Glass blowing

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I’ve been interested in blowing some glass recently.  So, I set about finding how to tackle this (soon to be hobby?) task.  I came across The Washington Glass School first.  It wasn’t the easiest to find out about glass studios in the Baltimore/DC area, but I did come up with that one.  They offer affordable classes, but the commute would have sucked.  So, I emailed their generic site email for some more information.  They were kind enough to point me towards Corradetti Studio, here in Baltimore.  

I emailed Corradetti with some general questions on what it takes to get started with blowing glass.  They offer classes (workshops), also.  So, their class setup is based on about 4-5 people working with 2 instructors.  Basically, it is a two day course held on specific weekends.  They have a schedule of specific openings.  The prices were not very bad, at $350 per person.  This price includes all materials and tools, so you basically just need to show up.  The second point that I was curious about was that once I start getting the hang of what to do, are there open studios or walk-in type availabilities?  To cater to that type of visit, they offer renting the studio.  Their price is reasonable at $250 whole day / $125 half day.  You can also work with a private instructor for an additional $20/hour. 

So, it looks like blowing glass is not an impossible task, and it’s nice to know that it is offered without having to go to school for it.  If you do happen to go to Corradetti studios, it’d be cool to let them know that I helped you find their business 🙂

Update: I attended the 2 day weekend course.  If you’re interested you can see what went on for day 1 and day 2

Damn squirrel dreams…

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I found myself bashing a picture in my room last night, around 3am.  Apparently, I was dreaming that a squirrel was hanging out on the picture.  I guess I felt the need to take my pillow and hit the picture as hard as I could, a couple times.  Heh… they joys of acting out my dreams.  Anyway, I figured this should be mentioned as it might bring a smile to someone’s face.

Depressed again

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Weird… I’m feeling pretty depressed again.  It’s really weird how this seems to go in waves.  I’m going to keep writing about when I feel very depressed, to try to figure out a couple things.  One, if it has a cycle like, ahem, someone that I’m living is on.   Or if it has a specific day that it always seems to land on.  Currently, that day seems to be Sunday.  Anyway, I could somewhat notice that it was creeping into my life a little last night.  I went out with a couple friends and really didn’t feel like drinking.  So, I just people watched at the club that we were at.  I didn’t have a shitty time, but at the same time, I didn’t have a blast either.  I do have to admit that the place that we went ranks up there on decent places to go around here. 

So, back to the madness… I think part of the reason that I felt weird last night and somewhat today, is that I’ve been hanging around girls primarily.  It sounds like it is cool and all, but they’re fucking stupid sometimes.  Too often, I caught myself analyzing their behavior throughout the night.  All I have to say is fuck any girl who criticizes their “other” for looking at or acknowledging other girls in the room… Maybe it has just been the girls that I’ve been hanging out with, but they hit on other guys, wear clothes to specifically get notice, and try all sorts of shit just to get attention.  So apparently, attention is the universal weakness of a girl, I guess.  To then witness the fragility that is the girl’s state of mind, suck the girl into the role that they are trying to put on for that night.  I think that’s how some girls get “hurt” by one night stands, etc.  They don’t realize that it is all brought on by themselves and a guy is just a pawn playing the hand dealt.  Now don’t get me wrong, I know some guys are smooth as shit, and can talk girls into doing most anything, but I think that 9 times out of 10, girls are asking for what is coming.   I find it somewhat interesting, the lines at which girls draw… How they don’t acknowledge someone over here, but hang on this other person.  I won’t even get into their view on looks or “it’s not the looks that count, it’s what is underneath.”  Yeah… keep smoking that crack.  I think a combination of all of this has really made me sick of the bar scene and just VERY frustrated with the whole dating system… It would be so nice to be able to weed out all girls that play little games like that.  

So anyway, I’m going to say that the catalyst for my depression has been my recent analytic behavioral observations.  (heh, maybe I should’ve been a psych major)

As a side note, I have to admit that the girls have been really cool to hang out with… Once you take away all of those fucked up games.

