Cutting the Cord

Well, according to the time-stamp on my last post, I haven’t posted in nearly 6 months!  Half of a year…  There have been a few changes since then.  First and most importantly my wife and I are now parents.  Quincy Blue was born August 12th.  At first we spent a lot of time driving to the hospital, doctor’s office and medical supply store but now everyone is doing very well.  The only problem so far is that Quin hasn’t learned to type yet so she can’t update my blog for me.  She also doesn’t have enough experience in the clay studio to be a proper apprentice and attach handles to mugs, reclaim clay or mop the floor.  So I’ve had to do all of that sort of thing myself (as you can see from the lack of blog posts).  Luckily my wife let me spend a good amount of time in the studio recently to finish some commissioned pieces and Christmas items.  (She wasn’t exactly thrilled to take care of the kid while I got all dirty but I guess I’ll count it as my Christmas present.)  I just bisque fired everything last night so I hope to start glazing later today or tomorrow.

Mural in Progress

The new school year started a few months ago.  As previously mentioned, I’m back at West Noble Primary, formerly known as Ligonier Elementary.  We are now a Kindergarten and 1st Grade building while the other elementary school has grades 2-4.  The “Boss” wanted a new look to go with the new staff and building name so he hired another teacher and myself to paint new murals all over the school.  It was a huge project.  My wife, again, wasn’t exactly thrilled that I was off painting while she was 9 months pregnant.  But she is the best.  I finished all but two of my murals before the kid arrived and then finished the last two in November.  More details will follow in a later post.

As for this site, it seems to have been forgotten.  But that’s not true!  I’ve been working on it behind the scenes a little bit at a time.  I moved the site to a new host as an add-on domain.  (Use StableHost by clicking this link to help support my endeavors.)  I’ve tweaked the Basic Gray theme for the blog and I’ve added content to the process, studio, and artist pages.  There aren’t a lot of images yet, and the gallery isn’t up (which, I suppose, is ironic for a visual artist’s website).  But there will be images.  My goal is before 2012.

Clay Blog Review

I’ve also spent a little time working on a web project: Pottery Making Info.  I’ve started a new series of posts called Clay Blog Review which highlights some of the best pottery related blog posts of the month.  Take a look at the top pottery posts of November.  I have a few posts lined up for December and hopefully another Blogs of the Year post over Christmas break.

Other than all that, a few T-shirt designs, another website, painting large cartoons of half a basketball team, changing a few diapers and coaching cross country it’s been pretty boring for the past 6 months.  I’m hoping to add some more detailed posts about recent projects soon.  And announce some big news…  Stay tuned.

I do plan to spend a lot of time at Ligonier Elementary this summer, but not to move boxes.  The Ligonier Elementary era has come to an end so the West Noble Primary era can begin.  A new name, new staff, and new mascot means a new look.  So I’ll be working with another teacher to cover the walls with murals that have less to do with dogs and more to do with Little Chargers.  Currently we’re working on sketching out some ideas.

I’ve also been spending a good chunk of this week in the clay studio.  But now I’m going to the library with my wife.  Updates on murals and pottery should follow.

Ultrasound

Here’s a screen capture of the ultrasound from today.

HP pavilion elite 9290f

Not long ago I bought myself a late birthday/early Christmas present.  My old hp pavilion (probably 6 or 7 years old) needed an upgrade.  It served me well and I never really had any major problems with it until I crammed it so full of programs and files at the end that it really started to slow down.  So I shopped around and decided to go with another hp.  Since I plan to have it for awhile I decided to go all out and I got the Pavilion Elite 9290f while it was on sale.  So far it has been awesome.  It came with Windows 7 which seems to be pretty smooth.  Plus I got a copy of Adobe CS4 and MS Office at a great price because I’m a student at IUSB.  Everything has run really well so far.  I can’t believe how much faster everything is compared to my old computer. I’m actually typing this post on the new computer.  It’s set up in the “command center” at the moment (also known as the living room where I have two computers, an LCD monitor, Wii, Xbox 360, and TV all set up and ready to take over the world.)

dell 2209wa

The desktop didn’t come with a monitor so after getting some cash and gift cards for Christmas I talked to the fine people at Dell and they offered me a great sale price on their IPS panel 2209wa  monitor.  Apparently it is a pretty decent monitor for photo editing without a huge price tag.

Now, as Christmas break draws to a close, I’m going to try to get all the computers and the new wireless printer we got at Sam’s Club to connect to each other through the magic of a wireless network.

