New Laptop!

That’s right, I’m sprawled out on the couch and updating my blog.  I ordered it over Christmas break and got it a couple days into January.  It’s an ASUS 13.3 inch and so far it has been great.  It gets great battery life with the battery saving settings and it’s pretty thin and light.  I’ve got it set up on the home network so I can open files from my desktop and my wife can now print off twice as many coupons!  That wireless printer is really coming in handy now as well.

Thanks to everyone that contributed to the laptop fund during Christmas!  It was good to see the family and spend a little time relaxing.

While I was on break I also put up some more shelves in the clay studio, reorganized a few things and got myself a used triple beam scale.  I need to order a few more glaze materials and I’ll be ready to try mixing my own glazes.  Soon I’ll try to get some pictures up here of what I’ve been working on.  I also put together a post on my other site about some of the best pottery blogs.  As for the future, I might have a mural painting gig lined up.  And I’ll try to keep things up to date on the blog…

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…

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….