Monday, January 31, 2011

random reminiscences

My sister and I were often subjected to really long boring road trips with my parents when we were younger. These road trips were made even more agonizing than most children would have been/are subjected to. Kids today have the option of watching a DVD in the back with wireless headphones, MP3 players, portable video games etc. In the 70’s and 80’s, we did not have these feats of technology.  We usually drove to Vancouver in the summer to visit both sets of Grandparents and we would all pile in the Ford Fairmont Station Wagon and take off. These trips would take upwards of 13-15 hours. My Dad was also not one for stopping for anything unless it was gas. The only entertainment was a pitiful collection of 8 track cassettes (Cher, Commodores, The Muppets, The Carpenters, Carol King, etc...). The pain actually increased when we would drive out in a car with a cassette tape player (I think that was the Cadillac). Anyway, my parents would pop in a Phoenix Seminar tape and listen to selling/listing techniques for Real Estate agents (I think there were a total of 12 tapes?) To anyone that is not a real estate agent, this would have been enough to make you want to poke your tympanic membranes just so that you could listen to the ringing in your ears instead. Imagine what it would have been like for small children. My parents should have been reported to child services. Anyway, as you can tell, we were severely lacking in fun road trip stuff. So, as most children will do, they will invent their own fun. Here are a couple of the games we invented during these times of trial.

Disco Lights: When the sun is setting just right and you are driving through areas with a lot of trees on the side of the road, you can close your eyes, face in the direction of the sun and watch it make “disco lights” behind your closed eye lids.

Flying house: My sister says she does not remember this, but I do. We imagined what it would be like to go wherever you wanted to go without having to leave your house because it flew. We imagined all kinds of thing that the flying house would be able to do and have. Like a special separate house that flew with the big house but was just for my sister and me and we could take it out on our own etc...

My sister played her own games too, and they usually involved things like “see how fast you can embarrass an older sister”. This would take the form of sticking your tongue out and staring at the car behind you out the back window.

To add insult to injury, my Mother would stock up the car with road trip food, like sandwiches, juice& snacks. The snacks would be along the lines of Scotch Mints, Eat more candy bars, and All Sorts. That is the most revolting assortment of road trip snack food that you could give a child.

 

Click to enlargehttp://www.hersheycanada.com/en/products/details/eatmore/images/full_product.jpghttp://canadiandelicacies.com/candies/scotch_mints1.gif

Left overs for another load

Just a few large bowls

Kiln all loaded on Sunday

Great Goblets Batman!

This is a few days old, but just to give u an idea about how crazy Calgary weather is, it is now -25is outside...

Looks like Calgary is Canada’s hot spot again today. We are sitting at 13 oC (55.4oF) right now and it’s still January. Sure beats the -29 we had a few weeks ago.

Fairview Studios is having a pot luck dinner tomorrow night. Kind of a “Throw Your Winter Blues Away” party. Apparently I will be doing a demo of my choice and then a demo of Dave’s choice, but he is not telling me what it is. All he would say is that it didn’t involve naked throwing (nobody needs to see that).

I have been working on 1 piece goblets lately. I don’t normally make them, but for some reason, I have been making a lot of them. I have always made them in 2 parts in the past, and I think that is why I never make them. Too hard to make them all the same, and they are a pain in the neck to put together. These however are relatively easy to throw, and then the final shape is revealed in the trimming,. I have been trimming really slender stems on them, so that is the next step – see if they make it through the firing without bending over and kissing the pot next to them.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Long Day

I am sitting here in the YYC (Calgary) airport (terminal 49 to be exact) waiting for my 49 minute flight to Edmonton(YYG airport). It is rather hilarious that it took me longer to drive to the airport than it will to fly to Edmonton (it was rush hour and the roads were jam packed), and that I have now been waiting in the airport since 6:15 and it is now 7:32, and I have been waiting longer that it will take to fly. 
I am not driving to Edmonton because I would have had to leave after work, and it takes 3 hours to get there blah blah blah. Oh well, at least I get to catch up on my blog reading/writing.
I will be staying in the Holiday Inn, and I need to be at my training session by 8am tomorrow morning. This training runs until 5pm, and then my flight leaves at 9 pm tomorrow night. What the heck am I going to do for 4 hours in Edmonton? Nothing, just sit in the airport and maybe eat dinner, read a book, read all the blogs that have been piling up.
Anyway, I plan on going into the studio after work at Ceramics Canada on Saturday, and then again first thing in the morning. I have to do this whole airport waiting thing again Sunday evening though, so I wont be playing in the mud all day.

