Saturday, January 10, 2009
Once again, we start with the family photo from Christmas. It's lucky we have Jackson now, so we can put these all in the correct order, as he grows. (Note to self: Get the binky out before the photo is taken... )
My Family
Son-in-law Tim, daughter Susan (holding grandson Jackson),
me, daughter-in-law Kristin, son Richard.
me, daughter-in-law Kristin, son Richard.
It's been a couple of weeks since I shut down the retail end of things. I took a few days off between Christmas and New Year's, and then I started in on the task of getting the gallery cleared out. I've given myself two months (the lease is up the end of February) to clear out, and I think if I come out here and work a few hours a day, that will be best.
I've made a lot of progress this week. I've cleaned out the closet behind my desk, and the corner upstairs that was really bad. Today, I tackled my desk.
You remember my desk:
Pathetic, no? My kids have given me all manner of grief over the constant state of clutter that my desk always seems to be in. It never gets better or worse.. it's always just this constant state. I don't know how that works, exactly, but it does seem to be the way it is with me.
But after a couple of hours of Saturday Public Radio..
Isn't that remarkable!?
Why couldn't I keep it like that all the time? Hmmmmm. Strange.
Next week.. I have to open the drawers. EEEEEK.
In other news. I now have an address that UPS can deliver to, which is not my home. It's at a Parcel Plus not far from my home. That means that potters can ship their work to me and it won't be left on my front step if I'm not home.
Things are taking shape.
Friday, February 6, 2009
I'm still here! I feel like I have about 100 "men on the field" and I have to move them forward one at a time towards the goal line. This is not a pleasant experience for me. But it's what needs to be done now.
The furniture in the gallery is moving, but very, very slowly. Tomorrow I will talk to a fixtures liquidator and see if I can't get him to come and take the rest of it away. I need to focus on getting out of here. My daughter is a month away from having twins (they could come anytime now, actually), and I need to be able to help her out once that happens.
A couple of weeks ago when I got the next bill from ADT for monitoring services at the gallery, I did a little digging to find out how to cancel the service, and found out that I needed to send a written request for that. So I wrote them a short and sweet letter, asking them to discontinue monitoring as of January 31 because "I am closing the business." (Hey.. this is a "need to know" kind of thing and they don't "need to know" it's going to go on online, right?)
I crossed that off my ToDo list and moved on to another guy on the field that needed to be advanced.
Today in the mail, I got a letter from ADT that acknowledges receipt of my cancellation letter. It goes on to say "We would like our valued customers to know that we have security programs to meet almost any budget. If you maintain your account with us, you may be eligible for a special discount on your monitoring service."
I wonder exactly what kind of discount I can get for monitoring an entity that doesn't exist anymore. No doubt it would be quite a bargain, indeed.
Does frost my Wheaties to think that if I had called them six months ago and said I couldn't afford it anymore, they would have rolled over with a discount THEN.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
I moved a lot of men down the field yesterday. I was able to borrow a pickup truck to move a few larger things from the gallery to my little townhouse. I also got word from the Verizon cyberwench that my DSL account is ready at home, so I brought the computer home, and managed to get all the cords and wires plugged in correctly in just about an hour. It has replaced the vintage 1996 (you read that right) Packard Bell computer running Windows 95 ( =:O ), hooked up to the internet via dial-up ("Daddy, what's dial-up?")...
So officially today, "the gallery" moves to my second bedroom.
Today's job is to PURGE all the clutter from this room so that it will be a pleasant place for me to work.
I have just gone through a bag of cards that I have saved over the years. These cards go back at least 20 years. I'm finding Christmas cards from people I don't know. They are addressed to me, and there's a friendly note inside, but... I have no clue!!
Sometimes I lament the fact that I don't have a lot of storage space in my townhouse, but more and more I see it as a blessing.
Having to find places to store the pots that will come in, plus the packing and shipping supplies (boxes, peanuts, bubble wrap) that I will need to turn around and ship things out is forcing me to clear out a lot of places that have been full of clutter for a very long time. And that is a good thing.
Monday, February 16, 2009
I found out that FREE is a magic word on craigslist today.
I have been stressed thinking about getting all the display furniture out of the gallery by the end of the month. It hasn't been selling well at all. The pieces that could be used as furniture in homes sold.. but I wasn't getting any nibbles at all on the display furniture.
I had a mini fridge and an area rug upstairs that I wanted to get out of there, so I listed them on craigslist. The mini fridge has been listed for two weeks for $25. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
Today, I listed it and the area rug under FREE stuff and HOLY COW what a deluge of emails!!!!
I was meeting a guy out there at 12:30 today to pick up the plastic thing that my desk chair rolled around on under my desk (he had bought the desk), so I replied to all the email inquiries about the fridge and the rug that I was going to be there at 12:30, and it was first come/first served.
Well, you'da thought I was committing some crime by not holding a FREE mini fridge and an area rug for a specific person. I figure.. they're getting something for FREE and they can make sure they are first in line if they want it. Kind of a little contest to see who will get there first.
I figured with all the emails, SOMEONE was going to make the effort and that's all I cared about.
