The Kiln is Almost Done

8:49 am, coffee in the Alaska mug, "Blame it on Me" by the Barenaked Ladies on the iPod, and the day has begun. Well it actually began at 7:40 when I wrangled my sleepy child out of bed and into the bathroom to get ready for (pre)school. I then took my spouse to the train station, my child to school and stayed at school with my power drill to put up a miniblind in her classroom. I am Buildings & Grounds doncha know.

Now I blog, get caught up on bills and finances and I wait for the Maytag repairman to get here and Fix My Washer! Waiting for servicemen, like Godot, is a whole 'nother topic and gets its own post later on Stranded in the South. The iPod keeps me company as John Mellencamp is introduced by They Might be Giants and followed by the Midgetmen. It doesn't usually take me three songs to write a paragraph, I must be off my game and still in the timeslip from the other day.

Monday ended with three impossible tasks crammed into one little hour and as I am not Dr. Who and have no Tardis, they did not get done. Yesterday morning bright and early my new next-door neighbor Shane and his brother-in-law Roy came over and spent almost the entire day putting my new kiln lid on for me. It turned out to be quite a chore as the kiln was missing the four posts for the lid clamps and the electric box on the top middle was too large to fit between the steel framing from the old kiln. The framing is necessary to keep the lid from warping at high temps so I ran it around the corner to my local body shop and paid $75 cash for a piss-poor un and re-weld of two joints. I hope they are better than they actually look as the welds need to hold the weight of the lid on my counterweight system...

So far a boring, technical post and it reflects a tedious, boring day. There were two bright spots in it (or one bright spot and one really surreal spot) and they are Stranded in the South today as they are not glass related. For glass related, the Jewish Museum in New York is getting anxious for their Seder sets, I haven't finished the last two pieces of the dinnerware commission yet, I have yet to sort my inventory for shipment to distant and delivery to local galleries, I am at least 30 days past due on paying some bills--due to time and not financial constraints thankfully, my website is still really dismal (untouched), and the book? Well, at least that one is not my fault: I am STILL waiting to hear back on the *contract* edits I sent in before going to California two weeks ago.

On the plus side, I am up-to-date on shipping the orders I took at the BMAC and I am not yet behind on fusing upcoming orders. So I wait this morning for Maytag (and get caught up on blogs and bills), and this afternoon I put new fiber blanket in the top of each side of the kiln, drill for and install and the latch posts for the lid, hook up the counter-weight, and do a fuse. I did the burn-in firing last night (and boy did it stink!).

I debated doing a test-fuse today, but the controller did not change, nor did the size of the box or the placement of the shelves. All I have done is put in new (and probably more efficient) elements and upped the insulation so I am going to go against safest practices and jump in with a real firing. Worst case, I lose some glass and waste some time, best case, I am on-time for all of my current fusing obligations.