Pottery Supplies

I love pottery supply yard sales!  I made a trip up to Michigan on Thursday to see my family and check out a yard sale at Crossroads Pottery.  They didn’t have the kiln shelf that I needed and I didn’t get all the posts that I wanted but I got a lot of new stuff to experiment with.  I picked up some Laguna clay and a few random dry powders.  I also got a decent scale ($3!) to replace the cheap plastic Walmart kitchen scale which was probably $5.

Bad news: this is officially my last day of summer break.  Good news: The kiln is firing as I’m typing this.

Looking back, I had a pretty good summer.  I got some work done in the clay studio and did some work around the house.  My wife and I shot a wedding and we took a class at IUSB together.  We also stayed up late most nights and got to sleep in most mornings.  We got to see my brother and his wife a couple times before they headed over to China.  We also got to hang out with family and friends and use the grill quite frequently.  I love summer…  I’ve probably spent a lot more time on the Internet than I should have but at least I have some small things to show for it. I made a few small updates to my website and created a new Resource for Potters.  I’ve even made a couple bucks with my AdSense account.  I’m also in 2nd place in my fantasy baseball league and soon I’ll start putting together my Fantasy Football draft plan.  I’ve also been keeping up on the football situation in the state of Michigan.  I wouldn’t say that I have enormous expectations for the Lions (Lions, Lions) or the Wolverines (Wolverines, Wolverines) but I expect to see some improvement.  And after all, according to Red, “…hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things…” so I’ve got that.  I just can’t believe summer break is over.  After I pull the finished pottery out of the kiln I’ll try to post some pictures if any are worth posting.  Until then, I’ll be enjoying the last few hours of summer break…

The new riding lawn mower

My wife must have been feeling sorry for me (after I had to hose clamp and duct tape the handle back together) so we decided to get a riding lawn mower.  She even cashed in the credit card points to help pay for it.  We looked around for a while and finally settled on a Craftsman for a few reasons.  We could get the most $ for our credit card points at Sears and their warranty included house calls which will save us from borrowing someone’s truck/trailer to haul it in and get it serviced.  I’ve mowed the lawn a couple times now and it is fantastic.  It takes me half the time to mow the grass that it used to.  Unfortunately I haven’t spent any of that time updating the website (until now).  But even if I only save an hour every time I mow the grass I ‘ll probably save at least 8-10 hours total before school starts next year.  That’s a full day of throwing or painting (or climbing trees…)

Now I’m sitting here at the old computer that I’ve pieced together.  It started as my original college computer (2000 AD) so it’s far from top-of-the-line.  I added some RAM, bought an LCD monitor and laser mouse while browsing garage sales and bought another Linksys USB adapter from ebay.  I decided Windows ME wasn’t what I wanted so I installed Ubuntu 8.10 and even got it onto the wireless network here at home (mostly by pure luck?).  Now I can surf the net while my wife is “doing research” which looks suspiciously similar to finding coupons on the Internet.  Ubuntu has run smoothly so far considering the ancientness of my machine but I haven’t exactly been editing video or playing the latest video game.  I plan to get a little more experience with Ubuntu and the world of Linux and the universe of Open Source software this summer.  First step: figuring out how to use my printer without unplugging it from the main computer and plugging it in here.  Second step: downloading and installing some of the 304 updates that the little red arrow says are available.  I better get busy…

We got ourselves a Linksys router and adapter from Best Buy (thanks to everyone who gave giftcards as a gift) and I got our wireless network set up so we didn’t have to move my computer or run a network cable up the stairs.  We returned the usb adapter to Best Buy after I got the same item on eBay for exactly half the price.  So the good news is that I have quick and easy access to my website but the bad news is that I have quick and easy access to the Internet which could distract me from getting any real work done.  The middle school track season is under way as well so I will probably have minimal free time for the next few weeks.  At least I got a few things done over spring break including an order of senior pictures, taking pictures for our church easter egg hunt, some yard work and finishing the shirt design for our track team.  So now I have to get to bed since I have to wake up before 10:00 tomorrow morning…

I’ve also been working on a couple projects all at one time.  In the clay studio I’ve been working a few items much larger in scale than anything I’ve previously done on the wheel.  I got a book from the library about XHTML and CSS so I started designing a new site.  I’m also trying to set up a time to go paint some dogs on a wall for one of my friends.  As I was typing this I helped my wife set up her own blog to use for her kindergarten class.  Once I finish some of these projects I’ll try to put up some pictures….

Apart from all that I’ve been watching the Wolverines and Lions lose on a consistent basis, avoiding politics, and a couple days ago I took a class to become certified in CPR.  So I can’t say I’m bored…  I’ll post some pictures in my next post.  Thanks for reading.