Sunday Early Edition

Yesterday was one of those wacky days where nothing really goes as planned.
If you actually have plan.
Which I did not.
Have a plan that is.
I started off by going to the local food storage facility to get some provisions:



I drove there for I had visions of me pulling a Ed Harris in Pollack; crashing on my bike and destroying all my cream sodas.
The thing is, when I got to the store, I took a look around and realized it was a beautiful day, almost cloudless.
So I got home, put away the provisions and got on the Barn Door for a short ride.
I need to get back home to work on glazing some stuff.
I did manage to catch a picture of some people on the ridge above Lanikai, hiking up towards the pillboxes:




As you can see by the pictures, the weather turned pretty quickly.
This was about forty minutes into my ride.
It's been sort of hot and muggy here recently.
Nice riding weather for the winds have been on the mild side, not the usual gale force breezes that push you off your line.
One business combats the humidity using those mist thingys:



I've never sat on the lanai there, so I don't know if it really works.
Looks cool though.
Get it? Looks cool?
Nevermind.
So anyways, sometimes you get in a funk and all your hard work glazing is for naught.
Usually it happens when you are just trying to get things out and you rush or don't think the process through.
Like yesterday.
Everything I did seemed like a good idea, at the time.
What I got was a mediocre/bad glaze fire:




I don't know what the hell I was thinking when I glazed that bowl!
I may have to take the ole Quality Control Hammer(QCH) to that thing.
To be fair, half that stuff was refired for I wasn't too happy with the way the colors came out the first time.
I tried to layer some glaze over the original colors, but I guess the glaze was too thin for in some cases you cannot see any difference, or the difference is way too subtle.
Those green things in the top actually have a coat of black on them and that red one on the bottom is supposed to have some yellow on it.
I'll fire them again, probably tonight, for I still have to finish up these:



I'll get to them when I get back from my ride.

Ever the Optimist, Evil Short

So, I wasn't going to post anything up today.
I've sort of been preoccupied with something.
I'd tell you, the reader, what it is, but there's this thing here we call bachi, which is like Japanese for bad luck.
I think.
Wait, lemme look.
Okay, it means like divine punishment, or retribution.
Something like that.
Over time I guess, it evolved into a local kind of slang to mean bad luck or jinxed, or just like the definition, what goes around comes around.
Sort of a catch all thing.
For instance:
"Hey, you wen enter your stuff in the contest? How you think you going do?"
"I no like say, I might bachi myself."
Or:
"Eh, you heard? Bradduh when smash his car."
"Das bachi for trying to take out my girlfriend."
Etcetera.
So anyways, I would tell you, the reader what's on my mind, but I'm afraid of putting the 'ole bachi on myself.
See, I'm not really an optimist.
I try to be, but in reality, I fail miserably.
See, I just can't but help seeing life from both sides.
Pragmatic is me, if you will.
Maybe not even pragmatic.
Okay, okay, I always think of the worst.
Does that make me a pessimist?
Example: the reason I carry around so much crap with me when I ride is that I always look for the worst case scenarios.
Do I really need two patch kits?
Possibly.
See what I mean?
So I'm sitting here, preoccupying myself by preparing for the worst.
The way I look at it, it isn't a bad thing, for if it doesn't happen, then all will be good, but if it does(the bad part), then I'll be prepared.
Besides, there's a bright side to everything.
See, that sort of makes me an optimist!
In a 'whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger' sort of way.
I've had some people tell me that I never seem to smile.
I do, inside where it counts(inside joke, get it? inside joke? nevermind).
It's not that I'm not happy, I am, it's just that during most of my free time, I'm, well, calculating.
Weighing the good and the bad.
Putting together Plan B.
Playing out every possible outcome for whatever happens to be on my mind.
Okay, most of the time I'm thinking of the bad outcomes, but sometimes I allow myself to think of the positive stuff.
Sometimes.
That's being optimistic, right?
Maybe it's just an inner defense mechanism, or maybe I paid too much attention at Boy Scout school.
Or something.
I'll tell you this: I am rarely taken by surprise when things go bad.
That's got to be a good thing.
I think.
So anyways, I'll leave you with this.
I was watching this History Channel thing on parallel universes and I was reminded of something I saw long ago on tv: