Brad Sondahl's blog

We've been seeing a lot of these chestnut backed chickadees at our feeder lately. We also have black capped and mountain chickadees, and all come to the feeder, usually at separate times.

Nov. 13
We're getting our first serious snow, just as predicted. It's a pleasant novelty watching the snow swirl down, though I know it will get old within a month or so. Fortunately there's nowhere we need to go, as the first snow always brings out the worst in drivers. It also makes everyone hustle to get their snow tires on. I was lucky to get our local mechanic switch them today for $10. I used to do it myself, but ended up breaking off lug bolts which cost more than having a shop do it...
I've gotten the latest CD ready on the music end--still need to do the graphic design. My goal is to have it ready by the time I go to the dentist, whose office appreciates my Christian music.

Nov. 15

    The snow has stayed, around 2 inches, with weather hovering around freezing. I've ignored it and watched a lot of football this weekend...

Nov. 16
    I got my new Christian CD finished--the link is here. The cover is a kaleidoscopic cross from a photo of a flower. The music is as folksy as the instruments.
    Otherwise I glazed a couple kilnloads and threw some napkin holders (request) and squared off soup mugs (request) and large pitchers. The weather warmed and removed a lot of the snow, but not all...

Nov. 17
    We had a reprieve from the white look today--when we woke up it was nearly 50 out. The wind blew through the day, drizzling and colder in the afternoon. We worked on yard projects, like spreading manure, spreading leaf mulch, and taking off the fake plastic shutters that came with our house.
    In the pottery I made cereal and dessert bowls, and fired another glaze kiln.

Nov. 18
    We went shopping in Spokane for things as mundane as vacuum cleaner bags. It was a sad discovery that the world is headed towards very short socks. A lot of ankles will be cold. Perhaps that will make a market for ankle warmers. I don't understand style.
    We also shopped for a turkey. The store had a promotion where the more stuff you bought, the higher the percentage off on the turkey. An alternative was to buy a ham for $20 and get a 10-12 pound turkey free. Unfortunately it was one of those processed ham rolls that I prefer not to eat. Buying decisions are complicated. At least at Sears the vacuum bags we needed were the first set we laid eyes on. Win one for the consumer... We also got a used piano bench for our piano that lacked one.

Nov. 19
    There were a lot of things to pack for the local clay artists sale this weekend, since I'm doing music, pottery demos, and sales. Then I volunteered music at the library in the evening for a program riffing off of "Where the Wild things Are."
    We got more snow that stuck yesterday, and the weather service seems to change its mind frequently as to our weather in the next couple days. I'd prefer no snow with our sale on, but...

Nov. 21
After a long two day fair, it all seemed to work out okay. I played over 5 hours of music in the two days, since there were fewer groups that volunteered this year. Sales were down about 35 per cent from last year, which was down 40 % from the previous year, so one can easily long for the good old days, but they're not coming back any time soon...
    The fair was held in an oddly luxuriant new structure which was built mostly on funds from the McDonald's chain Kroc Foundation, a many million dollar community center loaded with water features, exercise opportunities, even a recording studio, all run by the Salvation Army. We were off in the conference room area, away from all the fun stuff. It's been open less than a year, and the attendance at the facility is double expectations. We did get some spillover in customers from the facility, and some of the 180 employees as well. We look forward to going and playing there sometime.

Nov. 23
    Thanks to a few orders, I was back in the studio today. In the afternoon I put some pegs made from old broom handles onto two boards and attached them to a wall near our wood stove, so that coats and things can dry there in the winter. We currently have about two inches of wet snow.
I've resolved to make a snow measure stick this year so as to be scientific in my approach to the inevitable.
    We got our property tax bills this weekend. We're paying over $300/month just for the taxes. I used to think that was too high for rent... Then last weekend our "good" car's check engine light came on. The car still drove the same, but I paid $190 today to replace the EGR module, which I had to look up on Wikipedia to find out what it's for. I expect in the future the cars will run perfectly but every once in a while flash a message on the display telling you to run your credit card so the car will continue to run perfectly without interruption, kind of a high tech protection racket.
    When we lived in an old farm when we were starting out in Minnesota (rent $75/month for a chicken coop), there were some old letters in the basement from the Great Depression (1 or 2 cent stamps). They were requests for payments for small sums (by today's standards) which likely never got paid. Today the small sums are mostly converted to large debts at exhorbitant interest via credit cards. This is a boon for small business people, who don't have to deal with customer credit. And of course we see how it's destabilized the banking industry, along with family finances. We've always made a point of paying off all credit card purchases every month, which is the only reasonable way to live long term. Banks would prefer us to use some 18 % credit, for some reason.

Nov. 24
    Adjusting kiln sitters, the device I use to shut off my electric kiln, is tricky business. There is a little stick of clay that rests across two posts, with a third rod sitting on top of them. When the stick of clay melts enough to bend down, the rod goes down with it, and the other end of the rod lifts up, allowing a switch to fall down and trip the kiln off. To adjust the settings, there's a little screw that loosens a bar that slides up and down to adjust how much play is in the trip switch. Currently both of my kilns are off, just a bit, so that the cones I usually use result in overfiring. So I adjust the bar, and it's hard to tell how much it's moved, except by trial and error. This was one of those error days. The last firing in one kiln was too cool-- so I refired some crystalline and black disc vases in the other kiln. It was too hot, and some of the glaze slumped off and stuck the pots to the kiln shelf. I guess I need Little Red Riding Hood to find the one that's just right.
    This afternoon I mixed up some masonry cement and fixed some bricks that were loose around our fireplace. There were only 3 when I started, but by the time I knocked off the old mortar, there were 10 that needed replacing. I found that a spoon worked well to make nice concave joints between the bricks. Being used to working more with my hands than a trowel, I did a lot of it with rubber gloves on...

Nov. 25.
    I'm off tomorrow on a holiday for about a week. We decided to have turkey early. Yesterday while working on the fireplace I thought the turkey was cooking, but I must have bumped the temperature knob from 350 to 200, and when I finally remembered to check it a couple hours later, it was essentially warm to the touch. So the turkey got done around bedtime last evening, and sat out in the van overnight to cool.
    Today we had turkey for breakfast and lunch, and possibly dinner. It's just that time of year...
    I was thinking that our culture needs to evolve a new mythology of why millions of turkeys must die, and the overfed must watch football.