Etsy avatar

Here's the new photo I uploaded as my Etsy avatar. Someone suggested I put a picture of the kiln, but the avator space is so tiny, the kiln didn't show well.

Yesterday I announced it was my birthday,instead of today. Guess I should have looked at the calendar. On one hand, I love that my life is such, that most of the time I can ignore calendars! In fact, I don't even keep one. Jim has one on his desk and if I need to be forewarned about a date, I have him note it in his calendar.

Yesterday was a busy day starting with getting the new table down to the basement and redoing my photo setup, then kiln meeting with Shane, followed by getting antivirus setup on all three computers which took quite a while and other computer work, recipe filing, and cooking a lovely Chicken Normandy for dinner.

Shane is going to get two new burners for the kiln, and make some other minor modifications on the burner ports and bag wall and we're going to make pots and aim for a February firing and see if the modifications will make it fire a little more evenly. If it works, I won't have to take the extreme measure of taking the whole arch down and starting from scratch.

The Emeril Lagasse Chicken Normandy recipe is divine. It's not an every day dish with all that cream, butter, and bacon; but it was delicious and the two chicken breasts I bought were large enough that we have leftovers tonight. My friend Betty made me a lovely birthday pumpkin roll cake with a cream cheese filling - really delicious! It went great with the Bremer chardonnay Jim picked for dinner.

I didn't have time to redo some of those Etsy photos so I'll try to do that this afternoon. Later, dear friends are coming over to share some of the special cheeses I ordered from Murray's in New York. It was an indulgence; but those cheeses are sublime and not available locally or in Asheville. Today is going to be a nicely balanced day of non strenuous productive activity, and relaxing time with dear friends. What could be better!