OH keith!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#32365793

watch, listen :)

One Week at Home then Pennsic

Traveling for a living certainly makes things interesting. I think most people probably don't get it. I feel it's similar to the feeling people get when they are leaving for a vacation and there are still 300 details to take care of before stepping onto the plane. We just do it a lot, not as much as we used to, but still more than the average person.

We're in that space now. It's not too bad because we did a lot of planning. I am glazing and firing kilns. Ro has been scrambling to make sure things work out at The Creative Oasis as well as at home. We're figuring out what to do with the kids and the animals and trying to be sure we don't forget anything important for the trip.

All this is being coordinated with Jessa and Elliot who are also doing similar things to prepare to leave for the next show, but in their case from the last show. Elliot has packed down everything from the Kentucky Renaissance Faire and is bringing Jessa's clothing and my pottery north to the PA Renaissance Faire and then splitting the stock and then probably driving to meet Jessa and help pack up the stock she has. Jessa is currently selling clothing and Pottery at Starwood (a festival held at The Brushwood Folklore Center in Sherman NY) and then packing down and bringing that stock to Pennsic. There's a lot of packing, driving and coordinating for all of us.

The best news is we have double the available space for Pennsic this year. Last year we split a 10x20 garage tent. 2/3 pottery 1/3 clothing, plus a checkout and sewing area. It was very cramped. This time we have 2 10x20 tents one will be pottery one will be clothing with a checkout and sewing area in the middle between the two areas. We should have an amazing display.

I'm very excited to see just how much stock we have made for Pennsic. I kept thinking all I had was what we had at Brushwood and a lot of mugs waiting at home, but in reality we have MUCH more. The stock I left at home...fired and unfired, including wee bowls and shot glasses and tasting cups, scale patterned mugs, some more BIG tankards with BIG handles for BIG hands. We also have double handled mugs..so much stuff!

and I had better get back to glazing...

I've been watching season one of Sanctuary on Netflix while glazing and just found out that Bigfoot, who is kind of a butlerish manservant in the show and John Druitt a teleporting, former love of Dr. Magnus (played by Amanda Tapping from Stargate SG-1) are both played by Christopher Heyerdahl. I had no idea after watching 11 episodes. Impressive.

I am such a geek!

Snakes in the Well

After a long time on the market, we're in the middle of negotiating a short sale on the Erie house. When all the tests were done, we ended up with a high bacteria count in the well and they suggested we "shock" the well. Since the count was probably high just because the water was not being pumped on a regular basis. So Our Mission was to open the well house, take off the well cap, turn off the pump, dump a gallon of bleach into the well, turn the pump back on, and leave it sit for 3 days before running the system clean. We got a big surprise. I lifted the heavy roof off the well house and Rowan said "snakes" I dropped it like a rock, probably scaring the garter snakes out of their minds..but I didn't know if I had a pissed off copperhead at my legs or not...

We had fun with the snakes, there wefre probably betgween 5 and 8 of them, but we couldn't shock the well as we had no ladder or tools and it wasn't as simple as "take the cap off and pour bleach down the pipe" We called the realtor and he said the testing company will do it for us for another $45..so that took care of that :) Hopefully the second test will go well and we'll be rid of it.