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Brad's Blog
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Since blogging is riding a crest of popularity, and I have time to waste, I'm introducing this as a new feature. I've always viewed my whole webpage as a blog with actual content, but now will try adding comments to this page on a regular basis for the more ephemeral thoughts. Click here to zoom down to today's entry.
Anyway, before I forget, I've been reading two mystery
writers from New York lately, who've both been favorites for years.
Lawrence Block evolved at least three major series, with Bernie Rhodenbarr
(a thief who has to solve murders that he gets implicated in), a recovering
alcoholic detective (classic noir), and a secret agent named Tanner who
received a brain injury so that he never sleeps (comfort for insomniacs
around the world). Donald Westlake has a similar thief series (though
more in the comic heist caper genre) with the Dortmunder series, as well
as many other classic crime novels. Westlake has a lighter and more
humorous touch. But they are both such good writers that it's hard
to dissociate in a way that leads to sleep.
So my bed novel is by A.E. Van Vogt, a very creative
if quirky science fiction writer, who wrote mostly in the 1950's.
He was known to write without an outline, and the story meanders by leaps
and bounds, often with awkward and dreamlike enough phrasing to encourage
slumber. In spite of this he pulled off some great stories set in
the way distant future.
Bonus blog:
The weather is rain, rain, rain, with snow on the mountains
(about an inch today, and 3/4 inch yesterday, and predicted through the
week). This is good news for farmers and skiers alike. In the
arid west, we tend to get rain for a period in the spring, then go totally
dry for July and August (hence our biggest tourist and fire months), often
into September. When we lived in the wheat country, the farmers had
to wait for the first rains of fall to soften the dirt clods so they could
work the fields to plant the winter wheat (which is the more reliable of
the two kinds of wheat). Some years there was scarcely enough rain
to germinate the wheat, and then scarcely enough snow to cover the young
seedlings and protect them from the winter cold. So the rain is good
in its season. If the rain falls in the normal dry months, it can
cause the grain to sprout while still standing, reducing its value precipitously
(perhaps I should have said as in the old Tom Swifties, "Tom said precipitously...")
Nov. 2
I heard today from a blog reader named May Luk from London,
who's lived in major cities around the world, and enjoys reading the blog
partially to find out what life outside of big cities is like.
I think it's similar to big cities in one way.
Currently there's a mayoral race with major mudslinging involved.
Enough politics. I agreed yesterday to play banjo
and sing with a group from our local church at a Teamsters dinner in Spokane
on Friday. So we practiced this evening. The group is limping
a bit from one member having a tooth infection and another with pneumonia.
I'd considered bowing out, since I have 3 more performances scheduled through
the weekend, but I'm now glad to help them out. It's also the only
"paying gig" of the weekend--lunch plus $10.00. Remind me sometime
why I'm not rich...
My son Birrion skied for the first time today, hiking up the mountain at the local ski resort. He saw two moose up there--a good sign for lots of snow--my wife said, as all the skiers here are grasping at any straws hoping for a better ski year than last, which was ended in January with a major thaw.
Earlier this week I said we would be short a member for our Musicians Anonymous concert this weekend. The bass player who plays in a duo with me agreed to help fill in the sound, so we're hopefully able to deal with the imbalance.
Nov. 3
It rained all afternoon, and the first sticky snow plops
appeared at dusk. The rain totalled 1 and 1/2 inches, and nothing
but rain and snow are in the forecast. Snow is visible on the ridge
this morning. My skiing son is happy. The carrots are still
in the garden...
Today I built a new display case for all the CD's and videos I attempt to market. The deadline for this project was Saturday, the Fall Folk Festival, as it seems one place I might be able to sell some music (although I haven't had much luck previously). I spent the evening packing pottery for the craft sale part of the festival. Every craft sale seems to consume a day on either side of the event--one reason I've cut back a lot on doing them. Currently most of the ones I do either involve a worthy charity or music, giving them (for me) an extra cachet of respectability.
