Art by Fuzzy

Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz

Summer Break: 2011

Well, I finally made it to summer break.  The end of the school year went pretty well.  We finished up the track season by taking third at the conference meet.  I spent the past school year at West Noble Elementary instead of Ligonier Elementary where I’ve been teaching since 2004.  Now I’ll be going back to Ligonier Elementary for the next school year but things will be different.  The two elementary schools are re-aligning into a K-1 building and a 2-4 building.  Which means that half of the teachers are switching buildings.  Which means a lot of moving!  The good thing about changing jobs and locations often is that I don’t have 20 years worth of stuff to move like some of the other teachers.

I do plan to spend a lot of time at Ligonier Elementary this summer, but not to move boxes.  The Ligonier Elementary era has come to an end so the West Noble Primary era can begin.  A new name, new staff, and new mascot means a new look.  So I’ll be working with another teacher to cover the walls with murals that have less to do with dogs and more to do with Little Chargers.  Currently we’re working on sketching out some ideas.

I’ve also been spending a good chunk of this week in the clay studio.  But now I’m going to the library with my wife.  Updates on murals and pottery should follow.

It’s a… BABY!

Ultrasound

Ultrasound

Here’s a screen capture of the ultrasound from today.

Happy New Year! and New Hardware!

I guess another year has come to an end.  Looking back I had a pretty good 2009, especially the last week.  My wife and I went up to Michigan to spend some time with my family during Christmas.  My brother and his wife were home from China so it was great to spend some time with them.  They made it back safely to China but apparently their sleeping routines are a little off.  I guess that happens when you fly half way around the world…

HP pavilion elite 9290f

HP pavilion elite 9290f

Not long ago I bought myself a late birthday/early Christmas present.  My old hp pavilion (probably 6 or 7 years old) needed an upgrade.  It served me well and I never really had any major problems with it until I crammed it so full of programs and files at the end that it really started to slow down.  So I shopped around and decided to go with another hp.  Since I plan to have it for awhile I decided to go all out and I got the Pavilion Elite 9290f while it was on sale.  So far it has been awesome.  It came with Windows 7 which seems to be pretty smooth.  Plus I got a copy of Adobe CS4 and MS Office at a great price because I’m a student at IUSB.  Everything has run really well so far.  I can’t believe how much faster everything is compared to my old computer. I’m actually typing this post on the new computer.  It’s set up in the “command center” at the moment (also known as the living room where I have two computers, an LCD monitor, Wii, Xbox 360, and TV all set up and ready to take over the world.)

dell 2209wa

dell 2209wa

The desktop didn’t come with a monitor so after getting some cash and gift cards for Christmas I talked to the fine people at Dell and they offered me a great sale price on their IPS panel 2209wa  monitor.  Apparently it is a pretty decent monitor for photo editing without a huge price tag.

Now, as Christmas break draws to a close, I’m going to try to get all the computers and the new wireless printer we got at Sam’s Club to connect to each other through the magic of a wireless network.

Pottery Supplies and the End Of Summer

Pottery Supplies

Pottery Supplies

I love pottery supply yard sales!  I made a trip up to Michigan on Thursday to see my family and check out a yard sale at Crossroads Pottery.  They didn’t have the kiln shelf that I needed and I didn’t get all the posts that I wanted but I got a lot of new stuff to experiment with.  I picked up some Laguna clay and a few random dry powders.  I also got a decent scale ($3!) to replace the cheap plastic Walmart kitchen scale which was probably $5.

Bad news: this is officially my last day of summer break.  Good news: The kiln is firing as I’m typing this. [Read more…]

Even Artists Have to Mow the Grass…

Not too long ago, as northern Indiana thawed out and the weather got warmer, the grass (along with my dismay) started to grow.  I began to dread another summer of push-mowing our entire yard every week or two.  I wasn’t worried so much about the physical strain on my out of shape body (it actually would have been quite a benefit) I just hated giving up a few hours per week to push around a mower held together with a hose clamp and duct tape and also has no discharge cover causing the grass to go straight up into my face.  I usually ended up with about 6 pounds of grass in my hair or stuck to my sweaty body every time I cut the grass.

The new riding lawn mower

The new riding lawn mower

My wife must have been feeling sorry for me (after I had to hose clamp and duct tape the handle back together) so we decided to get a riding lawn mower.  She even cashed in the credit card points to help pay for it.  We looked around for a while and finally settled on a Craftsman for a few reasons.  We could get the most $ for our credit card points at Sears and their warranty included house calls which will save us from borrowing someone’s truck/trailer to haul it in and get it serviced.  I’ve mowed the lawn a couple times now and it is fantastic.  It takes me half the time to mow the grass that it used to.  Unfortunately I haven’t spent any of that time updating the website (until now).  But even if I only save an hour every time I mow the grass I ‘ll probably save at least 8-10 hours total before school starts next year.  That’s a full day of throwing or painting (or climbing trees…)