Last week I grouted the house numbers in gray grout, then I let the grout cure gently for 1 week. This morning I delivered it!

The couple thought that it turned out better than they could have imagined. Even though I offered to charge them $70 as a thank you for taking a chance on me, nope I got a $100 bill for it....


And an offer to mosaic their business address number ...
in any way I choose as long as the number conforms to City of Seattle business statutes.

And a hey, we want some of your business cards so that we can talk you up...

Still no call from the court, so I have to assume that the jury I was an alternate for is still deliberating. I'll see if there is a way to search cases online. I was a little disappointed not being able to deliberate last week. I'm sure the jury that remains probably envies me.

Right now I'm relaxing at home, but I do have some goals for the day this week. Goal #1 is to catch up on my house cleaning - which I am doing 30 min or so at a time by using mini-projects. For instance, I scrubbed out the tub out yesterday afternoon. Ah, heaven! Goal #2, unfortunately is work related - performance evaluations. One more section for me to write on my own eval, and I scheduled the meeting for my direct report who went on family leave.

Goal #3 is to finish my commission. So far, everything is glued - I stick the mosaic onto a board using thinset, then grout. Grout cures for a week and voila. But so far, it looks good... Paulette, the finished piece will appear near you!


Sunday I hit the mother lode. I was at a yard sale, looking, and I talked with the owner who told me that she had a lot of stuff due to "projects". I mentioned my mosaics. Turns out that she used to do stained glass and asked me if I could use stained glass. Could I! . I bought what I think was about 10 lbs of glass for $5, it was a nice variety too. You can see the stained glass above and below the numbers.

Other things - I finished by change finding for the third year in a row (yes, oddball me I started in mid-july). $90.35. Thank you loose change losers. And yesterday, I found my 6th silver dime for my precious metal portfolio.

No interesting deaths that I know about - nobody had Andy Griffin, or Kitty Wells. 4 people in our group have Bashir al-Assad.

Just in case you were curious about it. It turned out smashing! The party was fun, but there was not so much planning - more like what were people's hobbies, personality, did people have side plans? A fair number of people also wanted to travel across the wide, wide river bed and visit Urugray.

Let me give you a tour of my tiny portfolio:

Monkey mama linked to my first project, done in class. I loved it, but I don't think of it as sellable and the grout is now starting to crack on it. I learned two lessons - 1. don't get fancy with the edge (fancy edges have to be babied), and 2. grout has to "cure" slower than 3-4 days ... I wrap my pieces with a bathtowel I hate, spritz the towel to dampen it and wrap that in a plastic kitchen garbage bag and leave it alone for a full 7 days.

This is the finished garden tray. I found a wire tray at the thrift store and fit the piece to the bottom. Wearing like iron!


This is the piece I gave to the Duvall friends. Its a homage to their

1-winged rooster, State & Main. 1 wing but he produces "swimmers" (their comment, not mine). His first rooster son, First & State, got sold to neighbors.


I asked a coffeeshop (Green Bean) to hold their chipped and broken mugs, plates, and other ceramic stuff. I used a fair amount of black coffee mug for the rooster tail above. I made this piece for them. Word has it that they will be hanging it soon. I'll let you all know if that comes to pass!


I still have to grout this for lawyer friend and partner. They love poker and throwing dinner parties. What should happen (fingers crossed) is that the clear glass should protect the card face underneath from the grout. I learned also that a much better source for interesting ceramics is not the thrift store, but a high end ceramics shop because the high end shop can only sell the chipped and cracked pieces to me for a quarter or fifty cents. (a Vernon plate provided the curtain-y middle top).

With the stock market 12% off and with the never ending recession, and with a virtual certainty that if you have a checking account with a big bank you'll be (expletive deleted)... well, I need to share just one good thing that happened this quarter. Here it is, made it myself:

Its July in Seattle, the height of the tourist season, and everybody is looking to make a bit of coin off of them....

Went to the Museum of History and Industry, Seattle version (there's a museum with the same name in Chicago) for my free museum day. Did it because we went to the Greek Festival afterwards, less than a mile away.

A non-too-often photographed view of an "old style" street light.


For scfr - unfortunately, the Lusty Lady passed into history a couple of months ago; at least the sign made it.


A lego version of 1930's Seattle - the white 3 story building with the street lamp in front of it was the old SeaFirst #6 bank building. These days, its our office.


Speaking of the 30's many of the Depression -era photos and exhibits really spoke to me. Seattle was known then as the The Soviet of Washington; it held the first general strike in the nation. Seeing the Hooverville stretch for many acres south of downtown was chilling, as was a shot of 10 adult males in long 30s-style overcoats at the city dump picking through garbage for anything to resell. Times are bad now, but they could be (and have been) far, far worse.

