[Gossamer's Scrapbook] The Ethereal Canyon I

[Gossamer]

Busy Busy Busy

When you live in the Pacific Northwest, rain is a way of life. We had the wettest June on record and have had the wettest year to date. We finally dried up the very end of June and when Gillar (my hubby) had an opportunity to VL from work (due to it being slow over the 4th Holiday). He asked me what I thought of it. I jokingly said he could but only if he prepared to do some serious work around the house... like rent a Bobcat and go to work on the outside because the outside needed some serious upkeep.

You see... we have these delightful creatures. They eat copious amounts of hay and produce huge amounts of manure. Now, in the Northwest when everything is flooded you can't get a wheelbarrow out into the pasture or even drive one across the lawn thats loaded because you'll sink in the mud. As a result the runs off our stalls - the turn outs - got overly full of huge piles of manure.

So what we do is every year we rent a skidsteer or bobcat and clean them out. The piles go into trucks for gardens owned by our friends and family that don't have these hayburners or out into the pasture to be spread out to improve the quality of the soil to grow better grass for the hayburners to eat.

Gillar decided a week off playing with heavy equipment was more fun than say working the drudgery that is our job. We're all a little burned out because our vacation season doesn't start hot and heavy until August. Then I have tons of it until Christmas were it slows down again. Yea... our busy season is August 15-about December 15th so we schedule vacation then because we can get away from it when its really sucky.

So... Gillar messed around last weekend (I was busy) and then Monday... and tues this little toy showed up. He had a ton of fun cleaning out the runs and they looked FANTASTIC when he got done with them. Then I had a local gravel company deliver two truck loads of sand before I realized two loads of 24 yards wasn't going to do it justice.

We had them bring two more. So in the end there were four piles like this. Gillar had two sides of the barns and their runs to fill and one pile did about one quarter. Check it out. Look at the awesome job he did prepping for the sand! The sand is to control the flooding so it will drain off better once we start getting rain again.

After four piles of sand came, we had two truckloads of gravel also delivered. Our driveway and parking pads are paved. Even the barn is paved. But the road to the barn was grass and very much overgrown. It's now nicely rocked thanks go the driver doing a great job of spreading the rock and Gillar running the bobcat around and making it just about perfect.

The chickens are also getting re-sanded. They'll love a new layer of gravel in the chicken palace.

Then.... we had this huge place we called the pit. Historically it was an old building that probably fell down or burned down and all that was left was a foundation. The previous owners of our property used it as a trash heap or burn pit and it was literally filled with deadly objects that would mess a horse up. So we used the bobcat to break up the foundation and to dig out and sort the pit materials out. We made two huge piles... one to burn (old fence posts/boards) and one to haul to the dump (old fencing, an old wood stove, barrels, old tube fencing, and a whole host of odd things like a circa 1980s light sabre). That was a ... hell of a job. But the pit is officially no more. And now our horse run instead of wrapping AROUND the pit is running square through where it used to be which gives the end stall of the barn a huge run and the chickens another potential chicken yard when we want to expand.

I'm super happy. Tomorrow we are drilling post holes (I rented a ground hog to make it easier) and putting in new run fencing on the pit side and running posts through where the pit area was and cross fencing the horse runs so each stall has their own turn out.

Hopefully we'll be done tomorrow or more likely after we haul the dump piles away next week. I'm telling you this because that way you'll understand why I haven't been online for a few days because after work I've been tearing down fencing and dragging trash around and basically coordinating rentals, the delivery of gravel, etc etc etc etc.

I'll post more pics when we get it all done and the cross fencing accomplished.

[Gossamer]

Hay Time

It's ridiculous how busy I've been lately. This weekend I worked all day Saturday and we started putting up hay since everyone and their brother is cutting hay in the northwest. Its been rain free for a while with no rain in sight so its prime field picking time. We put away 7.5 tons roughly one trailer load at a time. The barn is full. I'm tired. But I'm happy that there's no more runs to the feed store because our supply of hay ran out months ago.

Anyhow... just saying that's why I've been busy. I always like to post pictures because sometimes people say the things I'm always doing seem far fetched. But you feed three big horses all year and ask yourself how much hay will it take. It takes a lot. And 7.5 tons will play out long before the haying season comes again.

[Gossamer]

Nothing Says Summer In The West More Than...

Idling your dodge 4x4 down the center of two rows of hay bales in a freshly cut field. The truck is in 4L so you don't have to work the clutch as it crawls forward and the guys walking alongside throw hay onto a trailer while someone stacks it up neatly.

This is the good life...

