My own Mary Kate

Wedding

It's been such a busy week I hadn't gotten the chance to post about my brother's wedding a week ago today. It was so awesome and the two of them looked amazing. I'll just cut to the chase and post a few photos.

First Day From Hell

It’s my first day back on the job and I’ve already come home in tears. Where to begin…

Over the summer my maintenance guy promised me that he would install my spray booth. I know he’s a very busy and under-appreciated man, but he promised something and I thought he would come through. He didn’t and I’m back to the expensive paperweight/storage container on the counter bit. Great.

Last Friday I hauled Adrian (and all of my borrowed ceramic studio equipment) in to my classroom. The custodial staff enjoys tearing the room apart over the summer and NEVER puts my 300+ lb. tables back where they go. So I needed Adrian’s help to shove them back to their places. Not easy in itself but then you add on top of that the fact that my floor is sloped toward a drain in the center and that means that the feet on all of the tables have to be adjusted to level off the tops. An irritating way to begin my year.

Today was our first day of inservice. As a member of the art department I have come to acknowledge that many inservices are going to relate more to other folks than to me. The first two hours of our morning inservice were just that. But then I learned that the district has decided no teachers should have printers in their classrooms. WHAT? I went my entire first year without a printer in my classroom. I know what it’s like and let me tell you the amount of ridiculous-ness that decision has and will cause cannot be quantified. Instead we will have “printing stations” where everyone’s documents will print. In an art classroom students require the use of a printer almost daily. That’s a fact. And should I need to print something confidential (like a student’s grades? Accommodations??) Um, do you see the issue? When they’re talking about moving the “printing station” to the prep room (a mere QUARTER MILE from my classroom)… whaddya think the odds are of me running down there before someone beats me to it? I’m in fair shape, I work out… but that’s not gonna do much if you’re plowing through 2400 students on the way there. Not even Michael Phelps in all his super-human glory could achieve such a thing. Ok, so I’m really upset at the printer situation and it isn’t even 10 o’clock.

Lunch rolls around and I’m working through it. Administration doesn’t plan a whole heck of a lot of time to be working in our rooms this week so one must make use of every available moment. So while sucking down my pb & j in one dust covered hand and trying to sort through the disaster that the custodial staff left of my computer cords and clay dust bunnies (so much more fierce than your run of the mill dust bunnies) I discovered that while they were judiciously moving my crap to the most inconvenient places they destroyed one of the connectors of my BRAND NEW COMPUTER SPEAKERS. Destroyed, beyond repair, kaput, useless, done. So my anger is now set to flash boil. So I head to the faculty lounge to retrieve my beloved plant that I purchased in my pre-school year optimism last year. This plant was GORGEOUS, to say the least. I left it in the lounge as part of a program that allows teachers to do that at the beginning of summer with the promise that they will be well cared for. With my preoccupation with other things (call it scatterbrain, call it half-a-brain, whatever) I figured my dearest plant would probably be better cared for by someone whose job it is to regularly water the plants in a room full of beautiful sunlight. Let me put it this way, I dropped off Queen Latifah and picked up one of the Olsen twins. I was over the top with fury. Who knows if this emaciated excuse for a plant will EVER become a shadow of it’s former glory, and quite honestly, to even put it out is an embarrassment.

One thing after another piled on to my oppressive first day back. I made a quick detour for something to ease the pain on the way home, fuming over all the frustrations of my first day back. And I haven’t even seen a single student.

I decided this was a blogging type of day so I jump on my fancy little computer here and think about “blogging it out” as they say. Literally seconds after I open up the browser, my connection flickers off because I have a P.O.S internet provider, apparently. An issue that I’ve called multiple times about, had multiple technicians out to the house over and have yet to have fixed. In fact, since my latest service call just last week it’s gotten worse and now is connected to the internet less time than not. Anyone want to recommend a new service? PLEASE? Before I throw my modem through a window? Now I’ve got to try to post this in my next 30 seconds of service or--

Joy, here comes day two. I love my job I love my job I love my job…

McCall

Some photos from our many trips to the condo

Backwoods Adventure

Adrian and I decided to spend our last available weekend of the summer in McCall. Some good friends of ours have a condo that I have visited every summer of my working memory. It has long been my favorite place in the world to be especially when accompanied by my best friend.

On Saturday we decided to finally use a gift certificate for Backwoods Adventures that we received as a wedding gift from some friends of ours. They're located on the north beach boat ramp of Payette Lake. It's a small company that rents canoes and kayaks for trips up the North Fork of the Payette River. We were nervous considering that neither of us had ever placed a foot in a kayak and all I'd previously known about them is that they're the ones that can roll over in water. But we were assured that this was something we could handle so we loaded up and hit the water. It was beautiful!
I had no idea how much work was involved as there really is no current to push you. If you're not paddling you aren't going to be moving much. But between the two of us (ok well really just Muscles back there) we didn't do too bad.
We stopped on a sandbar for lunch. So far we hadn't seen much in the way of wildlife except for a studious chipmunk at our lunch spot and some kind of water weasel (I have no idea, but that's what we called him). Oddly enough it wasn't until we returned to town that we saw A BEAR in someone's backyard.
If anyone is heading to McCall anytime soon I would highly recommend checking this place out. If we can handle it anyone can and it was way worth the effort.

Raspberry Festival

Adrian and I just returned from our quest for fame and riches. I can attest that we are neither famous nor rich. We did, however, have a pretty good time.

The Raspberry Festival takes place at St. Gertrude's Monastery:
A beautiful 100 year old building nestled at the base of a mountain in Cottonwood. Surrounded by the rolling Camus prairie it's really a beautiful setting.

The amount of work I had actually worked really well for the table space.
Open for business!
And here's what I ended up with at the end of the day.
Surprisingly I only sold one or two of my tree pots and all the rest were my plates, minis and 3 of the neti pots. It was hard to sit and watch people walk by without a second glance, though, admittedly, I've done that myself at similar events. Now I know how that feels. I didn't sell a single pot for the first 2 hours and I was fighting the urge to really get upset about it. But then, slowly, things started disappearing. I had a TON of positive comments and it wasn't even my prices that turned people off. They didn't even get so far as looking at the prices before they just started moving on to the next booth. I met a gal who wants to display my stuff in her gallery in Kooskia (tiny town somewhere near Cottonwood, though I really couldn't say where). And lots of people took my card, though they didn't buy anything. Not sure if that means they might contact me or if they just took it only to throw it away later. Probably should get a website up and running specifically for my pots. I know how irritating it is to me to find an artist that I like that doesn't have a website. I always roll my eyes and think "why don't they get with the times?!" Doh... But anyway, the trip was a fun experience even if it wasn't wildly profitable. And I still have pots available if anyone is interested in purchasing them.