Catching Up

This last week I was in Portland, Oregon for NCECA (the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts) They have a bunch of lectures on various ceramic topics, demonstrations, a huge room full of vendors that deal in ceramics stuff, along with a bunch of art exhibits all over the city.  It was really great to be involved with that, I haven’t really had my hands in clay since I graduated from college… and that’s just sad!  I love it so much!  So one of my goals over the next few months is to work on cleaning out the garage.  Mom and I are going to have a big yard sale over a few weekends and try to sell as much of the stuff in there as we can.  Someitmes I think it would just be so much easier to throw it all away… 

The conferance was great though.  Mom came with me to Portland, not to the whole conferance, since it costs around $150 to get in for the whole 4 days of lectures and stuff.  She was able to come with me to the galleries though.  Through the conferance they offer shuttles to take you to the ones out of walking range.  We went on one Wednesday, it rained a lot, my hair was soaked, we were able to stop a buy a hat at a store between galleries, so that helped.  My mom had on a good coat, but she ended up catching a bit of a cold. 🙁  She was a little sick before we left (since she caught the cold I had right before we left) then she ended up spending most of the time in the hotel room.  Poor thing!  We managed to have fun anyway though. 

We went down town one night and she bought my half of my birthday present early, a new digital camera!  (and a 300 picture memory card!) It’s really nice, it takes such great pictures!  And you can hook it up to the tv and run them like a slide show.  Very cool.  She’s also going to get me one of those copy/scanner/printers to go along with it.  I’m excited! 

Anyway, on the way home we had long lay overs, so we were looking though this book store, and I ended up looking at diet books, and self help stuff.  I’m always thinking there’s some magical answer in one of those books… This time though it occured to me that I all ready know the answer.  I know all the things I should be doing, how it should all be put together.  And yet here I am, screwing it all up time and time again.   This time though, I want to do it right.  I think for my birthday I’m going to give myself the best present ever, success.

And now that I’ve completed my novel, I think I need to get to bed… it’s only 2am… sheesh!