► Getting our personal stuff loaded back into the van -- and still leaving room for
the dogs -- proved to be a little bit of a challenge thanks to THE GIANT BAG OF PACKING. Prior to Showcase, a glassblower friend emailed and asked Jo if she wanted a bag of packing. He has a couple of sources for recycled packing material -- mostly thin sheets of foam -- and had accumulated more than he needed. Jo said, "Sure", figuring we could always work in one bag of packing even though our van is always fully loaded when we do a show. Little did she know that this one bag was about the size of a Mini Cooper. I got most of our belonging loaded and then working together Jo and I squeeze the bag of packing in between the load and the roof of the van. When we finished, I could have rolled the van and none of that part of our load would have been able to move.► The weather had been beautiful all weekend, but was taking a turn for the
worse by the time Monday rolled around. It was clouding up quickly when we left the Little Rock area. On the way home we did a little Wally World shopping in Conway and picked up Rusty and Bucket in the outskirts of Greenbrier. By the time we got home mid-afternoon the skies were cloudy. The house insulation was doing a good job of holding in the cold air acquired over the weekend. The outside temperature was in the mid-fifties, but mid-forties prevailed inside our house. It took a while for the wood stove to take the chill off the inside air. It always does. Still, we have returned from Christmas Showcase to a house that was much colder inside.► About all we managed to get done after arriving home was unloading our personal stuff from the van.
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