Rest!

Today has found me, finding sanity, and some of the recuperation needed from a long and busy week! The lord above took mercy on my tried body, and countermanded the 6" of snow the weather forecasters had called for after Thanksgiving. Sad, yes, as the chance to plow had me excited as all get go. Happy, indeed, as I really wanted to focus my attention to the weekends' bizarre! Mind you, Maryann was ready to take the reins at the space in the event I had to bail to tend plowing, but it was alot, or would have been alot of work for one person, and on that note I am grateful she was there to assist. It was busy, busy, busy!! As well I enjoy being there to be a part of it all. It is always amazing and gratifying to watch people around pottery. I have to confess, I have the same fetish as most when it comes to pottery. The chance to feel each piece, the smooth and shining lines, the colors... When you actually find that piece that litterally calls out to you... It is just a very fulfilling feeling for me regardless if people end up buying or not. But hey, it is always good for the potter when people buy, aint it! Mind you I have never done the Kenai gig before so I have nothing to compare it to, but despite some of the comments on how the economy affected sales for alot of vendors, I feel like I did exceptional on sales! It is a good thing as I now am about out of clay and need to finance a shipment. Down in Dorrington I was spoiled. I had Quyle Kilns just 25 minutes down the highway who not only were potters themselves, but clay manufators as well. So clay was abundant, cheap, and readily available for me. Now I made sure to haul around 500 lbs on the moving truck when we came up, good thing. But that is dwindling now and it is time to anti up. Shipping will be twice as much as the clay itself, bummer, but after extensive research on shipping options and other logistical intell, there is really no way around the cost. So I prepare to bit down, hold my breath and just go for it! If all goes as planned I will have a pallet of 1000 lbs of clay here at the compound the first week of 2009. Is it just me or did the year fly?? Just doesn't feel right to me that 2008 is almost over. We were invited to our Realtors house for Thanksgiving dinner again this year. It was a fun time and nice to be with the closest thing to family that we have here. Lori is actually a gourmet chefette as well as a Realtor, and man can that woman cook. She added a flare to all of the typical dishes one would expect at a Thanksgiving feast. For example, yams au gratin as opposed to the yam standard! Oh I could go on, but it would simply make me salivate all over the keyboard. And the hor d vours (spelling?) were simply to die for. Fondue baked in pumpkin spread over peta crackers to name one! Lordy the scraping from the inside of the pumpkin was almost as good as the fondue itself! In fact, I was speaking to one of my clients this morning and he was asking me what we did for Thaksgiving. When I told him we had gone to Loris for dinner, he lit up and grinning from ear to ear said we are part of the 'secret hand shake' club if we were able to go to her place for dinner! He highly sugested that if I could get adopted by them it would be in my best interest. And no wonder as to why! She tells us to make plates to take left overs, right. I took que and got my plate to start serving the take homes. Maryann and John are sitting there smug, like, no worries, dad has us covered.... Bullcrap dad does! Call me a selfish tyrant but when it comes to left overs at Lori's it is each person for themselves.....you want left-overs you best be on it, man!! They figured me out real quick. Needless to say we all had a good celebration, and a good weekend and now I am out of steam. We were really surprised this last post to have found a comment from a 'stranger'. Apparently, she had gone looking for info on the "Christmas In Kenai" celebration and found our blog! Unbenounced to me until now (I have a low tolerance for technology), if you google "christmas in kenai" our blog posts rank 2 and 3 out of about 4 for the search! Cool beans, eah!? Anyways it was interesting as this family jumped off and did what we did, sounds like a year after us and conincidentally enough live in Nikiski as well. Not sure if they would want us to put their site on our 'favorites', but if they would not object to it I may, as it was good reading and a story right up our alley! Who knows, two books may evolve out of Nikiski! lol The sunrises are to that point now that I live for, and so wish I could see each and every one daily. We had a bit of a warming trend last week as it narrowed into the 30's but the night before last we were reading -0 on the temp gauge, and last night was getting there before we checked in for the night. Funny, we let the dogs out and their time in the exposure is alot less at that temperature. It's all about whizzing out a few ice cubes and "we're done, let us in". And who could blame them at that! John passed his E.T.T course and is now official, so he is pretty stoked about that and we are so proud of him. That is it for this round. I am still waiting for my 'happy light' to arrive, and bask in what little sunlight we get. It's a bit of a challenge when it is so cold your nose hairs freeze upon breathing, but the things we will do! Hope everyone is safe, healthy and ready to boot out the old for the new. Our love to all!!