80k and still spry

Approximately one month shy of my eight yeariversary of car ownership, my little black car just rolled over to 80,000 miles. I know, normally you photograph the odometer at 100,000, but considering this car had 25k miles on it when it came to me, a little bit of math tells you that it's going to be a while before I hit 100k.

The ironic bad news is that a dealer inspection today suggested $3,000 of repairs, so even though my car is still young at heart, it's showing its age. So if anyone wants to donate to my beloved Honda Civic's Preservation Fund, I have a PayPal.

how i got a macbook for less than $100

I don't know how many of you know this, but I'm broke. Some days, it sucks. But sometimes it's like a fun challenge, because clipping coupons and saving tons of money on grocery items is a really satisfying game. Sometime in September, I started thinking that it would be nice to get a new MacBook. I'd had this thought over a year ago, and wanted to act on it while I could still get some cash for my old MacBook. It often blows me away how insanely lucky I am.

Not long after making this decision, a few things fell into place - ultimately for the best, though sometimes it wasn't immediately evident.

1) Geoff alerted me to an excellent credit card bonus that I waffled on for a couple months. For me, spending $3k in 3 months is unfathomable! But I eventually realized how I could make it work.

2) My coworkers pointed out that my MacBook battery had bulged. I didn't realize that was a cause for concern. I hightailed it down to the Apple store and shelled out $100 (thanks, parents!) in a panic, because I thought my laptop might spontaneously combust.

3) Not long after receiving a brand-new replacement battery, the entire computer stopped recognizing the battery and only worked on adapter power. Another frenetic trip to the Apple store, and a two-day overnight stay for my MacBook. They replaced a part, as well as my top case and display bezel - pretty much half of the exterior of the computer. And they didn't charge me a penny.

Armed with a neatly remodeled computer, I drew up a Master Plan on an orange post-it note. My awesome landlord had confirmed that I could pay rent on a credit card. Better still, I could pay three months' up front. I received the card on a Friday (it's beautiful, by the way: a metal composite, thick, heavy, and shiny), paid my rent the following morning, and was at the Apple store feeling a bit dazed that evening.



I showed my old student ID and got a discount, too:


So I'd spent $2,750 in a single day. I promise I did not sleep very well that night. The next $250 went by in a blur (damn, that card is fun to use) and I had a $3k balance on a brand-new credit card, and two computers.

Reformatting the old MacBook is a long, technical story that nobody cares about. It took me several days. Afterward, I had it on Craigslist for several weeks, and most of the interest I got was this one dude trying to trade me one of any type of smartphone (that's not suspicious at all), or a bunch of fake scammers who wanted to pay me via money order because they suddenly lived across the country. Ultimately, I met up with a very nice fellow who had never owned a laptop and who promised to give my old friend a good home. I pocketed $500, because that's what I wrote down on the Master Plan, and that is akin to writing it in blood.

Then, just yesterday, I received my first Chase statement. I did, in fact, have over 53,000 points applied to my account. I turned that into a $533 statement credit, and after the $28 in interest I accrued (oops!), I'm still just under my goal of getting a MacBook for $100. It's only costing me $95.

The moral of the story is always write your plans down on an orange post-it.

i took a ceramics class.

i threw some clay back in high school, so i had some delusions of grandeur in regards to my skill. there's a bit of a learning curve, and even after i got the hang of it, most of what i produced paled in comparison to my classmates' work. so let's cut to the heart of it: i have photo documented every piece of pottery i made, in somewhat chronological order.



my first cups. chunky, misshapen, and the one in front actually took an extra spin around the wheel while i was trimming it. whoops!



tiny bowls. one has been holding jewelry (all three pieces that i own), and one is currently awaiting some fancy sea salt.



then i moved on to actual normal-sized bowls, without taking into account the approximately 15% shrinkage that occurs during the drying/firing process. fortunately, i eat small portions, and now i have a dozen jenna-portion-sized bowls.



the last bowl spawned this one - i dubbed it "the better bowl." an improvement on the last bowl in every way, "better bowl" is lightweight, delicate...oh, and still really small. this is one of the earliest pieces i finished, glazing and all, and was clearly a fluke. not positive i could reproduce it.



where the mug fits into my artistic timeline, i'm not quite positive. it must have been early on because i tired of mug relatively fast. handles are not fun, which is why this has a nubbin. it's got a bright blue glaze, which we'll return to many times.



i had a brief period of frustration with large bowls, so i turned to "tea bowls." i don't actually know what those are. i just made a bunch of small, handleless bowls. the blue one (front left) had such thick glaze, it dripped down the sides and stuck to the inside of the kiln. my love affair with "tea bowls" was brief.



i returned to normal bowls, and achieved some mild success. some of these are actually not bad. my glazing technique was not quite up to par, though.



here's that electric blue glaze again. my very knowledgeable and experienced classmate, leslie, allowed me to assist her in mixing a glaze. unfortunately, it looks nothing like we expected. it's even better.



then i tried my hand at a plate. still chunky, and not quite what i was anticipating.



my last day throwing clay, i churned out a few pieces. this bowl is pretty alright, and glazed okay too. maybe i am getting the hang of it!



judging by these little guys...no, i'm not. thrown from a delicate, "buttery" porcelain that another classmate gave me, these looked beautiful pre-glaze, but had very little structure or substance. so they were kind of a challenge. worse yet, i used them to experiment with the glaze leslie and i mixed up, only to discover that it's extremely runny. and the second coat of glaze i dunked them in "melted" off.



this is my "piece de resistance." early on, i learned not to set goals for myself because i often didn't achieve them and met with frustration. that wasn't the best method. i often found myself directionless, cranking out bad bowl after bad bowl. so i decided to challenge myself at the end, and try to make a pot. and it worked! i'm actually proud of this little guy.



oven safe! and perfect for jenna portions!

(there might be one more piece i'm missing somewhere. but in the meantime, here we can segue into the goodies i scored that aren't mine!)



another classmate, dan, is crazy talented on the wheel, and threw pot after pot after pot, all of a similar style. we found these on the shelves on the last day to fire ware, forgotten by him amidst all his other amazing work. he charged me with cleaning them up, and gifted them to me. i got to test out a couple of glazes on pieces that were going to end up in the trash, and now they are mine! yay!



and because i glazed dan's other pieces, he rewarded me with a couple rad pieces. now i have a giant bowl!



and a big pot!



and (yes, there's more), because talented, knowledgeable leslie was dissatisfied that the glaze dripped on some her mugs, she was designating these for the trash when abby and i intercepted. beautifully glazed, with only minor imperfections, i couldn't let these lovely mugs be tossed. trust me, they look phenomenal in person.



she was also about to part with this beautiful baby blue (one of her own glazes!) and coppery black mug. gee, some people are perfectionists.

ceramics class is over, so my artistic career is on hiatus. the end!