But what I really wanted to put here was some of the process stuff I’ve learned having done the first four podcasts. Here is the short version.

1. Find guest, agree upon general topic.
2. Make outline (ideally Wednesday before show)
3. Send outline to guest, get mods back by Friday.
4. On Saturday (or Sunday), do 2 hour recording session.
5. Producer does producer-y thigngs
6. Show comes out on following Wednesday.

So, once I hook a victim and choose a topic (i.e. “What an electrical engineer things a software engineer should know”), I make an outline.

The outline isn’t exactly a script, though the intro and outtro are written out. The outline is more a list of points and questions so I don’t forget any of my plans. We don’t have to stick to the outline but it means I don’t have the “err, what was it I meant to ask” feeling all the time. It also lets the guest know what things I’m likely to want to ask about so they don’t get caught off guard.

I sent the outline to the guest. Actually, the outline starts with a notes section:

I tend to script the first few minutes as it helps get comfortable. I have no problem going off script, it is just a crutch for the first few awkward minutes.

If you want this (or something else), let me know. We found paper to be noisy so I’d prefer to put your notes on my ipad if you’re ok with that.

Finally, I put in two end points. The goal is 45 minutes but I’d rather be 5 short than 20 long.

Next in the outline is the intro, all scripted out, as promised above.

This is Elecia White, welcome to Making Embedded Systems, the show for people who love gadgets.

This week I’ll be speaking with Phil King one of my favorite electrical engineers. The plan is to hear what a hardware guy thinks software engineers should know.

Hi Phil, welcome to the show.

[Phil says hello]

I know you’ve worked at some neat places, we made children’s toys for Leapfrog and a gunshot location systems at ShotSpotter. What else have you been up to?

[Phil gives 30s bio]

When I was a manager, hiring new embedded software engineers as my minions, Phil was part of the interviewing team. He was excellent at finding people with really good skills, even better, he could articulate what he liked (and didn’t like) about candidates.

So, Phil, what was your secret question?

And now we are out of scripting and into the outline. From here, there are lots of points I might want made (either by my guest or by me, I don’t usually differentiate). Sometimes these are question (“You always really cared, making sure we hired good software engineers. Why is that important to you?”) and sometimes they are just notes for both of us (“software engineers can damage to HW…”). Also in the outline, I might have reminders purely for me (“tell story about capacitors”) so I don’t forget something I think is nifty.

But these are just conversation points, if we skip one, no big deal. If the conversation is flowing, I’d like it to flow naturally.

Finally in the outline, there is the outtro, what I need to record when the show is over.

We’re out of time though I know we’ve got a lot more to talk about, you willing to come back?

[Phil]

Ok, thank you for joining me. Thanks also to our producer Christopher White and to everybody tuning in. Please leave us comments and questions at embedded.fm or show@makingembeddedsystems.com. We love to hear from you.

Next week, we’ll be talking to (? about ?). Have a good one.

I write the outtro so I don’t forget to thank people or say where to send comments.

Once the outline is done and sent, I start taking notes for random things I might want to say… extra things inside the outline bounds. Sometimes I ask for questions or information from twitter for “voices from the audience” sorts of things. I also try to think up some pre-show chat while we are getting the sound levels right (I jokingly asked Phil about his feelings on exclamation points, we got off on a tangent about the interrobang which made it into the show a little). It calms the guest (and me) and makes the show flow better if we are already chatting.

Recording isn’t hard, thanks to my husband-producer-superhero, Christopher White. He’s done wonders to make us sound good. Despite most people not liking their voice (me included!), everyone has been happy with the recordings, so far. In addition to monitoring sound levels, he tags points where we start and stop (hey, I stutter, sometimes I don’t want to share that) and highlights where we mentioned things that should go in the show notes (that RSS feed doesn’t write itself, you know).

Recording takes about 1-2 hours to get enough info for around 45 minutes of show. Later, usually right before he releases it, Chris edits the audio to eliminate the goofs. He makes us sound good (and balanced), does any bleeping, adds music as needed (he wrote the intro!). He attaches it to the RSS feed, presses publish. That makes it go to iTunes and Instacast and Stitcher where people can get it.

If you want to be on the show, please let me know. Most of my guests haven’t done too much prep (I want to talk about what you know, not something you need to learn and prepare for) so the process is about 2.5 hours of your time: gadgets, embedded systems, parts, technology, working on gadgets, maker projects, etc.)