Nov. 4
It's snowing this evening, in a way that may mean traffic
troubles by morning. It's funny how one of the later frosts in local
history (2 days ago in Spokane--a month or so ago here) is followed
hard upon by early winter.
This noon I sang with a church group entertaining retired Teamsters. Every musical group I'm involved in has its unique opportunities--in this case harmony gospel singing. The group we were playing for was staid enough that they had someone read a joke as part of the entertainment. Later, as they read the minutes from the last meeting, they noted who read the joke at that meeting. Clearly they need my mother to liven things up.
The rest of the day was caught up in getting ready for
the Folk Festival, and digging carrots from the garden in case this snow
is here for good.
My son and I also put the snow tires on one of our cars
today, with mixed results. If there were a tire place in town, I'd
take it there, but the nearest is 10 miles away, and at this time of year
the wait can be long, so it's easier to put your tires on yourself, generally.
The exception is that one of the lug nuts would not come off, and finally
snapped off at our urging. I think it was probably cross threaded,
and in our defense, done at a tire place last spring (in spring there's
not such a rush to get the snow tires off, unless the studs become illegal...).
Nov. 5
Meanwhile in our own family circus, son Birrion went to a ski swap this morning to get me some modern hourglass shaped skis (I've been skiing on 1960's straight skis which were also bought at a ski swap for $10 many years ago. Birrion mentioned he saw my old ski models there for $10 again. They're good skis--I never did wear them out, though they started wearing me out with turns in powder... My son wears out at least a set per year of these new style ones (well, his are twin tips, so you can land backwards or forwards), so I'll keep my old ones in case the modern ones prove obsolescent.
Nov. 6
Every circus must end, and as I dozed off listening to
a recording of one of my performances at the Spokane Fall Folk Festival,
I realized I'd better write down a summary before I crash completely.
Whether due to my provided (to the organizers) description (traditional
acoustic Christian hymns), or from being first on the schedule, it was
a small audience (under a dozen), but they listened intently to make up
for their lack of numbers. Being totally an ear-trained musician,
I figured out while performing that even if I have various clever ways
to vary a piece to keep it interesting, I have no way of remembering what
those ways might be when performing. So it took about 15 minutes
of playing the hymns in a straightforward manner before I began to be able
to improvise more freely with the tunes.
After that performance, it was back to photographing as many acts as possible, and minding the pottery store on occasion--of which I'll only say that sales went well.
Afternoons at craft fairs usually end in fizzles, but
since our old-time band, Musicians Anonymous, was last on the schedule,
we provided our own adrenaline to making it successfully to the end.
A pleasant surprise was the fairly large crowd that stayed for the program
and seemed to appreciate us. My wife said we never sounded better
(aided by an excellent sound crew).
It's hard to come down off my favorite event of the year,
but exhaustion seems to help...
Nov. 7
Back to the workaday world today, trying to rebuild pottery
supplies before the next fair (in two weeks). I fired a bisque with
the sculptures in it (sculptures seem to waste a lot of kiln space, my
functionally oriented mind says).
We've celebrated both my mother-in-law's 87th birthday and my brother-in-law's 75th birthday in the last two days. Although quite senile, my mother-in-law was able to get into singing the birthday song, even changing the words to "happy birthday to me."
Nov. 8
Last Saturday, the tire that had a lug bolt break off,
blew out while my son was driving. There were holes in the tire large
enough to drive a truck through. Other than that the tire tread was
in great condition, so I checked the warranty and it was guaranteed against
road hazards.
Today I took it to the tire place and learned that road
hazards mean nails and stuff like that. If your tire just blows up
without any nails in it, it's not covered. This is, of course, counter-intuitive.
The tire that just blows up is more the maker's responsibility than the
nail on the road. But who said life is fair?
Nov. 9
The 100 or more pictures I took at the Fall Folk Festival
are up at http://spokanefolklore.org/FFF2005/index.html
It's a long time till such a good time for me will come
again.
I suppose that's particularly true in comparison to today's task --digging 50 lbs. of wet cold carrots out of the ground in order to store them in sand in our root cellar. A similar amount was left in the ground, covered with a dense layer of leaves. It's interesting to note that some of the carrots split as they grow, and the cavity encouraged slugs to hibernate in the crack. I mostly left those out to rot, as they aren't very usable with the big crack anyway.
