No talking like a grizzled 1890s prospector…consarn it!

February 19, 2014 Comments Off read Uncategorized

In Oregon, there is a mine where the general public can prospect for the state’s official gemstone, the Oregon Sunstone. Although a number of stones from other places are called sunstones, Oregon claims it is the only proven location where you can find red labradorite, a plagioclase feldspar. These stones have an optical effect when turned due to reflections of the red copper inclusions inside.

Although we haven’t been able to make it down to Spectrum Mine ourselves for free (or fee, in the more ore-rich areas) digging, we were able to order a bucket of ore to the house and play prospector in the backyard.

To separate the sunstones from the crap, we used a grocery basket that we temporarily liberated from (and later returned to) a nearby Fred Meyer. We used the highly scientific method of pouring a bunch of ore in the basket, wetting it, swishing it around, and picking through it for bits that glimmered in the sun, alternating between who did the wetting/swishing and who did the picking since we only had one basket.

We actually got a surprising amount of sunstones in our bucket of ore, the photo below shows only a small handful of the stones we found. We haven’t really done anything with them yet, they’re just sitting in a bowl in the gallery o’ minerals in our living room, but eventually we’re going to try and rock tumble a few of them to see how pretty they are when polished. If it’s awesomely pretty, we may end up making a trip to Spectrum Mines ourselves to dig out more. Thanks in advance for the baskets, Fred Meyer.

It followed me home, can I keep it?

February 14, 2014 Comments Off read furniture, Projects

I have a thing about scouring Craigslist for furniture and then experimenting on it. I can’t stop. I won’t stop. I am on temporary hiatus, owing to not having access to a working car during hours when Jason is not supervising me. It’s harder to go out and collect things and “forget” to tell him about them when he’s right there, looking suspiciously over my shoulder as I’m dialing the phone number of yet another Craigslist weirdo.

Here’s a piece from the 70s that had clearly already been subjected to the whims of someone like me:

The white and lime green zigzag is cute-ish and only a year or two out of date, but it doesn’t go with my decor and even if it did, the finish was rough and pimply, so it had to go. I sanded the crap out of it (though not enough to get rid of the half-assed chevron) and sprayed it glossy black. You can still see the ghost of zigzags past on the top, but that’s fine as I had other plans for it.

I took the giant builder mirror we’d pulled out of the bathroom and shattered it, which took more effort and blows with a hammer than you might think. A lot more.

After that was done, I arranged mirror pieces on the top of the end table like a mosaic until they were the shape/density I wanted, and glued them down with mosaic glue.

When the glue was dry, I used black mosaic grout to fill in the gaps between the mirror pieces. This was by far the messiest part, the grout had separated and shot black goo all over the place when I opened the container, and this goo stained every surface it touched. What I’m saying is, it was pleasant. The grout itself was a consistency that didn’t want to spread very well, and though it was supposed to be completely dry in a few hours, it took days. Days in which I poked and prodded at it, wondering if it would ever actually set.

Eventually, I was able to scrape all of the extra crap off of the top and clean the mirrors, and now it lives happily in my upstairs. It could probably use another grouting to be perfectly level, so I wouldn’t run your tongue over it or anything just in case of a sharp edge lurking somewhere, but it works well enough for my purposes! Maybe when I forget how infuriating that grout was, I’ll give it another crack to make it perfectly smooth.

I found….a penny! Could this be the best day of my life?

February 13, 2014 Comments Off read Everything is Terrible, Travel

I have been collecting pressed pennies for as long as I can remember. Literally any time there is an opportunity for a coin-based souvenir, I have either gotten it myself or wrested it out of the hands of someone else. They all hang out in a bowl in the house, and like a great big weirdo, I scoop them up in my hands and let them jingle through my fingers. I would swim in them, Scrooge McDuck style, if it was possible.

The day we went to the Kennedy Space Center, there were two separate coin-based souvenir opportunities: one pressed penny, and one silver coin with the NASA logo. I needed both, and stripped the necessary change to acquire them out of Jason’s pockets. This ended up costing me significantly more than the value of the coin.

Unlike Washington State, where there are only a few toll roads and they’re mostly avoidable, Florida has tolls everywhere. It seems like there’s a tollbooth every twenty feet on the highway, and as people who rarely carry cash, we were completely unprepared. Luckily, we had some cash on hand when we arrived at the airport, and the booths we went to were staffed with people who could give us change. Unfortunately, on our way back from the Kennedy Space Center, our GPS lagged at a critical juncture, and I ended up merging from one highway to another going in the opposite direction of the one we wanted to travel. Normally, this isn’t a problem; you just drive to the next exit, turn around, and merge on in the opposite direction. In Florida, this was a problem, because on this particular highway, the exits (and entrances!) were tolled, too. Umanned tolls, accepting only change.

Change that I had used in the acquisition of pressed pennies.

Shit shit shit.

We scrounged through the car, through my purse, through all of our pockets, and we were exactly one penny short. I shit you not. I didn’t know what to do at this point, except I saw a video camera monitoring the scene, so I made a show of pulling a dollar out of my wallet, showing it to the camera, getting out of the car, and very conspicuously jamming it in the door of the tollbooth (because I didn’t want to break the change counting machine and get into MORE trouble). Then I got back into the car and proceeded to exit because I didn’t know what else I could do. As our car pulled out, a flipping SIREN went off and a camera took our picture as I cringed and cried out a Darth Vader style “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.”

Then it was a matter of driving around and finding a business that would give us change so we could merge back on to the highway in the correct direction, which took longer than you might think.

Before we went back to Florida, I stopped at a bank and picked up an entire roll of quarters. This time, the toll roads wouldn’t accept cash, period, only a sunpass, which of course, being tourists in a rental car, we didn’t have. Seriously, Florida? In order to get to our destination in South Beach, we ended up having to take a pass only toll road, so I’m not sure exactly how they deal with violators, but as a repeat offender, they probably have a warrant out for The Tollway Terror. We’re the most infamous duo since Bonnie and Clyde.