Thursday, August 23, 2007

Day Two Of My Impromptu "Residency"

I unexpectedly woke up just before 7am and peeked out the window to see this:







There was this amazing fog settled all over the compound that I just had to jump out of bed and photograph.

Breakfast was served at 8am, and we had our daily strategy meeting at 9am. Jeff and I got the job of refilling a trench where they had just recently laid a gas line to the new kiln pad. It didn't take too long (actually we ran out of gravel before we got very far) so we moved on to some other tasks. We were charged with filling the truck - which they so affectionately call the "Ass-Licker" - with items bound for the winter studio. We made about six trips back and forth in the Ass-Licker carrying shop glazes, kilns, tools, building materials and other odds and ends. In the meantime Tom and Brandon were working on a new shelter for the recycling centre, Sarah and Monica were sponging down the summer studio, and Stephen, Paige and Amanda were setting up the winter studio.

Lunch was served none to early at 12:30, and famished I wolfed down three plates of rice, pasta salad, stir-fry, green salad, and various other goodies. (One of the benefits of cycling 6 hours a day is that I can enjoy food in a way that few other people ever have the opportunity to.) We lounged on the grass for a little before being handed our afternoon assignments. The luck of the draw provided me with a pretty sweet deal - weeding some of the grounds with Monica for a couple hours.
By 3:30pm everyone was packing it in for the day and getting ready to go swimming at Peter's Pond. We drove out there for a quick swim to the far side and back, interrupted only by some leaping from the rocks into the water at the halfway point. I've never been much of a leaper myself, so I was happy to watch as the others somersaulted through the air and splashed into the surface. We returned to find our supper waiting for us - an amazing meal of chili, macaroni, salad, bread and mint juleps.



I spent the early evening catching up on some computing before joining the others in the studio for beer pong. Sarah and Damien handed Stephen and Paige a loss, and and then went for a second round against challengers Amanda and Jeff. After a close match the champions came through with a sweet win. We ran out of beer after that, but perhaps it was for the best. Most of us trundled off to bed exhausted around midnight.

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