In the pottery, I found a couple recipes for a gloss brown glaze in my record book, and noticed they both had the same ingredients in fairly similar amounts, so decided to mix them up, then do a small line-blend between them to see what came out best. If I remember I'll report the results here when the kiln cools in two days. Gloss brown glazes used to be common on everything from little brown jugs to electrical insulators, all glazed from the brown clay-glaze pits of Albany, New York. Then the land there became deemed more valuable as realty, and the pit was shut down. Some potters still search for bags of the original Albany Slip (I've got about 25 lbs. if you're interested), but mostly the popular culture doesn't go with gloss brown glazes too much any way. But a few customers like the color, and my bucket is nearly empty, and the recipe for it is lost, so it's time to do a bit of glaze research...
Nov. 10
My mother called to say she broke a couple antique Spode plates today. She didn't get much sympathy, as I generally break a pot or two per day at some point in the process. In fact, for quite a while I've been using a 4 gallon bucket to set my cardboard banana box on while loading it with finished pots from the kiln. Today the box tipped over with a large bowl and about a dozen creamers in it. The first time it fell, I set the box up again on the same bucket and put the unbroken ones back in it. Then I thought I ought to check the large bowl closer (give it the ring test--if it rings it's not cracked). So I lifted it out of the box which made the box fall over to break a few more creamers. And sure enough, the large bowl was cracked as well. I'll recycle it as a planter. I've retired the bucket, and gotten a larger based short table to set the box on, so perhaps I'm actually learning from one of my mistakes.
Also today we were spreading leaves in one of our gardens. We like leaves well enough to stop and fill the car with garbage bags full that are left on the curb to be hauled away. We reuse the leaf bags for garbage, which is a bonus. The leaf mulch breaks down over the winter, and in the spring is either raked aside for planting, turned in, or covered with a layer of horse manure. Our soil was gravel before we started doing this...
Nov. 11
I got the garden carrots stored away in wet sand in the
root cellar today. There's enough left over that we'll be offering
them to friend and foe alike.
We also got a new fireplace catalytic insert stove for our house, replacing a pellet stove. The pellet stove, like apparently the charcoal grill, was developed to make use of industrial waste (sawdust, in both cases. I've heard that Henry Ford figured out he could make some of his wastes into charcoal). The pellet stove never appealed to us, with a noisy fan and small artificial looking fire that didn't produce enough heat to heat the house. So we went with a local stove maker (and a model he's been making for 25 years), and it's being fired up for the first time currently.
It's also sleeting out currently, with 1-2 inches of snow predicted by morning. All of today's musings are portents of winter.
Nov. 13
Well, it's still sleety, but stayed above freezing enough
here that winter is still a few hundred feet of elevation away.
In the meantime, I was photographing something the other day and the lens cap dropped off the lens to the ground, and in reaching suddenly to get it, I sprained my back (a recurring problem). It's now a couple days later and I've hopes for recovery in the next couple days, which is pretty necessary in order to do the lifting involved in pottery making.
On to other topics. I was looking at some pictures of the tornadoes that hit in Iowa yesterday, since it was near a former hometown, and while I felt sympathy with the victims, one picture showed a damaged gas station with prices of gas under $2.00 per gallon. It was that image that caught my imagination, since gas is $2.40 here, and we travel a lot, so I got sidetracked off the issue of the tornado onto the vagaries of the gas pricing. I know there are international readers of this blog, and that gas varies widely around the world (usually has been about twice as expensive in Europe, for example, so I have no reason to moan at the current prices). But the recent fluctuations have brought about great disparities in pricing. It used to be in Spirit Lake we'd pay 5 to 10 cents more per gallon than in nearby larger towns. Today in one of those towns gas was $2.08, or 32 cents cheaper per gallon. At least such prices give them a healthy competitive edge...
