"I'm Pretty!"

Yesterday

Despite the fact that I had to go into work yesterday, it was a pretty good day overall. Alex and I printed from 11am to about 3:30pm. We both finished editioning our plates with no major complications. Mick and Patrick finished printing around the same time, so after cleaning up, we all rode over to Wal-Mart together to get some groceries for the BBQ.

I decided to make Spicy Spinach Artichoke Dip and I also got some things to make Tortellini with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce later in the week. I've still got quite a bit of food from my previous shopping trips with Carrie, so I didn't need much more than that. Mick was surprised I wasn't buying more Mountain Dew, but I assured him that I had stocked up before classes started and that I should be good for a few more weeks.

It was fun grocery shopping as a group... especially with Mick, who isn't used to such giant grocery stores. Patrick was giving him trouble because he bought a giant bag of Tater Tots. Mick thought about it for a second and said in his Irish brogue, "I've never had them before." Fair enough. Everyone should get a giant bag of frozen Tater Tots every now and again.

Here we are trying to sort out our purchases in the checkout line:



After grocery shopping, we decided that I would just go straight to Patrick's to start preparing food. Pat had gotten a ton of meat and vegetables to grill. I was glad that I made my dish there, since Pat has a lot more kitchen utensils than I do. Although we both rent from the same guy, his apartment was furnished with fancy things like a colander and serving spoons.

The other printers started showing up a little after six and we spent the next few hours grilling and eating and socializing. It was good to be somewhere besides my house and Tamarind. Here's the grill-master hard at work in the wind and rain:



To make the day even better, the Cardinals won again yesterday, while the Brewers and Cubs lost. They are now one game under .500 and only two games behind the first place Cubs.

Today

We had a counter-etching demo early in the morning. Rodney used my plate as an example, which will save me a half hour or so of work later. It's always good to be the guinea pig! Usually, with a plate or stone, once you've etched it, you can't go back into it and draw more. Counter-etching resensitizes the stone or plate so that you can continue working on it. It also serves as a deep cleaning on plates with scummy edges. For our next two projects, we are to practice counter-etching the plate and stone from the first projects, and then draw back into them with different materials.

After the demo we made a long walk over to get fitted for respirators. I have a respirator that I got in Wisconsin at a Home Depot... but I was never professionally fitted for it. I figured I should just go ahead and fork over the $45 and get a new one with the rest of the class.

Here I am with my respirator on:



Here are Ana and Yuli:



The fitting was a lot of fun. There were a couple of people in the class who, because of facial shape or nose structure, couldn't fit into the same mask as everyone else. After a few tries they eventually got it. The man that was doing the fitting told Valupuri (from Finland) that her Scandinavian cheekbones were causing all of her fitting problems. Through the muffle of her respirator she countered, "I'm Pretty!"



It was very amusing.

Once the respirators were properly fitted, we had to do some tests to make sure that they were okay for us to use. We put on our respirators and these giant hoods and then the guy sprayed bitter solution inside the hood to see if we could smell it at all. If you could feel the bitter solution burning your throat, then you knew that you had a leak in your respirator.

This is what the hood looked like... now imagine all eight of us standing in a row wearing these things.



This afternoon, Rodney will be going over the next couple of projects. I'm pretty tired, so I probably will make it a short night tonight. I'm looking forward to coming home and crashing.