Kingfisher Cove

Bullets!

Kind of random stream of consciousness stuff, so I figured it’s time for bullets.

• I’d ordered a couple of special glass molds for casting (where you weigh a bunch of glass pieces in grams and fill the mold with the glass to fuse into 3D shapes). One was a round “box” with a lid, and the other was a candle holder. I’d seen results from these molds in a fusing book I have and was quite intrigued (normally I’m not all that interested in casting, but these were pretty cool). They were a pricey investment.
• Well, the box mold was a complete #fail. The glass pieces stuck to the inside of it, not only ruining the project, but also completely ruining the mold. Unsalvageable.
• I talked to the manufacturer and we troubleshooted all of the steps I’d taken and we figured that I may not have sprayed on enough of the mold release beforehand. Which was frustrating, because I painstakingly followed the directions, and took care (according to those directions) to not saturate the mold with the release spray. Grrr.
• Here’s how it looked when I first put it in the kiln (full of expectation and hope!)

 

• And then disaster:

 

• I was nervous, but I decided to TRY the 2nd (candle holder) mold and made a point to spray extra release on it (without saturating it!) The result?

• Whew! It worked! I need to do some cold work on the inside (some spikes poking up) and then fire polish it, but otherwise it turned out well. Besides a tealight, it can also hold a flower arrangement frog:

• John installed a beefier breaker to accommodate the beast kiln and turned it on today—and it didn’t trip! I’ll see tomorrow morning how my test piece turned out! Woohoo!!
• The other night, John and I watched “Intersellar” for the first time. We *think* it was pretty good, but jeeze! The music was SO LOUD and the dialogue was SO MUMMBLY that it was hard to know what the hell was being said. This director is know for this; “Inception” was the same way and it was extremely frustrating to watch it in the theater. (It was equally as frustrating to watch Interstellar at home!)
• John’s been plugging away on the master walk-in closet. It’s going to be maaaahvelous!

• I also planted a couple of flower pots. I remembered those pots as being much larger at the Des Moines house!

• (Besides pansies, there is basil and also pineapple sage that turns bright red and hummingbirds love ‘em!)
• I’ll end with a few kitty pictures. (They’re such characters).

• Here, Wylie had HAD it with the pouring rain and flounced her butt down by the door in a huff and a snit. Little diva.

• It definitely was nasty out, and it DEFINITELY warranted a fire in the fireplace. (We’ve had very few of those this year!)

Even Bliss Has Ups and Downs

Yesterday was another stellar day and John (sort of unexpectedly) went on another (successful!) gold prospecting expedition. So, I took another beach walk—this time with all four animals!

Hysteria ensued. Jeeze, those cats are funny! They both followed me down the path to the beach and Wylie was not about to be Mojo-bullied. In addition to the typical chasing up trees along the bank and ambushing each other among the driftwood, they just basically kept up with me and the weenie dogs. There’d be a black and white blur out of the corner of my eye, followed by another, and then suddenly “I’m so cool” sauntering and tail-twitching at my heels. Cats invented the term “passive aggressive.” (click to embiggen!)

 

Here’s a quick clip of Wylie pouncing on a bug:

Wait for it!!

It was so fun! How many people take a beach walk with two wiener dogs and two black & white cats? Had to be a strange sight for neighbors peering out their windows.

So that was bliss (plus I found several more agates). Then there was today.

It began with waking up in the batscope hours of the morning (borrowed term; thanks, Anne!) to the sound of growling underneath our new bed. And thumping. And thundering paws pounding  throughout the house. I figured it was either one of two things: 1) the cats were being butts and on an antagonizing rampage, or 2) one or the other (or both) of them had a critter loose in the house. I suspected it was No. 2. No way was I getting out of bed in my bare feet to ineptly attempt to round up said critter in the pitch dark! Things must have simmered down because I fell back to sleep. THEN, later this morning, it was apparent that Mojo and Bailey (the long-haired weenie dog) had the critter cornered in the master bedroom in the stack of tile and glass blocks awaiting installation in the bathroom.  I opened the french doors in there, hoping that the critter would find an opportunity to escape (although it would have to flee the entire length of the deck to find safety, or else fling itself 25’ to the ground…) I was working in the glass room and…in trotted Bailey with a dead baby rat and dropped it at my feet!

Gah!!!! 

Meanwhile, I was having a helluva time in the glass room! Absolutely nothing went right. I couldn’t cut glass without breaking it or cutting myself! I kept mislaying my tools and dropping things. I kept measuring wrong. It felt like a conspiracy! I kept at it, kept cussing, and I think I’m finally on track, but crap it sucked.