There are some things I still need to figure out. We have a recorder I can carry about (if I’m willing to get crummier audio) so it is possible to do on-site things. But I need to learn to use it better, especially to get voices right for an interview. I have a plan to interview someone in San Francisco in July so I have a deadline. And I know some people do podcasting via Skype audio which would increases my pool of guests; I want to sort that out.

There’s always more to try out and to learn. And I suppose when there isn’t, I’ll do something else.

If something is not working, the next tool is an oscilloscope. Like a microscope for electrons, an oscilloscope will let me see what is going on. However, to get an oscope, I need to call an EE friend and ask if I couldn’t please borrow his scope (he always says yes). Then I head over to his house after he gets home from work (I think his wife is afraid of the garage) and pick up the scope. I usually get it for a week or two, depending on whether he’s got a weekend project planned. (This is Phil of Weekend Engineering so he often has weekend projects planned.)

Where I’m going here… using an oscope requires planning. It requires me to admit my bug can’t be solved by just trying something else, that typing another line of code or doing a recompile isn’t enough. An embarrassing amount of my time is tweaking my code to do one thing just a little different. Admitting I can’t do that until it magically works, well, it takes a little while.

Even when I have 24/7 access to a scope, using it still means figuring out where to attach the probes to the board and configuring the scope. Admitting I have a problem, a real problem and not just a typo, is oddly difficult. I should just be able to figure it out.*

*This is a myth. A complete and total myth.

When I worked at HP, there were plenty of scopes around. But they all weighed 40-60 lbs (and dropping it would have been *bad* because they were hideously expensive (like 1/2 year salary expensive)). So in addition to admitting to myself I needed help, I had to find a big strong man to carry the thing for me. Who would inevitably offer to help me connect it to my board and then take credit for the solution. (Why didn’t we just put the darn thing on wheels? As I look back, I’m a little frustrated by that idiocy.)

There was another tool I used a few times there, one that I think was on wheels: the logic analyzer. It hooked up to dozens of digital signals and would help me figure out what was going on all over the system. But it was a very difficult tool to use (its manual was about four times longer than the oscilloscope manual and it cost a whole year’s salary). So to use the logic analyzer, I had to admit the problem was big enough to stop my normal work for three days, get someone to help me transport it, get another someone to modify my board so the signals were available, set up the analyzer, and then, within a few hours of getting the information, solve my bug.

Once I admitted the scale of the problem warranted a tool of that magnitude, and put in the diligent effort of setting up the tool, the solution was always obvious.

Now logic analyzers are tiny widgets that plug into USB ports and take all of ten minutes to set up. (I did it (almost) live unboxing of the Saleae Logic on my new podcast.)

But I still have to admit I need it. I wonder if I’m going about this wrong. In the past, I’ve always waited for a problem to happen. Then I’ve waited until I determined I couldn’t solve it the easy way (poke, poke, poke). Then I grudgingly admit it won’t fall to trivial debugging. Then I pull out whatever tool will help, grudgingly (still) hook it up and configure it. Then (usually), the problem falls fairly quickly.

First, the grudgingly parts… the fact that I can’t type my way out of a problem doesn’t make me stupid. I know that and yet… this is what programming is to many people.

Once I got my itty-bitty, super cheap new analyzer set up, I left it in place. And now I’ve moved on to other issues, just adding more signals. It is really handy. I can look at things whenever I want… before I start tippy typing randomly and pressing the recompile clean button for no reason.

But some tools take time and they don’t look like forward progress. It is hard to know when to throw in the towel on being a monkey typing randomly (and when to stop hoping Google, Stack Overflow, and caffeine can solve your problem). On the other hand, reading the manual or getting the right tool or taking a class… well, sometimes it is necessary to take a step to the side to get on to the fast track to the solution.

I like not wearing a watch. Having something on my wrist decreases ease of melding with my computer. I like the flow-state where it is just me and the bits, working together to make each other work.

Thus, if I was to give up my previous wrist space, it would have to be for a good reason.  It would not be a pedometer ( lives in my pocket), a GPS (lives on my phone), or a sports anything (lives nowhere on my person).

