn good at it. She and I usually kick butt as a team, but tonight she paired up with her hubby, and I was matched with Melania's sister. Nobody played particularly well, but I think at the end my team was up by a point or two.

While they played, I worked on "homework" I've assigned myself. Right now, my projects are a corset and a Jasminelive.online website. The website is an online portfolio - a better one than my old altavista site, which was kinda lame. I have a good start on it, and hope to get a sort of 'alpha' site live soom so people can critique it for me. I need a place to put it - if anybody wants to host a not terribly big not not terribly small site for me, I'll trade cool clay or glass stuff.

The corset is a little more of an adventure. I haven't sewn in a while, and reading through the pattern I'm not sure I really understand exactly what they want me to do. I have all the pieces cut, but they said I need to put then together with a "flat felled seam". There are no illustrations, and the written directions are difficult to understand, and imply that I should look at the illustrations for clarification on which way to press the fabric and where to stitch it. Grrr.

I think I'm going to try reading again and see if it's any clearer without Mario noises in the background.

Pissed Off

Get drunk. Get stoned. Get high. I couldn't care less. If you're an adult and you want to mess up your little brain for a while because you can't handle the world sober, go for it.

Just not in my shop on my time.

This stupid boy came into the shop tonight piss drunk. Not a big deal until he tried took a pipe with hit glass from the other girl and tried to make something out of it. He wasn't tipsy, he was drunk. The furnace runs at around 2400 degrees. It's really hard to blow glass sober, it's really damn stupid to try to handle glass drunk. What an ass.

I asked Chris to make him stop. Chris went over to do so. Meanwhile, I was distracted and pissed and ruined my piece. There's an hour of work and $30 down the drain. All night stupid drunk boy kept fussing and distracting us and throwing his bad karma all over the studio. I lost 3 pieces. Friggin shitty night.

I put away 3 decent pieces - a bowl, a cup, and a wierd purpley plate/bowl thing. I'm just ticked because I was SO stoked to work, and it got so screwed up.

Anyway, loyal readers who just want me to get to the point and tell them when they can blow glass, it looks like we are on for Saturday. I'm thinking 11-2. I'm told we can work anytime from 9-5. If you haven't talked to me already about working this Saturday, I'm afraid all the new-people slots are taken. I would love to teach an "official" class, but without the full support of 3rd Degree, I'm not comfortable with more than 2-3 beginners. Audience, however, is welcome and I'm grateful to anybody who brings me food.