School kids should chat

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I’m sure I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll bring it up in case I haven’t… I think that school kids should be chatting… at least for learning how to type.  What better way to find out where the keys are, and how to speed up your typing skills?  For me, when I was learning how to type, chatting was the thing that frustrated me the most.  I felt as though I was taking forever to answer the person that I was chatting with.  And it was more than the 2400 baud modem that I was using.  It’s surprising, but it wasn’t the modem that slowed me down.  It was my inability to just “know” where the keys were.  Well, after a year or so of random chatting, I found that I wasn’t frustrated anymore.  I could type by thinking the word, rather than thinking the letters that make up the word.  I just think that something like this is needed in the classroom area. 

I was telling my Mom about this, tonight.  I got her started to try to see if a local high school would write her a chat application.  Since the high school certifies kids as Microsoft certified, I think it would be a trivial project for a class/kid to do.  Then, she could get that kid to install it on her computer network at her grade school (she teaches 4th grade).  So, once the chat application is installed, she gives the kids a topic to talk about for the day.  They then could use the computers/resources in any way that they want, to Google about the topic or whatever.  So, then throughout her “typing” class, they would then silently tell each other about what they learned… asking questions amongst each other, etc.   I do think that the chat application should be limited to that room though, so that they can’t go out and get into internet chat in rooms, etc… That way, it would remain “safe” in the parents’ eyes.

Paid Internship = Good

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I found out today, in my interview, that paid internships are much better than unpaid.  I asked the recruiter why this was so, other than for monetary benefits; he basically said something along the lines of… When companies look over applicants and they see someone who worked a non-paid internship, they think of the work that they did as go fetch this, and be my slave type position.  If they see someone who worked a paid internship, they generally think that the person did actual work, and worked directly on products, etc… 

Sleep walking Jim

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I forgot to mention, in my previous Colorado post, that I walked in my sleep twice while I was out there.  The second time, I woke everyone up in the bunkhouse.  To me, it was pretty amusing, but I’m pretty sure that I really freaked the other people out.

The first time (Saturday night -10/11/2003), I got out of bed and went over toward a bag on the floor, by the door.  I think I was looking for a bottle of water or something, but I’m not quite sure what I was planning on doing with it.  I do remember that I was kneeling down by the bag, but I don’t think I was looking through it.  At that point, I started to wake up, and then I heard some rustling from one of the other people in the bunkhouse.  So, I jumped back into bed and tried not to make a huge deal about it.  No one mentioned it the next day, so I felt as though it was fitting to bring up with Bill, while we were out. 

The second time (Sunday night – 10/12/2003) that I did something in my sleep, I really didn’t walk anywhere.  It would be more characterized as me acting out a dream that I was having.  I believe that the dream consisted of some sort of chain/nail cover that was coming over me.  It would have been similar to a bed sheet that was being pulled up the bed.  Though, in my little world, it had nails/spears on the end, and wasn’t something that draped over a body.  So, I did what anyone would do in that situation, I jumped out of bed.  When I “woke up,” I was on all fours on the floor.  At that point, the amount of noise that I made woke everyone up, and I heard my Dad asking my brother if I was ok.  Who knows why he couldn’t ask me, but apparently he thinks that he has to go through a mediator in order to communicate with me sometimes.  So while my brother was asking me questions, the other two people in the room where probably just really confused.  I know that my brother asked me what I was doing or if I knew where I was.  I was still partly dreaming at that point, so I kind of mumbled yeah, but really, I was just trying to get a grasp on what was real, etc… I know that I would’ve answered and explained about the chain/nail type cover thing that was out to get me, but I’m just not that expressive.  At that point, it seemed pretty normal for something like that to try to “get me.”  But instead, I got right back in bed and fell asleep, to wait for the questions the next day.

Both nights, I think I had maybe one or two beers.  Nothing major, so it must have been something else to give me so much pent up energy.  Strange.. maybe one day, I’ll figure out what it is that gets me going like that.

Back from Colorado

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Well, I’m back from Colorado and I got an Elk!  hehe, that was quite an experience.  We hunted for a total of 4 days.  There were 5 people in our group, including myself.  So, Bill (my brother) and I were assigned a guide, per day, and the others were assigned guides as well.  First, we had this guy named Tad, who was a sheep guide in Alaska prior to working at this ranch.  He was pretty cool and definitely knew how to hunt animals. 

The way that they hunt is that they drive into the mountains, using 4×4 trucks, in the morning and then again at night.  So, you drive out around 6:30-6:45am, right as the sun is coming up.  By the time you get to the hunting area, it was usually pretty bright.  Then, we would go back to the camp around 10:00am and hang out there till around 3:30-4:00pm.  At that point, we would take the truck to a different hunting area and hunt till dusk.  We were on a private ranch, where the ranch owner had about 50,000 acres.  He had one mountain/hill area that is NEVER hunted.  This is to provide a safe haven for the Elk, so that they stay on his land more.  I’ve been told that people have seen herds of Elk numbering 400-500 or more in that area.  Otherwise, they had about 6-10 hunting areas that they took people throughout the week.  They never hunted the same area more than once per day, so that the Elk would not get into a schedule of avoiding the area.

So the first morning, Bill, Tad, and I went to a hunting area.  He would drive down a path, and stop before a clearing.  We would then walk to the clearing and see if there were any animals there.  We got to a bigger clearing and Tad started calling the Elk.  We heard one or two bugle back to us, so he kept calling.  A group of Elk ended up coming within 20-30 yards of us.  There were about 7-10 in the group and they just walked down a runway that was pretty close to us.  There wasn’t a real big bull in the group, so we let them pass.  Afterwards, we moved to an edge of the trees and Tad continued calling for bulls… He almost got this one to come out from the forest, when all of the previous elk and more came running into the field.  This time, there were probably about 30 or more in the group.  He said that they were probably spooked by other hunters, since we were near one of the fence lines of the property. 

Anyway, two days went by of similar type situations… each time that we went out, we saw Elk.  After the first two days, Tad had to go back to his other job, so Bill and I went out with another guide named Girstsaw (sp?).  He is from Mongolia, and he was a guide there before coming to the US.  I forget the type of animal that he guided for, but Tad said that it is one of the hardest animals to hunt.  Anyway, Bill nicknamed him Mountain Goat, cause this fucker could run up hills/paths like it was no problem.  I don’t think that he ever got tired.  Anyway, Monday morning, we were all walking down a path.  We heard about 3-4 bulls bugling in the forest/a meadow over a hill.  I could see about 10 elk in the forest, but it was pretty thick Aspen, so I couldn’t get a good shot at one of the bulls.  While we were looking at those, we crept up the path a little, and another group of about 10 elk came from another direction and crossed the path in front of us.  They crossed the path about 75 yards away from us.  Girstsaw whispered that there was a 5×5 bull in the pack, so I knelt down and put my elbow on my knee.  The bull stopped in the middle of the trail and faced us broadside.  My first shot knocked him down like a lump of shit.  Right after I shot, Girstsaw started calling like he was a female elk (cow), and made the occasional bugle.  This is to calm the elk in the area.  So, at that point, Bill was the next to shoot.  We tried to hunt them for a while, but unfortunately the other elk moved out of the area.  While we were walking to continue hunting, we walked up to the Elk that I shot.  It ended up that I shot him through the spinal cord, which made him drop like that.  So, I guess a bit graphically, I put another shot through the back of his neck to finish him off.  Keep in mind that I had my gun sighted in at 200 yards and was aiming at the power plant area at about 75 yards or so… The elk ended up being a 4×5 elk, which isn’t bad at all for that region.  4×5 means that there were 4 points on one side of his rack, and 5 points on the other side. Btw, elk are fucking huge in person… I joked with Bill that the head reminded me of a camel’s head…