Did not get a chance to post this before the plane boarded, so this is part 2:

We boarded at 7:40 pm, and we took off at something like 8:15, and then we circled the airport for a few minutes, so we were late landing (9pm). The Airport in Edmonton is so far away from ANYTHING. I wouldn't even say it is in Edmonton. Add to that that the roads here are so sloppy with at least 5 inches of melting snow and slush, the cab ride took about 45 minutes and so I did not get to the hotel until about 10 pm.
I requested a wake up call for 6am (yuck!!), and I have absolutely no idea how long it will take me to get to were I need to go tomorrow morning. Oh well, I will get a cab for 7ish and and if I get there early, then I get there early.
Anyway, it is now late, and I need to get up very early, so I'm going to hit the sack.

Friday, January 14, 2011

too busy to blog

It's been a while, I know. I have been getting used to working in a new office, on the other side of the city. It actually takes me less time to get there in the morning, I think. The weather has been really cold and snowy here, so traffic is always stupid. The drive home however is horrible no matter what the weather is like, so it takes me longer to get home after work. The studio is on the opposite side of town from the new office, so I have to fight even more traffic to get there after work. I also used to be able to log into blogger on my iPhone and write my blog entries that way at work as I could use the wireless connection without needing to use the cell network. Now however, the new office blocks blog sites and that includes their wireless network. So, now I am forced to write my blogs at home as well as read all the blogs I subscribe to. Don't know about anyone else out there, but when you spend all day looking at a computer screen, the last thing you really want to do is look at a computer when you get home. So, it seems that my blogging with be greatly curtailed, but I am sure that is no loss, it's not like I am writing the next great masterpiece or anything :)
I also just found out that I will need to travel to Edmonton a couple of times in the next week and half for some training sessions for work, and it will seriously impinge on my time in the studio. I will need to fly out Thursday night, spend the day there, fly back Friday night, and then fly up again on Sunday, spend the day there on Monday and fly back that night. so, the only full day I will have at the studio will be on Saturday (maybe some time on Sunday, but not much). I have lived in Calgary for the past 36 years, and even though Edmonton is only approximately a 3 hour drive north, I have never been to Edmonton. I have passed through on a Greyhound bus, but that's it. I've been to Australia, Ireland, New York, Montreal, etc, but never Edmonton.
I finally managed to get some pots down to the Galleria in Inglewood today at lunch. I needed to get some more stock down there before their annual pottery sale. I didn't have much (Christmas pretty much cleaned me out), but I did have some new stuff, and I have some more on the way, I just need to glaze it, and then I can take it down.
Other than that, I have returned to my regular schedule at the studio, and have been working on some new things. I have begun to exaggerate the rims on a few teapots by forming a really recessed gallery and then further pulling up the rim, flaring it out and making it undulate around the pot. I have also begun the make goblets. I don't normally make them, but I have begun to make them in one part, whereas in the past, I had always made them in 2 parts, and I hated making them cause they never really worked well. These ones have so far proven to be relatively simple to throw, and time will tell if the shape and construction fires well.
Anyway, that's what I've been up to and I will try to set more regular blogging time, I actually found that I missed being able to put my thoughts and activities down "on paper". It's late, I'm tired, and I'm going to sleep.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

What I did on my Christmas holidays

I spent the holiday with my parents, my sister and her fiance, our great Aunt and our Cousin Wayne. The dinner was excellent. But after that I was pretty much always at the studio. I opened and closed mon thru fri and got a lot of work done. I fired a glaze load with some pretty great results. Here are a few pics of what I got up to
 





And then I was struck down on New Years eve. I came home from the studio, had dinner, and then almost instantly, I had a fever, with chills and everything but my teeth hurt. The weird thing is that it began at 6pm and ended at 9:30. I have not developed any other symptoms, so whatever I had, it was not too serious.