And sure enough.. there was a young man going off to college waiting for me when I got there and he took the mini fridge. A woman was also there who got the rug.
I thought I had deleted the ads before I left for Leesburg, but evidently I didn't do it right, because they were still up. When I got home, there were over 150 emails waiting for me (and that was in addition to the 30 or so that I got BEFORE I left).
Yeah... Free is a magic word.
And it is SUCH a relief to know that I'm going to be out of the space by the end of the week without a problem!
Then I can concentrate on getting the March show up and ready!
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Whew. Today I met the last of the craigslist people to take away the last of the furniture. I didn't do too badly, overall. I managed to sell most of the pieces and the pieces that I had to give away didn't cost me very much when I purchased them. I finished up the cleaning up and vacuuming today and brought the last of the odds and ends home. Tomorrow I will go hand in the keys. A whole week early. Such a great relief it is!
I brought the oval sign home...
... and hung it out under my deck. It can't be seen from the street, so the HOA shouldn't give me any grief about it. I think it looks very nice out there.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
What a week it as been!
I turned the keys on on the gallery on Friday as planned. Then, early Monday morning, I got the call from my daughter that she was having contractions and had been told by the doctor to go on in to the hospital. I had to drop everything and head down to pick up my grandson and take care of him for the day.
Nathan Donald Ward and Sarah Helen Ward were born about 1:00 pm last Monday, with a combined weight of nearly 13 pounds, and I went from having one beautiful grandbaby, to having THREE in one fell swoop!
When I think of what last week would have been like had I waited until the last minute getting things out of the gallery... AUGH!!!
The babies are doing quite well, and if everything goes well the next couple of days, they will be coming home later this week.
This weekend was the annual ACC show in Baltimore. I drove up and brought home some wonderful pots for the March show. I'll be working "head-down" tomorrow to get them all photographed and uploaded. I'm having to do some experimentation about where/when the best light is at my townhouse to take the pictures, but I think I've got it to an acceptable level.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Whew. It was quite a job getting the website updated and the page for the March Forth show put together. I was trying to make the thumbnail pictures all the same size in Photoshop, and whatever I was doing wasn't working. I finally figured out how to do it after several frustrating attempts. Figuring this out means the Artists page will look much more uniform, too after all this time. Nice when it works out like that, I think.
I really like working from the peace and quiet of home. There is still a lot of work to be done organizing the place so I'm not tripping over pots, but I'm definitely getting there. I cleaned out the garage last weekend so I can store packing material out there. Unbelieveable what a clutterfest that was after 10 years. I feel sorry for the trash guys these last couple of weeks -- they've been pulling double/triple duty at my house.
Monday, March 9, 2009
I watched the movie Flash of Genius this morning. It is the true story of Dr. Robert Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper. He took his invention to Ford Motor Company, and they stole the idea from him without compensation. He went after them, asking merely for them to admit that it was his idea and that they had stolen it.
His fight cost him a great deal, personally and financially, but he kept going because he believed he was right.
Great movie.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Well, I've gotten some excellent feedback from the latest newsletter. It was definitely a worthwhile exercise. And I got several orders in, which was also nice.
I won't have a problem going to actual shipping costs, because I'm very frugal on shipping materials. About the only thing I have to buy on a regular basis is the packing tape. While it is somewhat expensive, the six-pack of the giant tape rolls does last quite a while. I save whatever boxes I can from whatever source. I've picked up boxes on the street that people have left out for the trash. I've got my friends looking to pick up the boxes that paper comes in in their offices. The boxes that the pots are shipped to me are generally too large to use to ship the pots out as they are ordered, so I have to always be looking for smaller boxes. I save all the peanuts that come in, because those are REALLY expensive to buy new. I save bubble wrap, too. I've started saving my newspapers so I can use those if I need to.
This morning, I was boxing up an order and realized that I had a perfect box for it.. a kitty litter box. I probably wouldn't send an order out in that box to a brand new customer, but since this order was going to someone I know personally -- who has a cat.. I figured she'd appreciate it.
Next order was perfect for the diaper box I picked up last week while on Grandma duty. Another good customer that I knew wouldn't be offended. Even though I've never met this customer, we have talked on the phone and exchanged emails many times.
You can become friends that way, too.
What I want for this space is to make it a place where you think of me as a friend, and where I can get to know you as well, and know that you won't be upset to receive your pot in a diaper box.
I promise I won't ever ship anything to you in a Depends box (even if I ever were to find one).. so don't worry about that, please.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
One of the more thoughtful comments that came in had to do with the photographs on the website. The photographs are too small to see much detail, especially on the more expensive pots. And why only one angle? And why not give each pot the respect of its own separate photograph?
My first reaction, after "well, he's right..." was "Do you know how much more work it's going to be to have several different angles of each pot!!?" I answered myself with "yeah? Make your point... the guy is right!".. I got to thinking about what the website would look like with several images of each pot, and larger images available (presumably through some pop-up function). I got a little nervous about that, given my nearly total lack of knowledge about HTML (I'm real good at cutting and pasting, and that's how I get by.) I pondered for a bit, and then put out the question to a friend who knows HTML better than I do, and he pointed me to a nifty, nifty, NIFTY place where I picked up some code that will allow me to put one or more (as many as I want, actually) thumbnail images alongside the main image that, when clicked, will cause a perfectly marvelous larger image to appear in the foreground and size itself perfectly -- complete with a "close" icon. It was just all too beautiful.
