Okay, I have my biscuitware pieces in the house, but I'm tired and haven't taken pictures yet. Bear with me.

The thing about ceramics seems to be that you can make a *lot* of stuff, and I suspect that if you're not going to try and make money off it, you end up like people who grow tomatoes or zucchini in their gardens, always trying to give the stuff away. I've made something like twelve pieces so far, none of which I particularly need. And you make these things just in the course of having fun: throw clay on the wheel, make something nice in about twenty minutes, do that for three hours. I suppose I could get to the point of doing that with jewelry.

I'm noticing with all these craft things I'm doing that I'm pretty good at them, but not naturally extraordinary. I don't suck, and I make a lot of nice things, but I don't feel like I have a real gift or aptitude for it the way I feel with other things (software development, aikido, a cappella, guitar [sometimes], sailing--come to think of it I guess I'm talented at more than enough stuff to keep me satisfied). That's fine, really, since I'm learning the stuff for fun, and to keep learning, and to incarnate my enjoyment of building things, normally confined to the ethereal world of software.

I have learned this week that the phenomenon of magnetism is far stranger than I thought. I also found it conspicuous that I enjoyed reading that article.

I've had a productive couple of days at work. After the past two months, it's a little disorienting. I love my job.