[Gossamer]

Playing Hookie

The older I get the more I enjoy playing hookie from responsibility. So what have I been up too? Arting, of course. What's Arting? Arting is the art of producing art... any kind of art... in the most laid back relaxing way you can. Alcohol is usually involved. And someone usually brings a pie. This time it was sour cream and blueberry (sounds remarkably gross but was amazingly good). It's along the lines of yachting, sunbathing, lazing, swimming (but only doggy paddling or floating on your back) that kind of thing. This time I was learning some cool glazing techniques. I'm mostly proud of my crab. I'm showing it off here. But I'll show you some more ugly stuff that's not done so you can marvel over how neat it looks when it does get finished. I should have them out of the kiln by Tuesday!

Warning... all these glazes move around a lot. Plus I've added a product called FLUX to the top of them that actually encourages them to move and mingle even more. So accurate painting for the sake of straight lines need not apply. Everything will be blendy in the end anyhow.... except the crab. That's just painted with pigments that stain the stoneware. I clear glazed the top, though that will still move a great deal as well.

Crab - Watercolor Glazing on a Stoneware Plate :

Big Serving Bowl with Redhot Glaze and Melty Crystals In Green that will ooze down its side. :

Spiral Galaxy Bowls and A Casserole Dish that should look like the hubble shot with melty crystals when its done too. :

Tea Anyone? Stoneware teapot. I did a chimera of effects with more of the Spiral Galaxy paint and melty crystals so we'll see how it turns out. :

So yea. I played hookie. Art Hookie. I'm proud of it. We'll see how it turns out about tues. I'll post pictures on Wednesday. Until then I'm back on Miz writing and doing another 6 day work week.

[Gossamer]

Ridiculous Amounts Of Stupid

So my work partner has been on vacation for the last two weeks and I've been dealing with a lot of shuffling of personnel around. We have (still - hes been gone two months) one guy out on medical leave, one guy who had bereavement leave (his dad died) and I have new people and full time drivers substituting as Hostlers.

They've never hostled before. Which isn't a big deal... unless you have brand new trainees at the same time. You can't cancel vacation that's been approved for a year. You can't tell the guy in the hospital to get back to work now. And you can't tell a guy he can't go to his dad's funeral right? You just can't. You instead buckle down and make it work.

I've been making it work for two weeks or more. It feels like forever.

But this week reached a breaking point. My partner finally came back for the later part of the week and took up the slack, the guy who lost his dad is back, and we are ALMOST fully back to normal.... finally. Or as normal as normal can be around my job. But let me tell you I almost lost my ever loving mind before 'normal' presented itself. I thought I'd share some pictures.

Being someone with the only know-how to do a job and having not one but two trainees using new equipment and not knowing how ANYTHING runs can challenge even the most veteran person.... myself included. So... without further ado this is what I had to put up with all day and in many ways all week because it kept happening.

First... both, but especially one of them... refused to look out the slider door in the back to make sure the 5th wheel on the yard goat was set high enough. Consequently they went under the trailers too low, drove under the kingpin on the trailer, and got trapped behind the kingpin and stuck in the cab of the truck. This image is a one of the truck two inches off the front of the trailer 'high hooked'. This trailer should be firmly hooked about four feet behind the cab. The driver escaped out the window and walked to find me... so I could fix it. The fix is fairly simple, but neither one could learn it very quickly... especially the trainee.

They high hooked over 8 times in four hours. I was ready to murder.

Then.... they dropped trailers because they weren't hooked properly. The trainee did this a lot. This particular one was empty or it ran a real risk of the landing gear collapsing. I wouldn't let this trainee even touch heavy loaded trailers because he did this more than 8 times in one hour.

In the case of this dropped trailer, it slid off the side and kept going trapping the yard goat under it. He simply COULDNT get out.

So I had to creep up to the front, back under it and hook it, and lift it off of him so we could get him untangled. He did this more than once. I took lots of pics because I wanted my boss to know how dangerous the new hire was and that he was going to do some serious damage.

The driver that was substituting did well and after he did all the common silly hostler mistakes, was off and running and was good help. But man oh man... this crazy new guy SOB had to have some extra time and training... and you know it didn't help. You can't fix reckless, dumb, and careless. You really can't. It was a miracle the guy didn't kill anyone, especially after he blew through a 5mph zone doing 30mph and screamed across a crosswalk full of people with a facility that has a policy we must stop at all crosswalks and honk before crossing them because someone got killed at the facility up north in Seattle two years ago.