Yes.. now I have to go back and re-take all the photographs for the March Forth show, and I have to process each photograph into two sizes (small and large), but oh, my friends.. the results are definitely worth it.
Want to see a sample? Just click any of the images below and sit back and enjoy.
"Double Trouble" Vase
Sam Taylor
Is that cool, or WHAT?!!
Today, I retook photographs for Sam, Aaron and Sequoia. I hope to have the rest of the pots from the March Forth show done by the end of the week.
Just in time to get started with the pots for the April show that are starting to come in!
Monday, March 23, 2009
It's about incremental improvements, right? I took a lot of pictures yesterday and while I was excited about the technology of the floating pop-ups, I was a little unhappy with the amount of blue that was in the pictures yesterday. I didn't feel the pictures were AWFUL, so I pressed forward with processing them and getting the pages updated for Sam, Aaron and Sequoia. It was a full day.
This morning, I decided to mess with a setting on the camera and take just a couple test images to see if it made a difference. I think it did. I'm much happier with the pictures I've taken so far this morning.
The problem is I have a very short window of opportunity with the spot I'm using now as my low-budget photography studio. If I make full use of the time when I can take pictures, then I've got work to do for the rest of the afternoon processing the images and updating the pages. If I only take a few pictures, then run upstairs to see what they look like, I feel like I'm "burning daylight" .. literally. On the other hand, if I take a bunch of pictures with a bad setting, I've wasted that time, too because I'll have to retake them anyway.
Am I going to go back and retake all the pictures from yesterday because I think I can improve them, or am I going to press forward to finish the first scrub and get the floating pop-ups done for the rest of the artists? I'm going to press forward. I think I can get the first pass done by the end of the week. Stay tuned.. it's gonna be great!
... later that same day.
Why does it take so long? Well.. The original page for Ray Morales had 8 images. The page I just completed has 56 -- two images for every one you'll see. Whew!
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Today is about frustration.
A couple of folks have told me that the floating pop-ups (from Sunday's entry) aren't working with Firefox. I'm not even sure what Firefox is/looks like/does, which means I certainly don't know what might be wrong. I went to the nifty website and copied and pasted the required code (which is what I was supposed to do), and I changed nothing. I'm not SMART enough to change anything.
And I'm going nuts looking at all the blue backgrounds in the pictures I took on Sunday. The ones I'm taking now are SO much better. Today is Kent Harris and Willem Gebben.
Must.Move.Forward.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
The Caller ID last night said PRIVATE CALLER. Generally, I don't answer those calls, figuring they are telemarketers, but I went ahead and answered it last night, ready to dismiss the caller rudely the instant I discovered the truth about the call.
Fortunately, I held my tongue long enough to realize it was a perfectly pleasant man who owns a gallery himself on the other end of the line. We had a delightful conversation. He is planning a trip to D.C. with his wife to see the Cherry Blossoms, and they wanted to meet me somewhere and buy me lunch.
And they say there is no free lunch.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
I've been in Wyoming for a week, helping my mother recover from knee replacement surgery. Before I left, I was able to meet up with the gallery owner and his wife who were coming to DC and wanted to treat me to lunch.
It was quite an adventure. We agreed to meet by the cascading water wall in the underground walkway between the East Wing and the West Wing of the National Gallery of Art. We had a delightful lunch and talked a great deal about the partnership between artists and gallery owners in promoting art in the world.
My Free Lunch
Me and my new friends Heidi and Don
On the way home I realized I had paid $5 to park the car, and $4.70 for the Metro.
I'm still glad I answered the PRIVATE CALLER call.
Friday, May 15, 2009
I can't put it off much longer. I've got to start sending pots back. I simply can't keep stuffing more and more into the closet.
As much as I hate to have to do it.. the unsold pots from the March Forth show are going to have to go home. I'll be getting started on that in the next few days.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
I'm sorry I haven't had more little tidbits to share with you here lately. I guess I have felt that it's best, when you don't have anything to say.. not to say anything.
I did have one cute little story. I discovered while I was in Leesburg (down the street from the Leesburg Vintner), that empty wine boxes are EXCELLENT for what I need. They are sturdy, and about the right size/shape for many of the pots that I sent out on a onesy-twosy basis. So I just grab wine boxes whenever I see them at the grocery store or whereever.
I was boxing up some orders and things were going along very well. I had everything for this one order ready to go (from a first time customer), and I was ready to tape on the label, when I noticed that this particular brand of wine was called "BITCH."
Oh my. All over the box. Their tag line is "Life's a bitch and then we drink."
I happen to think it's cute, and I'd probably buy the wine and give it a try, but I figured, with a customer that I didn't know.. perhaps it wasn't the right box to use.
It's all about the judgment calls...
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