I’d consider a health monitor but I don’t think the technology is there. I’d want it to monitor core body temperature, heart rate, glucose levels, and blood pressure. Basically, it would be a wrist mounter tricorder. None of those are easy to do on the wrist (also, noninvasive was implied) so this seems like a pipe dream.

But I’m not completely unreasonable. I’d settle for an auxiliary screen for my phone. It would have to be light, more like one of those rubber cause wrist bands (i.e. livestrong) than a proper watch.

I’ve heard rumors of Apple and a slap band style. I could get into that. Say it is two inches wide and eight inches long. When flat, it could show me movies via, I dunno, Bluetooth (or BTLE). My headphones would plug into my phone so the wristband doesn’t need a jack. Though it could have one which would let me watch movies with someone, that’d be neat.

Given my goal “watch” is now about 2″ wide and 8″ long, the screen could be about 2″ x 4.5″ which would show movies in widescreen (16/9).

I could see using the wristlet in flat form as a display, using my phone’s screen for a larger keyboard. But I don’t have any problem with typing and seeing on my phone (most of this blog post was written on my phone).

When the wristlet is in coiled mode, it should show time and some chosen info from my phone: texts, emails from VIPs, tweets, etc. I’d like to be able to press something and say show me more and dismiss (also pause, forward, and back for movies). I don’t know if that means I need a touchscreen or just a few buttons on the end. With feature creep, I could see a stopwatch but I don’t really need a features I’ve got elsewhere.

I understand a lot of people are trying to make a wrist based phone and I can understand that. But even if they succeed, I don’t want that. How about instead of another me-too product, we get something really spiffy?

If you want my wrist, be innovative.

We had some technical difficulties with mikes squealing at the very high range of hearing (it is always a bad sign when your audience is holding their ears). But that got fixed. And then things went well.

Our panel consisted of:

• Christine Brumback, Director of Product Management at Fitbit, talking about their new Flex wrist based step-tracker (it will also track swimming and sleep).
• Alissa Fitzgerald, CEO of AM Fitzgerald, a company that makes custom MEMS sensors (can you imagine your own sensor, sensing something new?), describing tiny (tiny!) pressure sensors for blood and cranial pressure.
• Shena Park, Director of Product Development at iRhythm Technologies, discussing the challenges of ECG monitoring device intended for long-term wear.
• Me! I was talking about a project I worked on about 18 months back: SpotOn, a non-invasive body temperature monitoring system for use in surgery and ICUs that recently made it thought clinical trials.
• Jen Costillo, founder of RebelBot, was our moderator, making sure we stayed on topic and kept us going. (Jen was also my coconspirator in making this happen.)

Yeah, we had a panel at the embedded systems conference that consisted entirely of women. The attendance (and speakers) at the conference are primarily men so this is pretty odd.

We didn't get any negative comments. None. We did get lots of “neat topic” and “good information” comments.

Let's be really, annoyingly clear: it wasn't a panel about being women in technology. Those have their place (but I'm completely bored of the topic). It was a panel of women in technology talking about their tech and how awesome it is. Our post-panel questions were about health related embedded systems and about our particular areas of expertise. It rocked.

Every once in awhile I think “This! This is what I want to grow up to be!” This panel was one of those magical times.

But if it is the inaugural, that indicates there would be more podcasts. So what would we do podcasts about?

This one was very high level, an introduction to getting involved. I think I'd want to do a deeper dive into technical things, but still with a hobbyist bent.

I'd like to have a podcast that was just Jen and me, getting a box from Amazon that contains an Arduino and maybe one other board (accelerometer? ThingM LED?). We'd chat and open the box and download the software to make Arduino work. We'd do the normal Hello World to make the LED on the board work (that code is included when you install the compiler), and then change it so the LED blinks at a different rate and all the stuff we'd want to do to get started. Then we'd make the other board (accelerometer? LED?) work to show a few more things. Then, I think we'd rip the Arduino part off and treat it like an Atmel processor. Jen and I would chat over all of this, talking about what we were doing, talking about why we'd do this instead of that, mentioning AVR Freaks and other helpful communities.

I suppose we could do this with Raspberry Pi as well. Oh, MBED, XPresso and MSP430's cheapest board as well. It could be a segment “box to xyz”

And I'd like to do an interview with Jeri Ellsworth, asking her about what she's done and what's she planning. Actually, I'd like to interview all my friends first- Phil over at Weekend Engineering would have a lot of interesting things to say, especially about designing for consumer products. My husband could talk about FDA and UIs and embedded systems. Star could come on and talk about TacoCopter (she's locationally challenged so having her be a regular part might be difficult).

