well, its funny, i thought i was keepin up but now a week has almost gone by! so what has shane been up to, well as you know teaching is taking up a good chunk of each day and four days days a week, and the gas is killing me! over 300 dollars in two and half weeks! ouch. so a typical day latley has been as follows, up at 6am and out the door by seven to go do some handyman/ construction jobs, leave for western peidmont comm college by 11:30. teach from 1-4:30, then head home, the drive to school or from school to home is averaging around and hour and 20 mins. once home i do some things around the house, dishes, laundry, cut grass, dinner whatever, then if i can scrape myself off the couch i go to the studio to work usually around 8 or 9. i usually work till my eyes feel really tired, you know that feeling? sure you do. so no ohhhs or oh poor him, its a potters life, not a vetern potters life, a potters life, remember i have been making pots for over 15 years, but only six to seven years full time, so when the economy goes to shit and sales slow down i gotta reach down deep into that bag of tricks and find a way to make the benjimans roll in. not ashamed of admiting that one! after i start pulling long days like these i really start to feel better about myself, i believe i was meant to work long and hard, my father (rest in peace pops!) was a millright and let me tell you, those bastards work very hard and long hours too. i actualy wanted to join the local union he was involved in when i graduated high school, but he would have non of that, he wanted his children to go to college, i did so, but the first two years were a joke! when i had to transfer to a real college i landed at frostburg state university in western md. kickaround and eventually found the art dept. when i declard that major (second or third one!) my dad wished he had let me join the union then baby, he was pissed off. its funny though, he worked with his hand in what my opinion was a craft, as they say "engineers design it, millrights build it." think about that for a minute, when you start something out that you design to build it never goes together quite right? no extrapolate that out to a large power house turbin, or other large scale something or other. yep thats about right. lisa is upstairs waking evan up so we can run to asheville and look at patio furniture! so better run, and end this ramble.
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well here i go, started on the redesign of the anagama today, had to stop to eat and finish some pots that were drying out. i have removed the foundation rocks and the front of the foundation wall, unzipped the arch pretty far back. i found the dirt behind the brickwork very interesting and it smelled like fireworks! funny timing for that smell. i will dig out the very front stacking area and put grates there. i believe the hardest thing will be trying to tie in the new front buttress wall with supporting arch under the original arch, whew! hurts just thinking of it. i will also do the same to the back exit flue area, unzipp it and make the exit flue larger. i need to also take down the chimney, i want to taper it, make it shorter, and redo the damper slot. this will require some scaffolding as the current chimney is 15 feet tall. so far i have removed close to 300 straights and 80 arch brick, assume to get about 100-200 brick out of the chimeny, can you say gas salt kiln!? maybe we will see. ok off to get a burger then back at it.
shane
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