The Greek Fest was a bit pricey... always is when you're buying the good stuff - eg a large can of olive oil. Also picked up a bag of the braid cardamon-y cookies, kasseri cheese, bunch of greek oregano. The cookies were sweet, but not so much that you need the insulin shot. $52.

When I got home, I discovered that my first payments coming from the flu study came. So far $175.

I take pictures every year, because its fun and how often does one buy a great $2 brat? Along with few free (for the taking) pics?

Perhaps you have seen a few of these Seafair m a few years running. Every year the components of the parade are similar - the Seattle police motorcycles start the parade, the Seafair pirates end the parade, and there are businesses, little kids, beauty pageant contestants, horse dressage, drill team, bands, and step teams in between. I did manage to take good pics of some components that I've never gotten good pics of before. Enjoy ... and hurry up before they turn into red x's!

There was an Irish step dance troupe that moved into the neighborhood last year - so Michael Flattley, eat your heart out...


And I finally got a great picture of the Chinese step team, a real Seattle hallmark. They did a very intricate step pattern on the street, video

here. Have got to love the sweep of that pheasant feather headress.


I caught the musicians on the drill team with confused expressions, however they were very good. Underneath the dragon was a huge drum.


And while I have taken pictures of the horse dressage team before, I just like the rhythm and movement of this picture.

Sunday
Saving log - $0
Spending log - $3.88 coffee, bagel + $16 conveyor belt sushi pigout
Found money - $0.11 (coffeehouse floor, gutter)

Saturday
Saving log - $0
Spending log - $14 breakfast + $6 Halloween hat + $21 miscellaneous
Found money - $0.39 (sidewalk, gas station parking pad, carpet)

Friday
Saving log - $9 tip box
Spending log - $1.75 coffee
Found money - $0.04 (road, sidewalk, under picnic table)

Still having reasonable luck finding change despite the leaves on the ground. This weekend was a do or die time to "do" something for Halloween - I usually say I don't have a creative idea for Halloween in the two weeks before but then pull something off. This time, still nothing. I'm going with a funny hat (keeping the price tag on for the Minnie Pearl fans out there) and be done with it.

Finding the funny hat meant heading to the Goodwill, change hunting all the way. You might have noted that I expected, and was disappointed, that the Goodwill parking lot would be a rich source of found money, and I have mused about the mystery. When I walked into Goodwill, I found a cheap, funny, fuzzy hat, but also a partial resolution to the mystery: Goodwill's inside carpet was the rich source of found money. Goodwill was extremely busy with shoppers; they made a mess of the racks and floors; and the only person who was watching the floor was me. At first blush, if people drop change in response to distractions, the Goodwill store is a primo study site to explore. But for now - easy dime and five pennies. With the other change found in other spots - Seattle has provided me with $6.54 since mid-July.

Later at the Fred Meyer, I bought another item for the months to come: a clip-on, five-pattern, 1/2 mile visible bright flashing pedestrian light. $6, but when I walk home in December, that car is gonna see me.

The other delight I've seen at Fred Meyer are the definite price reductions for food. For example, I needed some luna/clif bars for breakfast - last year at this time they went, cheapest, @ $0.99/bar. Now - $0.79/bar. I've now been seeing produce for under $1.00/lb and canned tuna at $0.65/6 oz can. I've not kept up my price book for the last couple of years (too depressing). I might restart it now.

A bit of our neighborhood news made even some of the national news (at least I heard that it made the morning ABC news). Our neighborhood lost 4 businesses Friday to fire - 2 places I ate at semi-regularly, 1 I drank coffee at every so often. The

phinneywood blog has the fire pictures. Arson investigation is ongoing. Mine is from the back. That cooked area at the top is where the roof line was.

Saving log - $3 tip box
Spending log - $1.75 coffee + $7 salad fixings
Found money - $0.01 (gym floor) + $.26 (Safeway - another quarter by the Coinstar machine)

Fall has arrived in Seattle, today with a vengeance - cloudy, rainy, cold. After a day like today, as I walked to catch my bus tonight, I look to my little red fall beacon:


More good health news today - my cholesterol is a non-threatening 182. The big health issue is with V.I. - she hasn't been defecating in the litter box, and it turns out she has giardia. So our entertainment has been to catch her and give her her medicine to clear it. And wash our hands afterward. :P

DH sent me a highly entertaining

sin link for a data geek like me. As you look, remember that Seattle is in the upper left corner. We hold our collective heads high!