Maybe we could do a radio show of teaching someone to solder. Or talking about software design.

We'll need theme music, I think. And editing software. And good mics. And time. Lots of time. That may be the most difficult part.

The Expo is where you can see all the new dev kits and hear about the new chips/parts/etc. The Expo pass is free. It is worth a couple hours of strolling the exhibit hall, particularly if you want a few free dev kits or take a class from a vendor.

http://www.ubmdesign.com/sanjose/registration/

Here are the Expo hours:
Tues. April 23    11:30am – 7:00pm
Wed. April 24    11:30am – 5:30pm
Thurs. April 25    11:30am – 4:00pm

But wait, there is more!

I’m excited about the Expo pass because I’m part of two sessions and chairing a track of talks… all that is free to Expo pass holders.

Tuesday’s talk is Start Tinkering, a radio show style talk with Jen Costillo and Star Simpson… we’re going to talk about the hows, whys, and wheres of working on technical projects that aren’t work projects. This one is likely to be more fun than is reasonable to have. And I suspect we’ll give away dev kits and books and advice. 9:30-10:15am Tuesday. (Oh! Time for post talk coffee before the Expo starts, let me know…)

Wednesday’s talk Sensors Saving Lives, 1pm in the Expo Theater, right on the Expo floor. This is a panel discussing 4 different sensors, how they work in systems, and how they make a difference in the world. If you’ve ever wanted to ask about the difference between FDA manufacturing and large scale consumer, here’s the place. Or there are about 200 other questions I could feed you if you want. Or, more likely, you’ll have some of your own once you hear about the incredibly nifty systems the panel will be describing. Since this is in the Expo hall, you can pop in to rest your legs and then wander off, no offense taken.  But do say hello if you are around.

My track is Hello World and it is on Tuesday. Supposedly, it is about starting projects- things to know when you get started with something new. Really, it is all the sessions that I personally wanted to attend. Everybody’s got some criteria and I was just looking for neato-ness. I suspect I’ll be around the session most of the day, making sure it is running smoothly. If you are looking for me (to say hello!), I’ll be there (210 GH but maybe just look for the Hello World track location).

As if that wasn’t enough! There is talk of a book signing on the Expo floor Wed at 3pm. All your favorite embedded systems authors will be there (snicker, all four of us?). Feel free to bring your copy of my book (O’Reilly’s Making Embedded Systems) for signing. Or I may have a few to sell there.  I’m torn between amusement and embarrassment. If you are around Wednesday afternoon, please come to the UBM to tell me jokes so the former wins out.

My track: http://www.ubmdesign.com/sanjose/schedule-builder/track/hello-world

Start Tinkering: http://www.ubmdesign.com/sanjose/schedule-builder/session-id/121

Sensors Saving Lives: http://www.ubmdesign.com/sanjose/schedule-builder/session-id/174

My book: http://www.amazon.com/Making-Embedded-Systems-Patterns-Software/dp/1449302149 (or use coupon AUTHD on the O’Reilly site for a pretty bit discount: http://oreilly.com/catalog/0636920017776)

Finally, last but not least, if you are looking at Android for anything, check out Jen Costillo’s talk about adding new sensors to Android (http://www.ubmdesign.com/sanjose/schedule-builder/session-id/151). Wed at 3pm.

Oh! And the keynote on Wednesday is Mayim Bialik, the neuroscientist/actress from Big Bang theory.
http://www.ubmdesign.com/sanjose/schedule-builder/session-id/193
That looks like fun. Anyone want to sit in the back and pass notes like twelve year-olds?

Sorry for the spam but I’m excited and I really do hope to see you there. I also have coupons to get a discount if you want to sign up for an expensive ESC pass… email if you want that.

Oh, but I didn’t exactly do a normal resolution. Instead, my plan is to have different resolution each week. Each resolution lasts Wednesday to Wednesday and should take 15-60 minutes of daily activity or thought. The goal overall is to try new things, see which better-for-me habits are easy to incorporate into my life and which ones are too difficult to maintain.

