Breakage of One Sort But Not of Another

Coffee, real caffeine-laden, full throttle coffee for the first time in three weeks in the Los Angeles skyline mug, "All I Want to Do" by Sugarland on iTunes. Maybe I should have stuck to decaffeinated as the adrenaline and pain continue to shudder through my body and I know I'm going to be seriously stiff later.

This morning before beginning my post I ran over to the studio to get the three new Cloudstone pieces that I am debuting at ACRE to photograph and post. I ground the majority of the punties off on my flat lap (I'll do the rest on Licha's lathe later this morning) and decided to bring everything back to the house to photograph. Arms full of glass, juggling the camera, keys and coffee cup full of steaming goodness I head across the yards to home. I am daydreaming about names for these gorgeous new pieces as I start up the deck stairs... and trip, sprawling.

The glass is, apparently, well-annealed and very sturdy. I have a lump under my chin where one piece hit me on the way down, my knee is swelling from a very hard knock on the stairs and I lost 6/7 of my coffee, but nothing broke. Whew. Dave has since requested that I carry no more than two glass pieces at a time. I shakily get enverything the rest of the way p the stairs (in two trips) and I photograph the pieces with wobbly hands.

Today I try a super-secret new technique that I have never seen or heard of done before--simple though it is and vast though the world of kiln-formed glass experimenters is. Individual techniques have all been tried (there is nothing new under the sun) but combinatory techniques, ahh I think I may be trying something quite original. It's never too soon to work on a Niche piece!

Okay, that's enough good and happy news (except for the fall--it wasn't good or happy as I'm not into pain). Back to the saga of the crate of my work that was dropped last year while in the custody of the storage facility in Las Vegas. The work that I need for the ACRE show at the end of next week...

Yesterday I compared the pictures I took of my ACRE booth last year with the pictures the storage company took of the pieces they unpacked from my crate this week to determine how much broke. A disturbing pattern emerged: there are NO rectangular platters in their photos. I called just to make sure they hadn't missed sending me a photo (they took the pictures as they unloaded each plastic tub of work so each picture shows groupings of like pieces). They hadn't. So there is an *entire box* of my work broken and missing, or at least missing.

I tried to ask some gentle questions as to how something like this could have happened a year ago and I am only just now being notified, but the person of whom I need to ask these questions is not in the office this week (or is hiding under his desk follishly hoping I'll go away). If it was my employee who had a dropped a case of glass art I was storing for a customer and I was not in the office, I would make damn sure I was available by cell phone for a conversation with said customer who has every right to be really freaked out and vociferously unhappy at being informed at the eleventh hour that an unknown quantity of her work was destroyed *a year ago* and she is just now being told.

I have been *very* calm, *very* nice, and *more than very* understanding with the two people at the facility with whom I have been able to speak about the Unfortunate Occurrence (the administrative assistant and the warehouse manager) because I do not believe them to have been at fault for any of this mess. But I am at the end of my patience with the facility manager who has not even called me to express his dismay and sincere desire to make things right for me in the wake of this Calamitous Disaster. A whole box of pieces gone! The "goneness" implies someone opened the crate and removed it *last year* when they dropped the crate! Outrageous! (I begin to froth...)

The information I did get from the administrative assistant and the warehouse manager also implied that the facility manager was aware of both the dropping incident and the breakage. (I continue to get *very* worked up about the situation--hyperventilation might occur). There will be a reckoning. There will be a bill. Heaven help them if they don't make me VERY happy next week when the facility manager is back in the office.