Nov. 14
The thing I was photographing the other day, when I sprained
my back, was this picture intended for this blog:
It shows the test tiles for the brown glazes I've been
working on. At either end are two glazes that use the same ingredients,
but in different proportions, with the middle being mixtures of the two.
They are both supposed to be brown glazes, but when fired electrically
some iron browns turn green, as the one on the right has. I like
using hybrids, so I was inclined to mix a batch of one of the middle mixes.
Then, while entering them into my glaze chemistry database, I discovered
a couple more recipes, so decided to test them also before settling on
a new brown gloss glaze. They'll be out in a couple days.
Meanwhile, my back is still mostly recovering. I went to a clay arts guild meeting to plan the 26 potter sale we're having in December, which nicely combines all our various other skills (accounting, promotion, music, organization) into a hopefully successful sales event.
Nov. 15
I woke up this morning with the name for an experimental
comic strip that I then went ahead and started today. I like the
fact that distribution doesn't have to be through a syndicate, just user
to user on the internet. I also like that it can be in color, since
there's no ink costs involved. It may take awhile to evolve details
like characters, names, plots, etc, but who's in a hurry. I made
the first 5 days' worth today, so I don't have to worry about writer's
block for a while. Here's the page link: http://sondahl.com/soc/soc.html
When I was in Spokane tonight, I walked around downtown, and Harold Lloyd movies were being shown on a building wall by a supper club by video projector. It was a real joy for me, as I'm a big Harold Lloyd fan, and I was aware a new 3 DVD set of his silent films was just released this week. I like all of the big 3 of silent comedy--Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd. But Lloyd's characters are by today's standards the least sappy, on average. And his legendary feats of physical derring-do add to the fine entertainment he provided. To tie this paragraph in with the previous, Lloyd's comedy was episodic and flowing as I'd like the comic to become, which is part of why I called it Stream of Consciousness.
Nov. 16
I'm having fun with the Stream of Consciousness cartoon,
so now I've posted a week's worth (and made about 20 days worth).
The challenge with a blog, daily cartoon, or newspaper column, is to stay
ahead of the curve. This may just be another trial balloon, but it's
tugging at my hand wanting to fly. Being essentially a new medium,
though, the 20th day shows some improvement over the first. My wife
says it may appeal to post modernists...
My back was well enough to move firewood again today. The weather is hovering around freezing, day and night, so we're heating like it's winter.
Nov. 18
I suppose I need assertiveness training, but I'm too
wimpy to go and get it. Earlier this week I took the car to a muffler
place (local car repair Spirit Lake style--30 miles away). They needed
to get a special muffler so I made an appointment for today.
When I arrived, the office woman told me the muffler
guy was gone to Spokane for a meeting, and might not be back for a while.
"You have a lot of errands?" she asked hopefully.
Actually I did have a lot of errands, but none of them
near the muffler shop, but I went for a walk and came back an hour later.
She confessed sheepishly that the muffler guy might still
be gone for hours, so she suggested trying again another time. So
I made an appointment again.
It all reminds me of one of my few forays into acting,
playing some minor character in Endgame, who tells the meandering story
of an Englishman who takes his pants to the tailor, and has to keep coming
back to see if they're done...
Although I'd pretty much wasted a morning and 60 miles
of driving, I didn't let my exasperation show to the office lady.
Instead I'm ranting to the world (albeit a small one) of my blog.
But I'm not ranting to the point of mentioning the name of the muffler
shop--that wouldn't be nice...
The morning wasn't totally wasted. I'd been thinking of getting some more lighting to improve on the double florescent unit which lights our year-round showroom. After stopping in a lighting showroom and figuring anything there would cost $200, I stopped at the new Habitat for Humanity store, which turned out to be like any other second-hand store, only all hardware related... I got a couple of double aluminum sort of spot lights for $10 which seemed much more in keeping with our lifestyle than the $200 tracklights.
Nov 19
I mixed a 10 Kg. batch of the new brown gloss glaze today.
I should see the results in a couple days.
