One more week of insanity

It is Sunday, and I plan to make the most of it. Some gardening this morning, some rest, a nice lunch after that, not quite sure what this afternoon and then probably a visit to my brother's place to watch Battlestar and then maybe Dr. Who. Or maybe just more gardening. Or maybe just more rest if I'm not up for all of that. But any or all of the above would be nice.

I hardly know where to start. Seems like I haven't done much blogging for a long time.

Just six class periods left. And I don't think that I'm going to get much else done, so I suppose that I could just say the hell with it and stay home until Thursday. Thursday is my technically my "final" in this class. I probably won't get an A, even after he said that we could drop a project since he's letting the first semester students opt out of something and it's only fair that we're allowed the same. Let's see, the tall vase has been finished for a while and has a tiny crack that probably no one but me will ever notice, so I expect to get an okay grade for that. My dragon relief sculptures also have a few cracks, but fortunately the cracks follow where there are supposed to be lines anyway, so they aren't that noticeable, and I expect that grade will be okay too. The teacher and everyone else is quite pleased with the leaf vase, which I expect to get an excellent grade, even if I'm not really happy with the color the glaze turned out. I also expect good grades from the plates and bowls, even if I only made four each and didn't try any different glazes and such as I had originally planned. They are all solid black and look fine just the way they are. We were allowed to skip a project, probably the sculpture, so I did not finish my dragon. I barely started my dragon. I'll do it someday, but it really was too much to do in the time I had.

And that leaves the set. I never clearly defined what the set was going to be. I expected the set to be a bunch of strange dishes that I would make for the Halloween party, at least two or three things to start with, but hopefully after I finished my other projects I would have time to come back and do more. Right now it looks like the only thing I'll have done is the triffid. One triffid does not make a set. The first attempt at an alien egg dried out too quickly, and the second alien egg blew up in the kiln. The dip dish never even got started. And the Martian Crickets are not going well either. I had originally pictured them being two pieces each, the main part and a lid. But they were just two big and heavy, and by the time I got started on the heads the bodies were two dry to try to attach them, so they were going to be four pieces each, and then I thought as long as I was making the heads separate that they might as well have lids too, which made them five pieces each. But all the pieces needed to be fired together to ensure that they would all fit together properly, but that just isn't going to happen. I'll just have to fire the main body parts and lids together and worry about the rest later. That is, if they don't blow up in the kiln I'll worry about the rest later. After what happened to the egg I have some concerns. I've decided to totally take apart one cricket and try to fix any suspected problems and fire the other one as is and hope for the best.

Anyway, I guess that I'm getting a B for the official class work, unless I get some sympathy points for the blown up alien egg. And that totally shouldn't matter. I don't plan on getting another degree and having to worry about GPA ever again, but I still do, just in case. Still, at this point I would gladly take a B just to have it over and done with.

As for the extra stuff, I had planned to do four sleestaks. The sleestaks were the main thing that I wanted to do when I signed up for that first class a year and a half ago, and I'm only just now getting them done. I'd planned two skull relief wall hangings and two full heads, with one being a regular head and one being a skull. The reliefs have been fired, and one cracked all to pieces. The cracked one was patched back together and re-fired, but it didn't come out quite as I'd hoped. The other relief looks really good. The regular full head is nearly finished, but the skull still needs a lot of work and I don't know if I have time.

Of the six class periods that we have left, the professor really only has to show up for three of them. But he says that he'll be at all six. Technically, the only thing we are supposed to be working on at this point is painting sculptures that do not have to be re-fired. But a few of us are still glazing and stuff like that. And there's a lot of packing and cleaning to do. So I might as well work on the sleestaks while that is going on.

My husband is going to Oklahoma on Tuesday. It would be nice to get out of the house for a day and spend the night at a motel, but I probably won't go. I would miss three of the remaining six class periods.

That is, my husband is scheduled to go to Oklahoma on Tuesday. He might get fired or quit on Monday. Monday is one of those meetings that people have to go to and listen to how bad they are doing everything, and this is the right way to do things according to some people who don't actually do the work anymore and sit in an office and make lots of money having a nice 9 to 5 Monday through Friday schedule. And the meeting is on a day that they probably will not pay anyone for, or they might pay fifty dollars for, and they make everyone skip lunch to do it and probably only give them coffee. He's already had to go to one of these meetings a couple of months ago, and he was wanting to quit even before then. But there's usually only one of these meetings a year, and if you can keep your mouth shut and sit through it everything usually goes back to normal after. Only someone higher up decided that they should all get together and have another meeting.

Anyway, if they can all just get through another five hours of this nonsense on Monday, everything will probably be okay after that. But my husband needs a sedative or something. He doesn't take criticism well, he especially doesn't take it well from someone who doesn't do the same job that he does, and he really doesn't take it well from someone who doesn't do the same job that he does and makes lots of money from his work while he's getting paid less this year because some of the better accounts were given to a new guy in Waco.

So, one more week of insanity, and then it will all be over one way or another. I will finish my projects or not, get a good grade or not, and my husband will either go back to his job as usual or not. Then it's back to gardening or house cleaning or job hunting or whatever. Or maybe a week away in Paris. No, not that Paris, but a week away anywhere might be good at this point.