So, the next morning (Tuesday), we went out with Girstsaw again.  This time, I was somewhat happy that I didn’t need to bring a gun.  So I brought a camera instead.  When we were driving up to the top of a clearing on one of the mountains, we came across a herd of about 20-30 elk.  They ran back into the forest beyond the clearing.  The path that we were on eventually continues through the forest to the clearings that we were at the first day (read 3rd paragraph).  Anyway, we drove through the woods a little bit and parked.  When we got out of the truck, we heard about 6-8 bulls bugling to each other in the hills.  We walked fast along the path, to keep up with the elk.  Bill had shots at about 3-4 of the bulls along the way, but they were either bad shots, or something else came up.  One of the times, I think he was a little too excited, tried shooting at one, but he had the safety on.  So, we continued up the mountain path, through the woods.  At this point, we were pretty much running along the path.  They got to a "clearing" off the edge of the road.  Girstsaw was only about 5 feet tall or so, so he couldn’t see the details of the elk in the clearing.  Bill was tall enough to see horns, so he took up a position next to the closest tree.  He said that at that point, his adrenaline was kicking in, and combined with the rush of running up the hill… he fired his first shot, and we think that he totally missed the bull.  Well, it appears that the bull didn’t know where the shot was from, so about as fast as I’ve seen someone reload a bolt-action, Bill had the gun back up against the tree.  Between all of this, I was able to sneak up the trail a few steps, so that I could see his next shot.  He fired another shot, and this time, we all saw the back side of the Elk drop a bit.  Girstsaw continued to call the elk and make bugle noises, as they all took off.  We sat there for about 15 minutes or so… We all figured that Bill had hit the spinal cord, similar to how I did. 

After the 15 minutes, we all started down the clearing, to where the elk had been.  I spotted the blood trail, and we proceeded to follow it through a runway through the forest.  It was pretty tough to see the blood in places, but we ended up finding the elk about 600 yards or so from where it was originally shot.  It fell down the hill further from the runway that we were on… it would have fell off a 10-15 foot cliff, but it was stopped by 3 pine trees about 5 feet before the edge.  So, Girstsaw proceeded to go get the truck, and then gut the elk out.  When he cut open the elk, the insides were all full of blood, so we figured that Bill hit some major organ/artery.  He also broke a leg, which, we think, is why we all saw the ass end of the elk drop.  Otherwise, it was a good shot, and no real gut shot, etc… strange path that the bullet traveled though.  At that point, we were about 800-1200 yards downhill from the path where the truck was.  So, Girstsaw suggested that we cut it in half and haul it up hill by hand.  He ended up cutting it in half around the rib cage, and then split the ass part in two, so that there were two "hams."  He through one on his shoulders and proceeded to walk right up through the thick forest, like he was walking down a hill.  Meanwhile, Bill and I grabbed a horn and started pulling the front half up to the runway.  We then got the front part back to the "clearing" where Bill originally shot it.  At that point, Girstsaw had gone back and brought the other ham up to the truck.  He didn’t even look winded…  Anyway, we got it all back to the truck and were back in camp around 9:00am or so.  Bill got a 5×6.  Btw, I have some pictures that I took, of some of this… Well, my Dad will have the pictures, but whatever… So, if I get them, I’ll post them somewhere.

My Dad got a nice 4×4 elk, with a rack a little bigger than mine.  Another guy got a 6×6 that just overweighed the rest of the racks… The guys at the ranch said that the 6×6 was probably the largest one taken so far this year.

Whew… that is the majority of the hunting parts… I have some other stories, but I’m not in the mood to put them down here, and what can I say… the alcohol was flowing 🙂

It was a good time though, and I think we’ll be going back again next year.