The Day Flies Already

In the spirit of Posting Every Day, I am dashing off a quick one before getting the kiln loads in. Yesterday really had its ups and downs. I am having great difficulty making any headway on the items on my To Do list. While this sounds like an inconsequential problem as problems go, it is causing me Great Anxiety. Enough anxiety that I was up and stressed at 5:30 am again this morning. Well, maybe "up" is a bit of a stretch. I did get up for a couple of minutes for nature, but I wasn't really "up". In fact I wasn't even totally awake; I was in more of a half state, plagued with horrible, anxious dreams and semi-lucid fears of deadlines looming. I am reminded of one of my favorite signature tags: "I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by." --  Douglas Adams. Only I am not so much loving them right now (where did I put the Tums?).

 Let's move on to yesterday's highlights. The phone rang right after we opened and it was an enameling artist wanting to know about using Bullseye powders for copper enameling. After a few minutes of talking, he announced that he was really more of a visual person and could he come over and see what I was talking about. I said sure, and thus began a very enjoyable couple of hours picking the brain of another wholesale production glass artist/small business owner (jack-of-all-business). Houston Llewllyn has not been making a living at enameling copper art pieces for long, but he sure has built an incredible business. He is so organized I feel like a total slacker--and the quality of both the art and the manufacturing are amazing. He casually left one of his pieces for us as thanks for the time we gave him, and it now has pride of place on our mantle. He left with several bottles of Bullseye powders, and though I fear they are not going to work for him as well as true enamels do (color saturation issues), I really hope they work out and we see more of him. (And I want to pick his brain for the enameling section of the new book.)

But after Houston left, everything went to hell in a handbasket (I can't resist: "Houston, we have a problem"). I didn't have time to get my kiln loads in for the day, and, Primus, the first glass furnace and the one I put back into service after bring both of them back from Olympic Kilns on Tuesday, started acting up again. He errored out on Tuesday night so I had to cancel yesterday's lesson and started his warm-up all over again. He reached temp (2100 degrees F) between 5:00 and 6:00, and the temperature suddenly and inexplicably started dropping. Tadashi and I both tried everything we could think of to figure out what was wrong, but we failed. 

Fortunately, Secondus, the second glass furnace (I just noticed that all the Olympic Kilns are male and the Denvers and the Skutt are female... wonder what that's all about) was ready to jump in and take over... but his cord wouldn't reach the outlet with Primus in the way. Sigh. After a run to Lowe's by Tadashi and some electrical-extension creation, we got Secondus loaded up and he seems to be chugging along fine this morning. Now I need to figure out when I can get Primus back to Olympic for some extended testing (I leave Sunday for a week-long weaving workshop at Harrisville Designs on Sunday).

But I must end on a happy note. Today is my 16th wedding anniversary and I couldn't be luckier or happier in my marriage. Thank you, Dave, for the best 16 years of my life. Now off to load those kilns!!!!