Week 1: Health: 10,000 steps and some time on the exercise. Success. Most days did more than five miles on the bike, only one day did I not want to bike at all.

Week 2: Happiness: more quality snuggling time with my husband. Mixed. It was nice but it require being in sync though it did keep us more in sync for a week or two after.

Week 3: Health: every day have one meal with a whole grain as a main component. Success. The whole grains made me feel a little better in general, more balanced sugar-wise. I found lots of whole grain things that I like, including plain old oatmeal packets, an easy meal I’d forgotten about. This resolution was a really, really good one and even 9 weeks later, most days I have something whole grain because I like how it makes me feel more full.

Week 4: Social: spend at least one hour a day talking to someone who is not my husband. Success but exhausting. Victims: house guest Nate (two days), She’s Geeky various people (three days), Ingo (birthday), and Jen + Alissa (on the embedded systems panel).

Week 5: Health: sixty minutes of at-least-slightly sweaty exercise. It’s funny, I think I usually mange 30-45 minutes of exercise (almost) everyday so I didn’t think this would be a big deal. However, I had one of Those Weeks and just failed at this one. Too much work, too much crankiness, too much “does this activity count?”. I’ll need to have more specificity in the future.

Week 6: Health: a different breakfast every day. My morning meal is exceedingly monotonous: a high protein food bar with low glycemic index and about 190 calories. What other breakfasts can keep me going until 11am without needing a snack? The goal was to keep the calorie intake around 200. This one was more interesting than I expected, changing up my morning patterns as well as my breakfast.

Week 7: Health: 10 miles on the exerbike, no reading fiction books until after getting on bike. I often bike 10 miles but I’d gotten out of the habit and I’d been lazing away hours reading junk. So, getting back in the habit of a late afternoon bike helped both of these issues.

Week 8: Health and Social: dual resolutions: to drink 8oz of water before each meal and to go out after dark each night. Having two resolutions watered it all down so I don’t think I get credit for successfully completing either one. The water one I just forgot about and getting up halfway through a meal to pound a glass of water was silly. As for going out, I just didn’t have things to do each night and didn’t have enough oomph to make stuff up.

Week 9: Health: Count calories. Not trying to reduce calories (though counting them has that effect anyway).

Week 10: Health: Count calories and exercise, making sure the total falls under the (generous) guideline given by the counting program. Still gathering a baseline.

Week 11: Health: Eat a rainbow everyday. After two weeks of counting calories, I wanted to con myself into continuing. I decided to try the school-children challenge of eating a food from each color group each day (red, orange, yellow/white, green, blue/purple). This one I stopped because it was stupid: if I want carrots and snap peas with lunch then fennel with orange wedges for dinner, eating blueberries instead (or in addition to) is dumb. Plus, I don’t really like blueberries and I couldn’t bring myself to count wine as a purple fruit. Plus, plus, I don’t need ways to eat *more* food. So I failed this resolution intentionally.

Week 12: Diet: No bread. After a few Sundays of bread-induced coma due to the amazing, spectacular, phenomenal bread from Manresa’s bread stand at Campbell’s farmer’s market, I realized I have a problem. (Still counting calories.) The resolution was really “no bread as a major component of a meal” which meant I could have a piece of bread but no bread-and-olive-oil meals, no sandwiches, and (horrors) no pizza. However, I’m mid-way through and I suspect “no bread” entirely is fine. I do miss it though.

Other resolutions I might try:

• Brush teeth after every meal/snack
• Eat fruit/vegetable 20 minutes before any snacking
• An hour of house or garden work every day
• Bike ten miles and take a walk each day
• No alcohol or no caffeine
• No tv before 9pm
• No non-fiction reading
• Blog post every day
• Cook main component of one meal each day from a cookbook (C to help choose recipes)
• Artistic endeavor for an hour a day
• 30 min/day updating all career related things with current info: linked in update, resume update, google self, speaker’s wikis, etc.
• Write a program in numPy everyday
• Get up and shower and dress everyday, as though I have a real job
• Do something nice for someone
• Write a novel proposal every day
• Spend 1 hour/day working on book promotion
• 10% decrease in calories (using newly calculated baseline from weeks 9-12).

What else? What thing to try might make a big difference in my happiness and health?

