Stewart Creations

My friend from pottery, Mike is doing a big cancer walk and funding drive. Go here

http://main.acsevents.org/goto/mike_henrichs

to donate a dollar for his efforts.
My friend, Christina’s sister-in-law is dying right now from a cancer. I think it is Mesothelioma . Hospice is there for a few hours each day and lots of other people are pitching in to let her stay at home to the end. It’s pretty hard on everybody, but she fought for so long and so hard. She fought for three more years than they thought she’d have.
When they were all young and living in California, all Christina’s brothers and sisters would gather their families on the beach for a bonfire and barbecue on the weekends. Suzanne loved those times, getting to know her brothers’ huge family, and bonding. So she has requested that her ashes be taken out there and they all gather for a bonfire and barbecue to scatter her ashes.
Christina cried when she told me this.
Cancer is a horrible killer. Please donate in any way you can.

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Our morning dog walk was glorious today, I got a good shot of Reddy Kilowat-Coyote. This dog is one of our pups from Annie and Hank. He turned out to be too much of a handful at his home, so we got him back. We give a lifetime guarantee.

He is pretty high-strung, and apparently the people who had him had lots of traffic in their house. Strangers wandering around, coming in unannounced or something. Anyway, long story short, he was biting. They were afraid they’d have to have him put down and they just don’t have the right kind of atmosphere for a problem child like he apparently is.
We haven’t had problems, but then we don’t have much traffic.
So now we have five. That’s a lot of dogs. You try sleeping with five dogs and see how you do. I take pills when I need to, I’m not proud. Plus, I have them pretty much trained to stay off of my side bacause I’m tougher than Dave. He ends up with at least three dogs piled up on him and he’s too kind to shove them off. Not so I. I need my sleep.
Here’s anothe pic of our day up on Seven Springs. Pnut just jumped into the cold water! Out of the clear blue, he flew off the bank and into the pool. Seemed pretty happy with himself about it.

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Here’s Mike, mugging it up in ceramics class.

Today I am fulfilling the assignment: make something that stands at least 12 inches tall. So I will make a pitcher. Actually, I want to make a series of three, perhaps graduated in height. I have a plan for a three-sided pitcher, Dave helped me design it the other night. I need some advice from Mr. Bradley on the handle’s strength. This can be made with any of the techniques we have learned so far. I will make this pitcher from leather-hard slabs. That means I have to roll it out, texture and design the surface and get it out in the sun to dry right away so that I will have time to mess with it during class today. Maybe I will take it home and work on it this weekend.
This weekend I am going on a ceramics studio self-guided tour of artists in Phoenix. These ceramicists are opening their doors to students on these two days. They each have other (visiting) potters there. I suppose they will be selling their wares. I am mostly interested in the kilns.
I am having a hard time finding a good fuel to fire my ‘third-world kiln’.
Saturday I will be going out in the central Phoenix area with my pal, Liz, the photographer. Sunday Mike, from ceramics class, and I will go around the north Phoenix area. I don’t hope to find an alternative-fueled kiln, but I can pick some brains.
My beads got fired yesterday, I can’t wait to see how they turned out. I left the stick in to make the bead hole. The stick will just burn out. I have another piece with newspaper inside to hold the shape. Curious to see what the burning material does, I thought of adding glass beads, string, weight loss pills, anything you could think of that will burn, just to see the effect. Guess I should ask the teacher if it’s a good idea.

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Yesterday we went up to Seven Springs area to run the dogs. There’s a hill with a big communications tower atop, We went there. About halfway up the hill on a saddle we stopped, had a lunch, played with the dogs and looked around for some ruins. In that area we have found extensive ruins, some on maps and some not, but no such luck yesterday. Dave found a 1 inch piece of pottery with a black stripe across it, and I kept finding small pieces of a silicate mineral that was bubbled and crystal shaped. Like the inside of a thunder egg or vug already weathered out from the rock around it. I brought some of that home, but we always leave the pottery and such where we find it. It’s only polite, after all, it’s not our pottery.

