Austin Texas!

Austin Texas, we are here and it is fine! The Austin Fine Arts Festival is this weekend, and we have a few days to chill with friends and relatives beforehand. Details about the journey can be found shortly on Stranded in the South.

Coffee is Green Mountain Sumatran Reserve in an elegant black mug. Most importantly it is coffee from a Keurig coffee maker. Oh my. This is technology at its finest--exactly what I would expect to find in Austin. A fresh, hot cup of coffee in five seconds with no clean-up. For the ecologically and fiscally conscious there is a MY K-CUP reusable K-Cup filter assembly which allows you to use your own coffee (some clean-up there). The default is little individual packs of coffee that look like creamer containers that you put in the coffee maker and throw away after brewing. Music is from the dvd Aladdin which Jessie is watching on the Big tv.

It is only bested by the wireless access I have from the Linksys WUSB adapter I borrowed from my friend Bryon. (He and Vanessa are also the owners of the coffee maker and our hosts for the next few days.) So for those who need to know, there is a wireless network adapter that plugs into a USB port on your computer and it can be as fast as a regular network card. It is also a lot cheaper and easier to install--as a USB device it is plug and play--than the internal solution. So I am off to Fry's today to shop. Heh. Like I needed an excuse.

On the glass front, because I am in Austin I am obviously not in the studio today. However that does not mean I am not working! I got a call from two galleries yesterday whose orders I shipped before I left. One called to report four pieces broken in shipment, bummer. So I call UPS today to get the breakage investigated and reimbursed. Fortunately the pieces were all Archetype Industrials so I can easily replace them when I get back. The other gallery wants me to send them a sink on commission. They carry two other artists' fused glass sinks and when I met the owner at the BMAC she was very interested in having one in Morceaux de Verre. I have been wanting to do another one and now I have a reason!

Finally, I begin work with my new web designer today. Time to get that website up and going and boy am I ready! In fact, I think I will post this and call to talk to him right now.