Let’s recap my views on the Tesla… I thought it was silly and expensive. While C likes bleeding edge technology, I’d rather wait until someone else dealt with the bugs before getting mine. Since I write (err, fix) bugs for a living, well, I understand that it just takes awhile before things are solid.

Also, it is an expensive car. Really, really expensive. We could use that money for something else. Something worthwhile. Maybe three normal cars that we juggle in the backyard using our giant robot.

More than a year ago, I tried to get a friend to convince C it was silly to put down the deposit on a car that wouldn’t ship for a year and would be on the gushing bleeding edge. Said so-called friend told us he’d already put down his deposit; my hope for rationality was quashed.

Then it was like a game of chicken. I figured C would use his refundable deposit to have a stake in watching things. It would be amusing to him. And we’d never go through with it. Because, wouldn’t it be better to have a giant car juggling robot? Or something?

In the end, it is much cheaper to buy the car than to put my foot down and have my husband be unhappy. Clearly, I am a pushover for him.

But I wasn’t entirely a pushover for Tesla.

I didn’t like that Tesla isn’t a car company. While I don’t like the car lots or the dealers, I understand the process. Tesla isn’t that and I’m not confident I can navigate the shoals of an up-and-coming car manufacturer. Plus, I saw Tucker. I know how this story can end. (The Tesla has side headlights that come on when you turn, highlighting where you are pointing. It was eerily familiar after the Tucker movie. Also, quite amusing.)

Tesla did not help their case during the decision-making process. We went to one of their test drive extravaganzas, with balloons, soft-serve ice cream, a DJ, and the opportunity for one of us to drive the car on windy roads while the other one tries not to throw up on the super-expensive backseat. I hated the whole event. I was frustrated I couldn’t talk to the salesfolk because the music was so stupidly loud. I declined to ride along as I tend to get car sick and already knew the road they were taking; it wasn’t going to end well for anyone. I generally made my husband unhappy with my complete crankiness. But he still enjoyed test driving the car.

I was worried that we’d get the car and I’d still be cranky: unable to drive it for fear of hurting it, unable to look at it without thinking how many hours we’d have to work to pay it off, unable to ever bond with something that financially irresponsible.

It took two days. Maybe less. We got the car on Saturday, took it for a long drive, had annoying problems (had to stop at a gas station! oh, the chagrin!) and eventually came home with me liking the car but not loving it (also, slightly carsick). I didn’t drive it until Sunday and then only to pop to the library and back: boring, even in a nice car.

The next day, I took friends out to lunch in it. I accelerated outrageously and cornered hard (I <heart> freeway on-ramps). I showed them the frunk (front trunk). They oooh’d and aaaah’d over the utterly ridiculous retracting door handles. We talked about the car always having a full tank when it leaves the house. They played with the sunroof. I showed them the adorable key (vroom, vrooom!).

In showing them the sweetness of the car, I somehow realized I’d fallen for the Tesla.

It’s name is Electron.

C says it is too dirty for a photo shoot, I’ll just take a picture I’ve been thinking about for awhile…

Let’s take a look at what’s under the hood…

Hey! This car is puppy powered!

Does anyone have 30-60 hamsters I can borrow? I think that will be even funnier.

The first time we took Zoe to the vet for “gastric distress” due to “dietary indiscretions”, we felt like terrible puppy parents. We should have known. Because she enthusiastically wanted to play ball (even as she was vomiting), we thought she’d just eaten too much grass (which she seems to do because she likes to barf).

When the vet used the term “dietary indiscretion”, it strongly reminded us of the politician who belittled his hypocritical immorality by calling it a “youthful indiscretion”. Both terms have this feeling of joyful breaking of the normal rules. This completely describes our beagle.

And Zoe does like to eat things. Really, anything is fine.

Last week, while I was in class, my husband sent me a dog shaming photo of Zoe. If you haven’t seen dog shaming before, you really should follow the link. Dogs are terrible creatures. And putting signs around their neck has really made their bad behavior a lot easier to take. I wrote a post-it note for Bear a few days ago (my first) and it made his annoying behavior humorous.  Which them made it easier to deal with, which is to say, distract them from the badness, interest them in something non-destructive.

So, while we’re read the site for awhile, we’re new to actually shaming the dogs. I think this was C’s first attempt.

Does it look like she’s trying to blow a bubble? It says “I ate Elecia’s Bubble Gum (including wrappers)”

One important thing, though… like they used to say on America’s Funniest Home Videos, if someone is actually in danger, put down the camera and help.