This is serious stuff. I was seriously stressed. It's not scanning groceries, manning a drive through, stocking shelves or fetching carts from a parking lot. Those are important jobs, but I just think people that hold them don't understand the stress of others who have millions and millions in freight under their care... just as I can't understand someone in the military flying an F16 or manning a drone. Whether you agree or not, I feel like my job is big time grown up shit with 40-60 thousand pound trailers and freight that's worth millions. Picture one trailer full of Jack Daniels, Jim Bean, Wild Turkey, etc. There were things I just couldn't let these guys get close too. There would be nothing I could say to anyone to justify why if something happened to those loads.

So.... when I say rough week... I mean rough week. Yesterday was my first day off in a long long time and instead of using it to get things done like housework, laundry, etc... I just basically laid around the house all day, rested, and took like about fifteen naps. I had no idea I was that exhausted. But I was. And I'm not sorry I took a "me" day. I needed to catch up on my chai tea and reading. I even did some Miz reading. Today I'll do some real work and catch up on writing.

That leads me to another comment though.

I'm not going to apologize for slow posting. I get busy and people should understand that going in. However, when I do post for you I will give you 100%. I will write a lot and give you a lot to work with. I always do. I promise that. Its not worth posting if you aren't going to do it right. That being said though, when people do the opposite to me... when they complain to me about working 40 hr work weeks... and when they do take the time to reply... maybe a few lines to the large chunks of words I give them... I am just going to laugh. I really do. It's covering the utter disappointment that I wasn't worth the time it takes to actually do a proper response. Its super hurtful and dismissive of me when you finally bother to reply, use the excuse that you have been working a lot (TO ME!?!) and then give me nothing to reply to because you only bothered to post two or three lines... or maybe a small paragraph. At that point I'm done with you as a thread partner. I really am. I'd rather solo my life away than have you not read my posts or not even bother to respond to the things I do or say in character. Especially if you demand another huge post of me in response to your responses.

It puts me off threading. It really does. And in my tired, no exhausted... absolutely exhausted state... I can't deal with it. I'm only human. And that's the extent of it. I have my flaws just like the next person. And I know what's worth my time and what's not worth my time. So I'm going to put effort into those thread partners that always giveof themselves in their posts (or at least try too!) and thread with those people instead. Because they are givers and always make sure to heap on masses of action - either via movement or dialog - you can react too. I'm so grateful to those people. I shouldn't even mention the others. But it my scrap and this is for getting things off my chest and putting thoughts into words... so I'm doing that.

I'm at work a lot of hours... more than that. I often work 6 days a week especially this time of year when people are taking vacation. And we run a small crew so if someone gets sick (even long term) they are making huge impacts on the crew... and someone takes up the slack. I have a specialized job where we just can't call in a substitute. It's not that easy and its often more work than just doing the work of two or three people solo than babysitting substitutes or training new folks. So here's a MEME to that tune.

So you've been forewarned. If I thread with you, give me at least what I give you. If its anything less constantly, I'll just stop being interested... or the thread itself may just disappear. I'll warn you. I'll ask what's up. But don't bullshit me. And don't dismiss me by giving me nothing to respond too. I've carried a lot of thread partners over the years. Spare time is precious. I'm done carrying people anymore. And at the same time if I fuck up, forget something, feel free to nudge me. I'm on AIM all the time. I pop into chat a lot when I'm not at work. I won't make excuses, but there's reasons for slow posting. However, I'll make it up to you and get right on a response if your antsy and waiting for one.

[Gossamer]

Finished Art

After a grumbly post, I promised I'd show some finished arting stuff - especially the fired off stoneware. Below is some pics of my stoneware all fired. I'm going to do a whole set of the sea life plates. Then there's some other stuff I've done outside of stained glass workshop time.

Crab Plate :

Cereal Bowl #1 :

Cereal Bowl #2 :

Serving Bowl :

Casserole Dish :

Tea Pot :

Then, in some of my pretty rare spare time I've been doing some Arting... mostly with stained glass which is my chosen medium. A friend of mine who's also a beekeeper has cancer and our friends are doing a fundraiser for her. So I put together this window to donate to her cause out of my spare glass. It turned out better than I could have hoped. Then, I'm making a lot of little knickknacks because a friend of mine has a booth at a big Portland, Or Colosseum Christmas Bazaar and had her partner drop out on her so she's actually doing the show and needs more product to sell so I'm putting together some for her.

Beekeeper Window :

knicknacks :

[Gossamer]

Roleplay It Out

I'm getting a little tired of elaborate backstories written in CS's and then hinted at without any RP background. We have flashbacks for a reason. RP out your background if you have some sort of thing going on that was tragic, game-altering, life influencing, or made you some sort of badass. Otherwise, you are just telling rather than showing and no one has time for that. RP it!

