This topic has come up time and again since we moved to our “urban dwelling”.

I used to be a “potter”. I picked up the hobby from a friend i met in spain. I met this friend on a summer spent there during college. This hobby gave us something to do together, brought in another friend from work and she and I are still friends…  That was 1995…

I spent years in community schools doing my thing, creating my stuff.

I finally got my own wheel in 2000. So i could make my stuff when i wanted to, on my own schedule, early morning, late night etc. I would just then transport to community schools to get it fired.

I got my own studio in 2003 – my very own tuff shed with a split door!

I finally got my own kiln in 2004-ish. So then i didn’t have to bother with community school any more – ever!

I moved to colorado in 2005 and hubby and I built out the basement of our home to be my new studio with all my stuff.

We moved to Downtown denver in 2007 and basically i only fired the kiln once to finish up some pieces that were 1/2 done, and i haven’t felt the desire or need or want to do anything with clay since.

So, do i finally after 4 years of dust settling on my supplies get rid of it all and say my hobby has run it’s course?

The other half of the coin, glass or what have you, was what do i do with all the stuff i make. It was terribly hard to make a living at it or even break even. Craft shows just burned my butt cause everyone would say oh- how pretty and walk on to buy a hand painted tea pot …

I couldn’t compete with that and it took a whole weekend away from me to sit and be miserable.

Etsy has just too many items on it to be able to sell… so i just had boxes boxes of my wonderful pottery with nothing to do with it (mom and my sister always look forward to receiving it and still do – there are still about 4 rubber maids filled with stuff)  Every wedding, shower etc would receive my hand picked, hand created item… but not everyone is into that kind of stuff. I would hate to see where some of it ended up… so i don’t ask!

I recently had a friend ask about the kiln, and if i was willing to part with it. She had a friend who is looking to obtain one.

So do i hold onto this relic, hoping some day i’ll feel the desire to create in clay again, or do i let it go, passing on the gift of being able to create at home to another more willing and interested in it, at the moment than I.

So this might only be exciting to me, but since i need to deal with data that the dear hubby enters into spreadsheets in not format that is useful to me and since i’ll probably forget rather quickly how to do this…

I found a neat trick to separating a single column into first name and last name – or basically first word in column from the rest!

I found it on a blog called Excel Hints what a concept eh?  Better subscribe to that blog right quick!

Basic formula:

Example

Cell A1 contains the full name “John Smith”

First Name Formula: =LEFT(A1,FIND(” “,A1)-1) – this will return “John”.

Last Name Formula: =RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-FIND(” “,A1)) – this will return “Smith”.

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So simple, elegant and totally useful!

Now, i need something as easy to separate a full address…  I’m a noob at macro’s – some day i’ll go to a training class or sit down and learn it… now where is my bucket list – let me add this to it!