Looking for ruins reminded me of Puerto Vallarta. Sounds like Ron and Megan are gearing up for another trip down there next spring. We want to go, too, it’s always fun. I thought I found a web site that details some ruins in that neighborhood, but I’m not sure I am remembering the right locale. Sure is interesting to travel south. I want do some Machu Picchu travel in Peru some day soon.
Been thinking about my decision to move the focus of my non-profit business to the U.S. and am losing my nerve.
The problem is, it takes so much more money to do anything here, and anyone who is a citizen has our good-old fall-back system to draw from. I mean, if I can pull myself up from ignorance and poverty to get an education, then anybody born and living here should be able to.
I might just go ahead with my Honduran plans and take a chance, it will be a couple of years before I am ready anyway, the rate I’m going. Things will be better by then.
In fact, I don’t seem to be able to work up much passion for the U.S. program as it is shaking out. I need the passion to keep me working.
So the e-commerce class with the web site and business plan is going to go ahead and be the Honduran thing. More passion is good.

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I got to take pics at the care center (Life Care Center at Paradise Valley) Valentine’s morning. They had a group of people aged from six to sixty (including me) dressed up and singing to the residents. The fee was five dollars for a Valentine’s card, hugs, and a song. The money all went to donations through the care center.
The songs were ‘Let me call you sweetheart” and “You are my sunshine”. It was a hoot. I took more than 150 pics. Today I burned them on a CD and went to the UPS store for prints of the fifty or so that were fabulous! It only costs .35 (cents) each for a terrific full-color print on letter paper. LorNa at the care center will hand them around to either the care center resident or their family.
Dave and I had a beautiful brunch of smoked salmon, champagne, and chocolate out under the new lanai. I won’t tell you what we did next, but we woke up from our nap around three in the afternoon. It left little time for homework, but I don’t mind.
We didn’t buy each other stuff this year, not even gift cards or a scarf. Just chocolate and champagne.

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Joleen got her quilt. I actually got to sleep under it one night and cuddle up to it on the beach the next night.
It’s good.
Perfect weight and great texture. After it’s washed a few dozen times it will be even better. So I’m stitching up the leftovers for a sister quilt for one of the girls. I think Jayden wanted the green one. I have a fabulous purple one in mind for Adriene. I have an incling of an idea for Jutice’s quilt, It will be all manly blues, greys, blacks, and browns, but I’m thinking of T-shirt material. That will have to wait though, school is going to be busy this term.

diet pills

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MacroEconomics is pretty interesting in ways that I never thought. I’ve always liked graphs and spreadsheet design. Everything we’re studying right now can be graphed to show the optimal outcome of the set of circumstances. Like ice-cream, you can show on a graph what the consumer does if you give it away, raise the price, lower the price. And you can show what happens to price related to quantity produced. There’s another graph that shows what happens if you put three variables together. I am starting to understand the one that shows optimum production based on two variables. That one will be very good for a small manufacturing business, I’m hot on the trail of actually understanding all of the above.
Today I was wishing for some of that chemical memory enhancement supplement. Is it illegal? hope not. I guess if I just bulk up on vitamins and veggies my brain will work well. But study and study and study is what I have to do to pound the info into my brain. So try the Super Cissus or just maybe go raw.
I have a friend who says going raw is the only way. She’s already veggie/vegan, but she insists she feels better on juice and veggies. She probably does feel great, too. She looks about half her age (which is a great way to look at our age!).
But I like rice, and you have to cook that, I think. I cooked ‘Forbidden Rice’ yesterday with carrots and curry spices. Yummy!! Forbidden rice takes a long time to cook, but is delicious when done.
It’s chilly today, maybe I will make a punkin pie, we got eggs on sale the other day. Doesn’t it look good?

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This is our second (or third?) stretch of rain this winter.