Sugarless gum is poisonous to dogs. It is the Xylitol sweetener. Oh, and before I go on… Zoe is fine. Bear is fine. But it was a harrowing time.

After taking the picture and then perusing the internet, C rushed both dogs to the emergency vet. Where Zoe got to barf, probably even more than she liked. Bear also participated in that part but all evidence suggests he didn’t eat the gum (poor Bear, punished but not even an accomplice).

Does this bandaid make me even cuter?

Zoe did show some of the poisoning signs (low blood sugar) and was in the hospital for 48 hours.  However, thanks to C’s fast action, she was out of the woods pretty quickly and doesn’t show signs of liver damage (yay!). While in the hospital, she wiggled when she shouldn’t have and they broke a needle in her so there is a quarter inch of 30 gauge wire floating around. While that sounds horrible, it is probably not going to harm her.

Harrowing times… but all dogs are home and happy. They haven’t even deserved shaming today. Yet.

He started to talk about which things on the list we shouldn’t get. And we should organize to get only one of something between the six students. And really, he’d just bring it himself, we shouldn’t get one. Oh, but make sure you get a glass cutter. But not one like this. Or this or this. One like this (holding up example) but one that works (it didn’t cut the glass he tried it on).

Ummm… could I have a list of stuff I need to bring for next time? We went through the list a couple times and I just got more and more confused. He spent so much time talking about how to save money without explaining why we’d want horseshoe nails vs. tacks or why he thought my soldering iron wouldn’t work (it will, I’ve got a 70W Hakko, but my old 40W Weller wouldn’t work, the internet is wonderful). He’d go on tangents (he hates the fad for blown glass pumpkins though it is his bread and butter), he forgot all our names (I’m known as Ellen which is kind of odd but I’m ok with it), he changed his story on every thing: this glass is great (tries demonstrate how to cut), no, it sucks, no, it is the cutter, no, it is the glass, no, it is the phase of the moon.

Sigh. I doodled.

I find doodling to be extremely soothing. You can see at the top, I was thinking about doing a landscape. I’d seen and admired a stained glass landscape. I liked the way the glass was the star of the landscape so I hoped I could do something similar for myself. I doodled different options. The teacher commented on my doodling but didn’t take me up when I offered to repeat what he’d said. (Note: I’ve grown, up I once offered to repeat what a teacher said verbatim. It’s the doodling, it puts me in the zone and I remember stuff. )

Armed with glass, I spent Saturday morning making a proper design. Waves across the top in blues and greens, a jellyfish in the lower right with blue, white, purple swirly tentacles. The goal is to have fewer than twenty pieces of glass to cut out, a requirement/suggestion/thought from the teacher.

Kristin gave me some clear, iridescent, super textured glass. I was thinking about using it for the jelly body. But a purple or pink might be look better.

So I went off to Kiss My Glass where the owner had had a family emergency and the person working the counter didn’t know much about stained glass (she did lampwork beads which sounds fun). I was pretty glad I didn’t need anything particularly, just to look at the glass. And there was a lot of lovely glass to look at.

When I got home, I realized that I probably have more than twenty different kinds of glass. Which is a shame since I can’t use it all. And Kristin’s glass is special so I can’t just give it all back to her, using the wrong kind might shatter one of her fused glass pieces. Still, they are all so pretty. It was hard to leave them in the store where they might get dusty again.

You can see in that picture that I got some water+tentacles to go between the main jelly tentacles. And some differently textured cobalt blues. And some greens. The jelly cap is purple and translucent but you can’t tell on the table there, it looks really nice in the light. I don’t think I’ll be using the iridescent clear. And that isn’t all the glass I have. Here’s some that didn’t make it to the table:

So many tentacles, so little time.

Tonight, we are supposed to get our designs approved. Then we’ll learn how to cut glass using some clear glass and some standard shapes. I’m kind of excited. Once I can cut with confidence, I can cut it all out at home to see if my colors work well, to find the perfect tentacles in my sheets. (Yes, the third class is supposed to be about cutting the colored glass but getting ahead is ok, right?)

Finally, I cut my finger, moving the glass around for these pictures. Since bandaids was on the list and wasn’t marked off in someway… well, I’ve got mine already in my tool box.