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Last night’s and tonight’s almost twin (and kind of weird) sunsets. It’s been lovely and warm, but a haze keeps seeping in late in the afternoons and according to the local news, it’s apparently from wildfires in Siberia! Huh.

Specimen of a Day

I greatly appreciated our uber-mild winter, but today was proof that spring has actually arrived (even thought the winter often felt spring-like). Just under 70° and so sunny and lovely—especially welcome after several days in a row of wind and torrential rain (much more typical of the season). The mountains finally got some snow! Yeah, in April! Jeesh.

John took a break today and headed to the wilderness outside of Olympia to do some gold panning (he found some!) and me and the weenie dogs took a leisurely beach walk. I found a nice handful of agates!

And did I mention that it was gorgeous? (See the snow on the Olympics?)

During my walk, I encountered this (below) and I have no idea what it was. It kind of made me nervous!

Weird.

We finally got our bedroom furniture and it’s so nice to finally be able to sleep in our bedroom…ON A KING-SIZED BED! (There are times we accommodate four animals sleeping with us…)

The walls need pictures! (And the bedspread still needs its skirt thingy). Need some extra pillows for the shams, too. I like the simplicity of the furniture, and the fact that it was manufactured by a local (Washington) furniture maker. It’s all really well-made.

I still can’t use my beast kiln, but I’ve been doing some puttering in my smaller one. I’m already at the point where I need to TIDY UP the workshop! Doesn’t take much to get out of hand.

Well, Crap (Part Deux)

The effort of trying to troubleshoot the controller on my beast kiln has been astronomical. A little bit me (although I’m one of those people who throws my hands up in despair), and a whole lot John, who even got to the point where he was researching controller parts and considering building one from scratch. But he wasn’t sure that it would totally do what I needed (due to proprietary programming in the electronic card) and I feared that what he built and programmed himself would be even more complicated than a controller for a glass kiln already is. (They are NOT intuitive! In this day and age they should be!) This morning I even got online to see what it would cost to buy a new controller, thinking we were S.O.L. and my eyes about popped out of my head. So, John decided to delve a little deeper into what the problem might be with this one. It’s hardly been used, but it was displaying wackadoodle stuff that made no sense, and didn’t match anything in the instruction manual.

He futzed with that thing for a good two hours (or more), and finally he said, “I think I’ve figured it out.” And lo and behold, he had! (Definitely required some unintuitive delving…) He plugged in the program I use on my other kiln for a full fuse (so I can begin the process of comparing the two) and I popped in one of my test pieces and turned it on. I was so excited! And so relieved!

Well. It didn’t even reach 1000° and it blew the circuit.

This beast is on its very own 240 circuit! Yep, like a dryer! It was in the Des Moines garage, too, and it worked fine (the handful of times I used it down thar in the dungeon). This is no different!

We tried it again, just in case that was a fluke, and the same thing happened.

I sure do prefer feeling excited and relieved over feeling frustrated and disappointed.

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John said he will need to install a larger breaker. He’s rather bewildered because it was all set up for 30 amps, but that’s apparently not enough!

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I sure don’t “get” electricity…

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In other news, I ventured into the the backwater of Shelton and got my hair cut and colored. I had some hopes because the stylist I was assigned to had naturally curly hair, but her hair is very different from mine and she just gave me blank stares when I asked her about non-sulfate shampoos, non-silicone conditioners, cutting my hair dry (to follow the curl pattern), and suggestions for defining curls (hers were naturally very well defined, unlike mine). The cut was OK, although I feel more should have been trimmed (it’s looking a bit like a mullet), but I’m not very happy with the color. Meh. And maybe I’m a leeeetle bit snobby, but Shelton really is like a town out of Deliverance. It just seems that everyone I encounter is from this website.

Yeah, my bad.

Well, Crap

After the horror of learning what we have to pay in taxes (can you say “installments?”) our financial guy finally pressed the button to e-submit our return paperwork…and the IRS rejected it. Why?

Because somebody had already filed under our name.

Yep, we have Premera health insurance through Boeing, and you’ve probably heard all about their horrific data breach on the news. I don’t understand though; how does somebody file (and presumably get a refund!) without a W2, and without an employer’s corresponding W2? Premera is providing two years of free “ProtectMyID” service that supposedly includes a copy of our credit report, credit monitoring, and active fraud surveillance. (Because, obviously, these asshats have our social security number…)

This makes me absolutely SICK. Oh, and then I got a robocall today telling me that my credit union Master Card had been frozen.  Well, since I don’t have Master Card…

Humanity sucks.