It’s very nice, really, only I got caught out in the hail and sleet downpour. Just for a second or two, but it soaked my down vest back and collar real fast.
Art class today with my son. We are making the business cards, logo, letterhead, poster, and three-fold. I, of course, (think I said this before) am doing the non-profit business.
The focus has changed since last term due to world economic circumstances, but now I am looking for URL names that describe what I’m aiming to do. The direction of the goal is the same, and in a couple of years if I can get a national project funded, then I can use that as a portfolio to get my international thing going. Still plenty exciting for me. I can’t believe I was so upset about having to change focus to within US borders just a few days ago. I thought I was probably: wasting my time, and completely off track, and I should quit right now before I do something REALLY stupid and get into debt even further. It was a pretty low couple of days. But I think it’s okay.
I never once had something thrown at me that I couldn’t handle and if I can keep going with the flow, I can come out the better for it on the other side. So, yeah, that feels good.
I got my school money the other day. Being an Honors student has paid off pretty well and I’m proud of that. I get more monetary reward each term I maintain my GPA.

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Well, the little green quilt from the left-overs is almost done. Pnut helps me a lot.

I can’t believe how fast this quilt is going. Of course it’s little, like making baby bedding because Jayden wanted a smaller one just for curling up in on the couch. It’s perfect for that, and so very cute! I threw everything at it. No sense in having a serious blankie for a kid, so it’s got rutching and lace a-plenty.
Pnut is small enough to be on the work table and so he is, fequently. He’s just great company.
He doesn’t quite ‘get’ the ball game. He like it when everybody runs around, and when he can get the ball he likes that, too. But he just runs off into a corner of the yard and chews the ball, or even more ofte, he lays down beside it and chews on something else, forgetting the ball altogether. When he has the ball in his mouth he will come to me when i call him, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the ball.
He doesn’t have to be smart because he’s so cute. There I said it.

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These are pretty interesting times to be taking a class that focuses on world and national economics using current events. Our teacher Bahman (Batman) Maneshni is a real fireball. He expends so much energy in class that you can’t help but feel you should at least equal his output. We have links to new items every day to read and then we have to pop up real quick-like in class when he asks for the ‘whazzups’ and if you relate a juicy bit you can get an extra credit point. I got an extra point last week for popping up and telling about Thiel and his office make-over with bail-out money when it was fresh news.
Frequently he will stop you and (say you mentioned China) go, ‘and China is…?” You need to be able to answer ‘The second largest economic presence in the world’, or “the first in manufacturing.” something like that. But you need to know it.
I bombed out at the board the other night by not fully understanding the Phillips curve graph. But I keep trying…. I have five or six extra points already.
Here is one of my friends from the Care Center where I sometimes volunteer. Alice is having her 100th birthday party on Valentine’s day and I get to be the Photographer.
School Rocks!!!!!!

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The first part of the business plan is the Executive Summary. The exec summary is a complete and concise 2-page picture of your business.
It doesn’t matter what the business is, it could be software development, Moen faucets online, distribution of pet psychology materials, water treatment, you get the picture.
My business plan is for a non-profit manufacturing and marketing co-op, repeated with different products and different communities across America.
The start-up money will come from the grant and donation sector, perhaps foundation money, I won’t rule anything out.
The businesses will pay into the system and make new factories possible.
The community will benefit from not only jobs, but day-care and legal and social programs advice. The daycare will be a separate entity from the manufacturing co-op and paid for by the client with time and/or money instead of being a benefit of the job, because that will insure continuity of child care in the event of job change.
The marketing will be part of the manufacturing co-op and training will be provided for all the parts of running the shop. The community will benefit by having income, training, childcare, health insurance, and social services such as counseling and mentoring.
That’s just what needs be in the first couple of paragraphs. I need to write this up in business-ese. I’m working on it.

This is one of the logos, but not the one for the U.S. business. This is one of the logos for the Honduran project.

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Computer Graphics Art class today. The one my son is taking with me. We get to make posters. I’ve been focusing on my non-profit business this term, so the cards, logo, stationery, all have the non-profit business on. So will the poster.
Thing is, I hit a snag. I had been planning my first official project to be in Honduras, but in the last couple of weeks everything to do with money has contracted. The stipulation that the grant or donation be spent in the US is increasing.
My MacroEconomics class is teaching me that closing your borders is the wrong thing to do in a recession or depression. Oh well, not my decision, I just roll with it.
I need experience anyhow, so how about I put away the Samsoniteand do projects here at home for a few years while I finish school and the economy gets better? (Is that wishful thinking?)
Course, I have to change the logo on all of the stuff, but that’s the fun part.

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