Monday, May 19, 2008

I'm Baaack! (Again)

Coffee in the Denver skyline mug, the gurgle of the frog fountain spitting into the front porch pond and the conversations of birds for music. Home sweet home. I post from the skychair this morning, surveying a yard still drenched from last night's rain and covered in last week's explosion of weeds. Oh dear. Gone one week and the pokeweed in the back is already five feet tall--it grows faster than the bamboo! Much though I would like nothing better than to grab a hoe and hit the dirt in this fine 59 degree weather, I have a studio to run. Besides, it'll be 81 before the day is out and that's just too hot to garden for me. (The studio has air conditioning and I might even turn it on today.)

Yesterday I should have posted as I fired three kiln loads (two biggies and a medium) and caught up on all the correspondence that accumulated while I cruised the Caribbean. But yesterday was for getting the vacation pics and info up on Stranded in the South--this might be the first vacation I've actually managed to post about in two years... Today, tomorrow, and Wednesday there are orders to finish and ship, and the bulk of the week--and the firings--is dedicated to preparing work for the Decatur Arts Festival this coming weekend.

It's a good thing I just had a vacation as I updated my firing schedule last night and I don't have a day off now till June! However another benefit of being gone for a week is that the payments for previously shipped orders also accumulated in my absence giving me the false sense that I am not working for free. I'll just keep telling myself that I am growing the business and investing in the future--and no pay is better than commuting and working in an office...

One of the new clients I picked up at ACRE is a big casino in Vegas. Working with them might turn out to be a mixed blessing as anyone doing business with a Vegas casino is apparently intensely scrutinized by the Nevada Gaming Commission (can you say Ocean's 11?). It's not that I have anything to hide, but I'm also a single business owner/artist. I don't have a million dollar liability insurance policy for both my business and my car (I don't even *have* a business car). And all the business licensing docs. Feh. I got them when I started, at a previous address, with a slightly different name...

In a previous life I worked as a software engineer for a large company and was hired to install a system in the secure area at Los Alamos. When I got to the entrance they told me I'd need to leave my laptop, my cd's, my cellphone, my pager, my palm pilot and any other electronic or computing device I had on me at the gate--I couldn't take them in. I asked how I was supposed to install software if I couldn't even get it in the building, and how was I supposed to test it if I couldn't get on their network to use it? They were mystified. It was a challenge. We overcame. Shades of Los Alamos revisit me as I try to fulfill the documentation requirements to be a vendor for a casino.

Now off to the studio where chaos awaits for another jampacked, laugh-a-minute week.

1 comment:

Bill said...

Which casino?