Speaking of  asshats, did you see Rand Paul’s interview with Savannah Guthrie on The Today Show, mansplaining how to conduct an interview, refusing to answer her questions, and then SHUSHING HER? I swear I had PTSD from my life-long experiences dealing with misogynist engineers and I about blasted through the screen to bitch-slap his smug-ass face.

I wish Elizabeth Warren would run, because I would vote for her in a heartbeat. (Hillary will do just fine, though).

Nature

Yesterday began with me padding out to the kitchen/pantry to get my first morning coffee and I noticed John in the master bedroom peering out the window toward the beach. He motioned for me to come see and here was a family of bald eagles at the water’s edge chowing down on a salmon carcass. Two adults (Mom and Dad, I presume) and two youngsters. The youngsters were equally as large as the adults, but hadn’t acquired their white heads and tail feathers yet. It looked like a training exercise! There was a fair amount of squabbling and the carcass would get caught up in the waves and one of the eagles would grab it and haul it back to shore. John said he tried to quietly sneak out on the deck to take a picture, but the eagles were too skittish. SO, I used my (cheapy) digital camera with its quite decent zoom and shot a BUNCH of photos through the window and between the deck rails. Quite challenging, because the “sweet spot” was extremely limited and they kept moving around. Most of the photos were feathery blobs, but I did get a couple of good ones! First, either Mom or Dad with the kiddos (be sure to click to embiggen):

Then, when I took the one below, there were two MORE adult bald eagles circling right above them, probably wanting to invite themselves to the feast. (I have a feeling they wouldn’t have been welcome, what with the ruckus and squabbling already happening on the beach). But what a sight it was!

Our neighbor mentioned that last year they witnessed a group of eagles attacking (and consuming) a blue heron and all that remained were a pile of feathers. “Keep an eye on your cats,” he said to me. *shudder*

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And then…

The day ended like THIS:

Oot and Aboot

I know this is kind of strange, but I hadn’t driven my car since that wonderful Friday in mid-February when I left Day Jail for the final time and joyfully headed to Harstine—that is, until today. The running around that we’ve done since we’ve been here has been together in John’s truck, so I just haven’t gotten out on my own. There hadn’t been a driving need, so to speak.

It felt good to venture out, and I needed a break from Velcro doggies. (Jeeeeeeeze…) It’s a good half-hour drive to town (or a little more), and I cranked up the tunes and enjoyed the partly sunny day! I got a $hitload of groceries and then took my car through the carwash, which it desperately needed. The plan was to also pick up a package at the post office, but it closed on me! Closes at 2pm on Saturdays! Grrr.

I’ll be heading back to town on Wednesday, though, when I get my hair cut and colored. My fingers are crossed that the salon I scoped out (and read their Yelp reviews) will be good for me; the stylist I’m hooked up with has naturally curly hair, so there is hope! It needs some professional TLC and the gray is trying to take over, which I cannot allow! Heh. I’m also going to ask around for a good place to get my nails done. I’m down to one (partial) acrylic nail and I considered seeing what I could do with my own nails, but they are so effing terrible! They peel like onions, split and snag, and when that happens I immediately gnaw on them. Most of them are down to nubbins. And then I have cuticles that creep up the nail like some horror film fungus. So yeah, back to acrylics. I’m also open to a pedi! Haven’t had one since last summer.

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I’ve been futzing in the glass studio, mostly just doing little things to get back into the swing of it (plus, I can’t use the beast kiln since the controller is apparently kaput—John contacted the manufacturer to troubleshoot the issue, but they haven’t gotten back to him). Awaiting the beast kiln is this:

That mold is too tall for the smaller kiln. I’m *HOPING* that when/if I get a chance to fire it, it’ll turn out something like this, although sparser:

As a test, I decided to be conservative for the first time. If it turns out OK, I’ll make another one with more strips, different colors, etc.

And then, a few little things. This is a new mold for a soap dish. It’s OK, but why can’t they make the soap dish molds a little bigger? Most bars of soap are bigger than that.

And then these. I’d made a larger version a couple of years ago and had them framed with a double mat (very expensive!) and hung it (need to find a place here). These are smaller and standard size to fit standard mat openings and hopefully a standard frame, which should significantly reduce the cost.

 

The idea is something like this:

Remains to be seen.