New Years Weekend, 2010

I'm not much of a pack-rat, in fact, I'm distracted by clutter in our home. I wouldn't say I'm obsessive about it but I function best when I keep it to a minimum. Removing all the clutter from our garage during its renovation last summer was more satisfying than you can imagine. Nearly equally as satisfying was the project Tammy undertook within our home for most of last week when she tackled the job of emptying out all our cupboards, drawers and closets to get rid of stuff we no longer need and reorganize whatever was left. To any visitors who happened by, they must've thought we were terrible housekeepers to see our home in such disarray. She's got a bit left to do but the majority of it is done and I know she's feeling good about having that monkey off her back. Me too.

I stayed out of her way by immersing myself in our stained glass project down in the shop. I made good progress on it and hope to have this panel wrapped up in the next few weeks which should give us time to get at least one more panel done before spring arrives and we close up shop. That will leave us the remaining two to do next winter. I'm sure I'll be ready to move onto something else once we've got this entire project completed. It's a long time to focus on one thing when I've got lots of other ideas I'm kicking around in my head.

Tammy came down in the shop after she got off work last night and put a project in the kiln. It's a simple spoon tray for a friend. It fired overnight and is back in the kiln to be slumped to a form other than flat.

I want her to teach me how to do this but so far I haven't taken the time to learn. It's not difficult but there are certain things you need to factor into a project; things related to what various types of glass do at different temperatures and techniques used. Our kiln isn't large but it's got a programmable control unit so that the temp can be ramped up at a specific rate to a predetermined temperature, held there for however long and then ramped back down, again, at a specified rate. This stuff can be key depending on what you're trying to achieve.

My goal for a while has been to incorporate some fused glass into our stained glass so I'm looking forward to playing around with the 'warm glass' aspect of all of this.

I'm not sure why but I was carrying Charlie up from downstairs a couple days ago when the oddest thing happened. I set him down halfway up the stairs and he proceeded to go all the way back down before starting up again. I had to get the video camera out to see if he'd do it again. Rachel later wondered if he'd still do it if we put him nearer the top step. We did her little experiment the next day and it turned out that if we put him one step below the top he'd go straight up but anything further than that and he'd make his way all the way down and then come up. I'm still trying to figure this little guy out and I'm sure I will be for a while to come.

One other upload to my YouTube account over the weekend: we've got an albino squirrel that's been hanging around our yard since last fall. The guys at work are giving me a hard time this afternoon saying that my age is showing since I'm now resorted to posting video of a squirrel. Me...getting old?

All I can say guys is come ride with me. 👊🏼😁

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