its been a long long long time

Well this seems a good of a time if any to start this shit show back up being that we are all cooped up in our homes.  I hope everyone is doing well and staying healthy.  Just be prepared, the following will probably be a lot of blah blah blah, boring, snooze, hey listen to me, garbage!  I am really not sure if anyone really reads these things anymore. I need something to keep me sane so this is it.  My apologies if I don't address the elephant in the room. I get enough of that with the news and social media.

After some thought, I don't think I am going to go back in time to talk about the past.  I could. There would be so much to talk about.... but no one really cares about my problems at this moment.  So I think I will start posting things starting from this moment on. This will include crazy projects, studio time, and misc adventures with the Liz.  Let us see how long I will keep it going.

I guess to begin, only for framing,  I will talk this one time about what I will call "the time in between".  I left academia..... It is probably for the best. I realized that I just was having an internal conflict with formal education as a whole. So I left. Also, I was asked to leave. I will leave it at that.  For the most part it has been amazing.  I am getting paid more with the new gig (a post on that later) No emails in the middle of the night. No waking up worrying about students. No prepping all night for meetings and demos the next day. No squeezing in family time. No debilitating anxiety.  Honestly I really just couldn't see myself sustaining that for the rest of my life. Kudos to those who can.  Really.....I don't know how you do it.  All the teachers in the world should get paid more. Give them all the money. Seriously.

The biggest shift leaving academia has been giving myself time to heal mentally and physically. For a long time I was burning the candle at both ends while trying to light another candle, while figuring out how to make a candle, while trying to glue two candles together. You get the idea. I think I lost a lot of focus in the process. Abandoning people and projects for something that I didn't really want in the first place or that ultimately I lost passion for, but more than likely just wasn't really good at it (at least some people think that otherwise I would still have a job).  I hate to do it (fucking memes) but for me this sums up my entire academic career.

Thats enough of that garbage.  Moving on.

So now.... after the dust has settled, Liz and I have started a new/new to me life in New England. We actually really love it here (At least I do). While a little cold in the winter and mostly gray the rest of the year it really is an amazing place to live.  There are so many amazing things happening in Rhode Island not to mention that if you need to be near the water, which we do (Liz is secretly a mermaid) then Rhode Island is the best.

So here goes:

While trying not to go out for anything we have been using instacart to have groceries delivered.  While looking for flour to do some stress baking the only place that had it was our local restaurant supply house.  I ordered a 50 pound bag...... and now we are a bakery!  Recently our friend (Barbara Seidenath!!!.....the best!) gave us some sourdough starter. So it is off to the races. We have made bread, pretzels, bagels, cookies, pie crust...... SO MANY BREADY THINGS.  I have been trying to grow the starter using whole wheat baking flour so we can spread the love.  Recently,  after posting my plans to bake my way out of this mess on instagram someone asked to do a trade!

ISCO spirts (Industrious, Spirit Company) makes vodka......but now they now make hand sanitizer! I guess there is some part of the distilling process that can be converted to something that can be converted into hand sanitizer.  So while they make vodka they can also make sanitizer.  Instead of another small business going under they have continued to grow by getting a contract to supply local businesses and health care providers with vodka....I mean hand sanitizer. They have a touch-less "to go" window (everything gets sprayed with alcohol).  If you buy a bottle of vodka you get a free hand sanitizer!  What a great thing.

So here are some photos of everything I mentioned above including some amazing copper stills from the distillery.  Also I 3D printed some cookie cutters.