My wife sold pots at a craft fair in Osburn, Idaho
today. I'd mostly phased out craft fairs, but finally decided it
was the best way to get into the holiday shopping, since locally we have
snow and icy roads that curtails the random wanderer. On Sunday I'll
take my turn at the booth.
Nov. 20
I realized partway to the craft fair today, that I'd
forgotten my book that was to get me through the 6 hour event.
It was an ill portent. Two day craft fairs, except
in the height of summer, are bad ideas. It started slow and went
downhill from there. I sold two pots, totalling $13.00. It
reminded me again why I don't like craft fairs. If I don't sell anything
from my home sales area, at least I have the comforts of home...
The saving grace for the day was that since I'd forgotten
my book, I stopped and bought a tablet of paper, and settled in at the
fair to draw out "Stream of Consciousness" comic ideas. I got at
least another month's worth, but they still have to be made into images,
so my spare time will be busier for a while with this kind of goofing off.
Currently I'm adding a couple strips per day, since I've got a good backlog,
and want to have enough out to pique people's interest in the idea....
Nov. 21
So I opened the front flap of the backpack that I bring
with me with my lunch and everything to art fairs, and there was the book
I thought I'd forgotten yesterday...
In the movie version of The Wizard of Oz, now I know
how Dorothy felt when the witch told her that the ruby slippers could have
gotten her home at any time... ("You mean I had to endure flying
monkeys, a shredded scarecrow, a near poppy overdose, for nothing?")
So I mentioned it to my wife, who then remembered she'd
stuck the book in there before I left, and meant to tell me where she'd
put it.
It was a funny "rest of the story" ending... Today
I also got the muffler repaired at the time requested in the amount of
time estimated at less than the price quoted. And the Vikings squeezed
out a win over Green Bay, so things are going well.
Nov. 22
Christmas orders are beginning to come in. I'm
still adjusting to it being autumn, although the end of daylight savings
time makes the transition to dark winter more sudden...
One nice thing about Thanksgiving in the north lands,
is that the leftovers are usually pretty safe out on the back porch, which
is often used by us folks as our fridges get over full about now. For instance
lately we've been having highs of 39 and lows of 32, which are good refrigerator
temperatures. Unfortunately that's about all this weather is good for,
as we never see the sun, nor get the snow the ski resorts (and my son)
need to operate.
Nov.23
We've never been big on secular holidays, of which Thanksgiving
is one. My wife and her sister were going to volunteer to serve meals
to the homeless, but all the worker positions were filled. But we
did go to my wife's sister's place today (yes, Wednesday) for a Thanksgiving
dinner. The reason for Wednesday is that our son was intent on skiing
on Thanksgiving, so we skirted the traditional celebration by doing it
a day early. I plan to spend Thanksgiving taking care of my mother-in-law
and starting on several pottery orders.
Nov. 24
And that's just what I did...
Nov. 25
Today was busier--I footed and added handles to one kiln
load of pots, and glazed two other kiln loads. I also unloaded and priced
one kilnload, which included the final winning brown glaze (which wasn't
one of the samples shown way up above...) (My kilns are 7 cu.ft. in case
you were curious).
I learned that today is sometimes called Black Friday,
as it marks the day many retailers go in the black for the year.
If that were the case for me, the two or three customers that wandered
in today would not give me a big bump into the black.
However, due to my low overhead philosophy, I think I
probably turn profitable for the year by March or April, or June at the
latest. Usually the winter snows pretty much shut down the visits to my
shop, as the roads turn icy, parking becomes hard to find, and sometimes
a big mountain of plowed snow obscures our kiosk from the street.
Tonight the first big snow is promised. For some
reason the local weather service likes to predict 100% chances of precipitation,
which to my mind is stupid, and they often turn out to be wrong.
If they only hedged their bet by saying 90% instead of 100%, I'd have no
bone to pick with them. To me, you can only talk about a 100% chance
of precipitation if you're talking about now while it's raining.
I'm guessing the weather people, after having the same boring fog forecast
for a week, just got a bit excited at the prospect of some real weather
to predict...
Nov. 26
The weather sputtered out with only a light dusting of
snow, with temperatures dropping well below freezing for the next few days.
