Catch Upping

Happy day after the first day of summer! (Obviously I wrote this a few days ago.)

What have I been doing? I'm on a four-day break between Crunch-sitting gigs, so I've been catching up on sleep (I don't sleep well in strange beds), teaching at the studio for teachers who have been taking time off, slowly catching up on housework, you know, the usual.

It's been hot as Hades here recently. Yesterday it reached 102 degrees, which is insane. It's too hot to be out during the daytime except to give the garden or patio plants a quick, wilt-preventing drink from the hose. All the other creatures in the casita are wisely staying inside, where the air conditioner rules.

I haven't been working too much on my own stuff at the studio--teaching tends to eat up a lot of the energy I would normally pour into my own work--but I did manage to glaze a few mugs for a soon-to-be soda firing. (Though not too many mugs as one of the less experienced staff is firing the soda kiln this time and I want to see how that goes before I commit more pieces. Soda firing tends to be a gamble under the best circumstances and I'm enough of a control freak that gambling on anything has never appealed to me.)

I've also been wrestling with a bout of vertigo, which I had several months back and which I solved with some simple exercises. Apparently, it's something that I may have to deal with somewhat indefinitely, but at least the fix at this point is relatively simple. Still sucks though.


A Few Days Later, Yesterday:

Yesterday I had lunch with my aunt Char, whom I have not seen in six weeks or so. We went for dim sum and ate and ate and ate. 

Yesterday Kelly and I went to the New Mexico Arts & Crafts Show for a little look-see. I didn't buy the $200 dollar pair of earrings that resembled bedsprings, even though I very much wanted them and very nearly pulled out my wallet. I did buy a mug from a potter from Roswell, Geneva Baily, and one from a potter who works at the studio where I work. There were a number of potters there showing functional ware, but almost nothing terribly inspiring. (I tend to largely feel that way about functional ware though. I don't have an eye for it much.) The "non-functional" potters were out of my price range or, more often, were making stuff that I wouldn't want anyway.

It was way too hot to be out in the middle of the day though, so when I got back home I lay down for a nap with--no joke--a big plastic blue ice block from the freezer.

In the evening, Dave and I sat outside and ate tacos on the patio.