Bits, Bobs

A glass of Williamette Valley Pinot Noir.

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I'm working on a project which gets into the corners of my brain cells and tangles things up. This involves pages back-to-back, photo corners, text, etc. The good part is that I'm learning one helluva alot and the bad part is that there is often an urge to scream. And that it's costing me a heckuva lot more than I expected. Sigh. But it's going to be fantastic, I do believe.

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A big push at work these past few weeks, getting the last of the holiday orders finished and shipped out, lickety split. The annual home show/sale was today and then again next Sunday, which involves breaking down the home-factory and building the home-showroom. Glass shelving, fancy halogen lights, all excess paint/tape/buttercut pried free of all surfaces. Reports are that today went very well. A good thing. Job security. I work with a great group of three women, all of us artists in various disciplines. I regularly slay them with puns, and sometimes they laugh. Sometimes. (Not often enough.) The food is good -- lots of homemade soup, an occasional salad, freshly-ground coffee. Bits and bobs of this and that. Last week C. brought in remnants of pumpkin pie: one bite each. And then there was bittersweet chocolate with sea salt. And believe me, we work hard. Really hard. The hands ache, we manoeuver heavy boxes around precarious corners, battle spiders and wasps, go up and down steps over and over again, into the dungeon (the basement) for packing peanuts, bubble wrap. Glass is heavy. Sometimes it breaks. And sometimes at quitting time there's a nip of single-malt Scotch.

It's these small things -- soup, Scotch, puns -- that keep things simmering along at a tolerable pace.