In the past....

I made my living as a cook. A couple of years after High School I decided to go to a Vocational Technical School and go through the Food Service Industries Course. I did pretty well and after the 2 year program I landed a job as the cook on the Spear-O-Wigwam guest ranch outside of Sheridan, Wyoming. I spent 3 summers cooking there. In the Fall I would cook for a hunting ranch out North of Sheridan, the NX Bar. Wyoming's only privately owned elk herd. In the winter I would go back to Billings, Montana and wait tables. I am not a good waiter, I have very little patience with people and how they treat people in the service industry. One winter I did cook out at the PK ranch on Soldier Creek, that's just west of Sheridan. There were 8 guys that lived in the bunkhouse plus 4 others that came for breakfast and lunch. Twelve hungry cowboys can eat a lot of food.
After that I spent two years at the Ucross Foundation east of town. An artists colony. It was a restored ranch that was backed by a rich oilman and had space for 4 Artists at a time to come and live. They were housed in what was once the town school house and I provided their meals, lunch and dinner. For breakfast they were on their own.
It was there that I got interested in ceramics and then went off to Casper, Wyoming to attend the community college. I was there for a year and a half. The restaurant where I was waiting tables burned down and I decided to just get the hell out of town. I was pretty miserable there.
I went back to Billings and after a few days of staying with my folks I found a job up in West Yellowstone for the snowmobile season. Two months of hell later I up and moved to Portland. I had wanted to go to Seattle but couldn't get a hold of a friend I knew there and so I called a friend in Portland. She said yes, come on out, but you can only stay for a couple of weeks because the babies coming.
After a year of waiting tables I found a job at the Tile Factory here. I was in a ceramics course out at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts, which is now the College of A. and C. , my class went for a tour of the factory and I applied. I'm still there.