You aren't a big badass until you are. This has been a growing pet peeve with me that's starting to make me shudder each time I see it. When my PCs say something about their past... its because its been RP'd out somewhere. There's thread evidence it happened. I wish everyone was like that so I could go back and read what happened to better understand the PC and why they are acting like they are. I know I have PCs that are going on being played for 10 years... but you can do this with brand new PCs too. There's flashbacks that do a lot of good for fleshing out histories.

Don't be afraid to put your words where your imagination is.

[Ashka]

The forum says it's your birthday. Congratulations.

[Gossamer]

Busy Busy Busy

Hi Folks.

Sorry I haven't been around much. I'm not completely gone though. I'm just in the middle of retail hell otherwise known as the Holidays. Retail is about two months ahead of things on the seasonal stuff and because of that fact we are in full blown Christmas Delivery Mode. I have been working 12 hr days 6 days a week. If anyone has ever worked shifts like this you know you get super tired and drag your butt and have barely any time for anything other than sleeping and grabbing a quick bite to eat.

I'm behind on everything. I haven't touched my PMs and I haven't even remotely looked at the HD. That should change today and this week.

However, the season ends about the first of December and then work will die off. After that I will have copious amounts of time to get caught up. I also traditionally take the week of Samhain off, so that's this week in fact. I'm going to try to get caught up on a few things this week while I'm off in between the Samhain doings and parties. I literally went to a 16 hr witchy event honoring the ancestors Saturday and then got together with my Solitary Witches group on Sunday where we threw ourselves another party in the rock pit where we meet. We had about 30 at the Saturday Ritual which was incredible for a sacred ritual high holiday. Sunday there was a half dozen. So I'm in semi-recovery mode today. Tomorrow is actually Samhain so I am booked solid from about 10am to well into the wee hours of the morning. Pagan New Years is busy! And since I do past life readings I get really bogged down this time of year. On the fun side I did an incredible reading on Saturday that opened my eyes to a whole new side of history I never realized existed until I caught a glimpse of it and then sat down with Google. Wow. Just wow. I really really love this time of year. It's completely renewing and refreshing for me.

I might even have time today to sit down and carve some pumpkins and turnips (turnips are traditional) after I finally decide to make some breakfast. I decadently slept in until 10am today. I actually get up every morning at 230am so thats a super rare thing for me.

I feel amazingly refreshed. Hanging out with copious amounts of witches and wild women over the weekend just recharged my batteries. I even got to experience an amazing dedication to Freya. Check out Tony's site for more details on Wodhanazson ... he does Eddaic Poetry which is poetry recited either chanted or in a very theatrical voice to music. The guy is amazing on drums. Nothing like working magic and toasting the gods and our relatives that have passed well into the night with delicious honey mead and a roaring fire filled with stories and magic.

Soo.... Anyhow.. Miz. I'm planning on being here for NaNo and spearheading it. I don't know if Tarot will have time to show up and do word counts or not. I can only assume his new wife Kate hates me and isn't speaking to me now (aren't FB arguments so entirely stupid?... she unfriended me and blocked me over a comment I made on one of her posts... go figure.) so I've felt a little weird contacting him over anything at all. I love and adore GP, but I don't want to cause any strife at all in a new marriage by even talking to him atm because it might put him in a weird position. I know women and how dumbass they can get (in general) sometimes... so I leave well enough along.

I'll leave that up to you guys if you feel the need to reach out. I've sent him a few PMs over the year with no response which isn't unusual. And I don't feel right texting him unless its a real emergency like the site is down... so that's why I haven't uploaded new banners or awarded new badges etc. I can't access the FTP to upload images because I think it needs a restart in the shell... and has needed one for a while.

But, in terms of moderation and managing things... I'm still around. I answer PMs mostly, unless they are utterly stupid, and since AIM is no longer supported, we have to come up with a new way to keep an ongoing chat going with staff and players like we have now. I'm not sure what day AIM goes down, but its soonish. So if anyone has any suggestions for a portable easy on the phone and computer chat program, let us know. It's really how the staff keeps up with each other.

Anyhow, now as in this week, is a great time to reach out if you need anything at all. Get those hd tickets in, pms sent, etc because they will be read and answered today and the rest of the week (besides Tues).

And thanks especially for those pms sent that have been encouraging me to just be me and return to the site. I do appreciate those of you that reached out while I was mainly AWOL.

Goss

[Pulren Marsh]

Good to see you are well, my friend. Pulren will be back in full effect by Winter. I may take a soft stab at nano by doing my job threads in RF before departing. Winter and forward I will be in Syka as a permanent resident. Phew. I am glad you are okay and looking forward to fun.

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