My holiday weekend...

One would think that with a whole four day weekend off from work I would have found a moment to write something here, but somehow it didn't happen. Our holiday weekend began with a nice surprise. Our kids Korean dad was here in town on business and stopped by to pay us a visit. Korean dad?, you ask. My kids first babysitter was Korean woman who's husband was pursuing a PhD in engineering at the University. She watched my kids until my daughter was year or so old at which time they moved back to Korea. Thus they are my kids Uma and Apa (mom and dad), and their son is my kid's Korean brother. We have not seen them since we traveled to Korea to visit them back in '94 so it was nice to have even a short visit. I only wish Uma could have come too. She sent gifts though, a Korean music CD for my son, a beautiful little purse that she made herself for my daughter, and gim (seaweed) snacks for all of us. She only had one child, a son, and always really wanted a girl, and she always treated Sarah like a daughter. My kids were lucky to have such a wonderful caregiver, and we all really enjoyed learning about Korean culture. I still find it hard to believe that my picky eater kids will eat seaweed snacks (roasted, salted seaweed squares)

Other then that it was an uneventful weekend. We had a small family feast on Thanksgiving. The weather was nice so we walked the dog to the gully for a swim, and stopped at a friends for coffee. I managed to get a couple of jogs in. (I am determined to someday be in good shape again) I made a few beads, played with fusing glass in my kiln, but mostly I spent hours and hour cleaning beads.

Someone tell why I don't clean my beads as soon as they come out of the kiln. I had a nearly 6 month backlog of beads to clean. I haven't been caught up on bead cleaning since May, when I cleaned them all to have some to take to the Michigan cabin retreat. So after many hours, 2 broken diamond bits, and couple of dremeled divots in my left index finger I have lots of clean beads. Now I'm going to swear (again) that I will clean my beads as I make them, rather than letting them pile up. ...Just like I've sworn (about 100 times now!) that I will clean up my workspace after every torch session.... Hopefully this time I will really keep my promise to myself by finishing my bead chores before I go on and have more bead fun!

Next I'll have to figure out what to do with them all. I think Oreo has claimed them as his own.


The family with Jong Bae, the kids Korean father.