If everything in the world was hunky dory there would be no ninjas. Imagine a world without ninjas. Would you really want to live there?

My niece, Kayleigh Nicole, was born June 18th at 1:27p and was 19 in long and 6 lbs.

I bought a kiln.

While its a little older, it's got 4 zones, good brick and elements and the switch mechanics look good. I'm a little concerned that with its age some of the wiring may need help, but then i did marry an engineer so we should be okay. Unfortunately I can't test it out until we tear down the roofless garage, build a new garage and put in the 220 plug for the kiln. One of the cool things about the zones is I can set up half the kiln in two stacked zones and test fire in smaller batches. Thats pretty sweet. the kiln brick is light enough that i can move each part of the kiln myself except the one heavy ring with the central electric controls on it. It does not have a programmable electronic control on it, but i only intend to fire to the spy holes anyways, so I'll have a back up cone in the setter for fail safe shut offs. none of it matters at this point because i can't use it until I have a garage. so dont expect pottery for a while!

chris has been polishing his resume and getting to the last stage of his CAD certificate. chris took me to see the kilns at work making substrates for computer servers. They're big and there is flame. theres a lot of incanel steel and other high temp metal things (where us potters use cheap fire brick). they have robotic car things that rove around on command picking up product from one place to the next. Lots of sets of pipe run along the ceilings and walls. it feels a little strange to walk into an industrial setting. it reminded me of visiting work with my dad as kid, with all the welding equipment on the floor.

we went to the bookworm. I took a dollars worth of books i bought at a library book sale and got 13 dollars in credit for them, and combined that with my b-day gift certificate from nate and sharon and bought 2 art theory books, some ann rand and some cs lewis. i think i did pretty good! i'm starting to play the game kalah used to when she would buy books she didn't want for dimes and trade them at the bookworm for 1/4th the coverprice (for a 6 dollar book thats 1.50!) in credit, then get books i want there for half off cover price! kalah is a smart cookie.

she called me on the phone. it was nice to hear from her but my kids were really loud and i couldn't hold a conversation. plus i'm braindead from caretaking small children

which is why i'm reading this book called "the mommy brain' which uses scientific research to argue that being a mommy actually makes you smarter. i don't know if its true, but reading it is a boost to the mommy morale center of the brain anyways!

happy mommy's day!
~n <3