T-27

Coffee in the Atlanta skyline mug as my virtual journey west continues. Forbidden Forest by George Winston on iTunes, no writing yesterday. No studio work at all till 5:00 pm. So what, you might ask did I do all day? Who knows. I was on the computer all day--except for the 2-1/2 hours I took to take Jessie to the dentist for the first time (she did great and wants to be a dentist for Halloween now--she gets off on the rubber gloves. Don't go there.).

Oh yeah, I also finally figured out how many circles of what sizes I need to have for the 60 PopArt platter and plate sets I have committed to being able to provide (spreadsheets rule). I will make up 40, ship 20 of those, and have the materials on hand top make another 20 if asked. I hate purchase orders with a "hold for confirmation". And I ordered the circles. Another $1,000+. Not an expense I was planning, and one I have to take on against the eventuality of an order rather than against scheduled income. In a way I can see where knowing exactly how many of what size circles I have and having them sorted and stored by size will enable me to manage my inventory and plan my designs better (and manage my production costs). But business growing pains are still pains.

Today started really late as I completely lost it and scheduled way more than could possibly fit in the big kiln last night for the fuse load. And the schedule is such that I couldn't just save some and do it today--the kilns are already scheduled for a slump load (the big kiln) and a book project (the medium kiln). I did have the little kiln unscheduled and I do have to use it to fuse the one piece I couldn't fit in last night. So how did I mess up so badly? I tempted the fates, that's how.

The day before yesterday I looked at my schedule and thought I was so far ahead I had room to put in a couple of pieces for the November Taylor Kinzel glass show or the One of a Kind Show in Chicago in December. Might as well start squirreling them away now, went my reasoning. Then yesterday morning I pulled an order from a new gallery in PA off the fax. It was a little start-up order and I thought I could just squeeze it in with the last of the PopArt platters and plates for the catalog and the order for the gallery in Chicago. About 9:00 (I took a dinner/family break form 6:15-7:30) I looked in the kiln and, holy sh*t, it was almost full! And I had already made another unscheduled "extra" piece! So I finished filling the big kiln, then I filled the medium kiln, then I filled the little kiln and fired them all up. It was 10:30. I went down and shut the kiln lid on the big kiln at 11:45 (it actually started firing at 10:00 and was--I hope--at a high enough temp to have burned off the organic binders in the shelf paper so the PopArts don't get a milky haze on the bottom.

When I woke this morning I was singing the chorus of the Monty Python Spam song, only instead of spam, spam, spam, spam I sang beans, beans, beans, beans as what woke me up was the sound of Dave grinding the coffee beans at 7:30. Honest, I woke up and the words were already coming out of my mouth before I was even awake. It's desperate times here. I didn't even start this post till everyone had left for school and work. And now I am dragging.

Fortunately, it is a light day in the studio--a slump load in the big kiln and the table project to fuse the medium kiln. The rest of the day is really, truly BOOK. T-27. Twenty-seven days till the book is due at the publisher. Yee Haw.