So besides working on a couple of projects like improving
the show room lighting and insulating a crawl space, I took it somewhat
easy today. In fact I was dozing in front of the tv watching a college
football game, when I heard some customers at the door. One of the
customers commented that I must be taking the weekend off (since I wasn't
wearing my clay covered apron...) While this was somewhat true, I
always stick to the P.G. Wodehouse dictum of "stout denial," so I pointed
out that in fact I was selling pots.
A lot of people (aspiring potters included), don't think
about the fact that every pot I make has to get sold, so I am as much a
salesperson as a craftsperson. I didn't think of it myself, starting
out, as I'm not gregarious, so I tend to sit and read books or play guitar
at craft fairs rather than chat up the visitors or hawk wares. That's
also a reason I allow my pots to sell themselves in my outdoor kiosk display
area.
The other reason, of course, is keeping overhead low.
I've never employed anyone more than for short time help for a single fair,
because if I did I would have to raise my prices astronomically to cover
the expense, and end up paying the help as much as I make.
This strategy has worked for me (with the help of my
family), but it means I'm also the advertising department, secretary, shipping
clerk, research and development section, and janitor, so I'm generally
working, with potting being only the stereotypical image associated with
me.
And sometimes I work with my eyes shut and a football
game on...
Nov. 27. I discovered a new
dimension, today, called Crawl Space. It's mostly two dimensional except
for having floor joists above you just high enough so you can't go on hands
and knees. Snakes are used to Crawl Space, but there weren't
any there--just hundreds of spiders. I'd been in Crawl Space before,
but this was my longest foray, adding insulation to the outside walls and
spring loaded vent boxes to the vent holes. The vent boxes were necessary
so that the insulation would have something to snug up against, and the
spring loaded lids on them were my idea. When combined with long
strings leading to the Crawl Space entrance, it will make it possible to
open the vents in Spring, and close them in Winter, while standing at the
Crawl Space Portal.
The physics of Crawl Space posit that everything is hard
to do. I had to spread plastic over the ground, which is sort of
like making a 20 by 40 foot bed while being under it. Another corollary
is that every tool is as far away when needed as possible. Also everything
in your pockets will leave at some point, as you try rolling from location
to location. And the cordless drill will mysteriously lose all its
charge when you are furthest from the Crawl Space Portal to the Basement
Shop.
While working in Crawl Space, I could dimly see sunshine
occurring outside, but like the characters in Plato's cave analogy, I could
only guess what a great time everyone else was probably having. That
is, until my wife showed up after sundown and said she'd thought of coming
to help me, but it was too nice outside. It's good to have
one's suppositions verified.
I'm still suffering some ill effects in every joint from
my voyage to Crawl Space--man was not meant to crawl on his belly like
a reptile...
I used muscles that haven't been used since we escaped
from the primordial ooze...
Nov. 29
We finally got some serious snow, so winter looks assured.
The ski area announced it will open on Friday, so our ski obsessed son
will be able to blend in with similarly afflicted people and appear normal
for a while.
Normal for me is going to the Tuesday night jam, in spite
of the first major snowstorm to hit the area. The snowstorm had hit
early, and I presumed it was over before I started driving in. Nowadays
you can check the webcams of the freeway before you start, to check on
conditions in Spokane, which generally are a lot better than our local
snow zone of Spirit Lake. I should have checked the weather
as well, as it started snowing again as I headed in, and snowed all evening.
It wasn't a huge storm, only about 3 inches, but enough to make for the
usual rash of fender benders related to the slippery roads...
Nov.30
Every once in a while I send one of my daily blog entries,
when it's pottery related, to the Clayart pottery discussion group.
I did that with the comment on last Saturday about working while snoozing
and watching a football game. As usually happens with internet discussions,
it got reactions in various ways. Because of some technical difficulties,
I only caught the end of the discussion when I saw some messages
with "In defense of Brad Sondahl" as the topic. This is good, since
I don't have to defend myself, and I get free publicity as well.
I was just surprised my comment was controversial enough to elicit responses...
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