What's This Stick For?

Let's chat about driving. Specifically, the turning part of driving. More specifically, the notification part of the turning part of driving. You know that stick that protrudes from the left side of your steering wheel? It has a function. Yes, it's true. It's not just a place to hang your purple-haired troll. It actually serves a purpose -- a quite useful and, some might even say, necessary function.

Okay, okay, I know you people reading this are sufficiently intelligent, and considerate enough of your fellow human, to already be completely familiar with the function of "the stick." You have easily grasped the concept of moving it up or down to elicit a "blinking" effect on various parts of your vehicle. And more, you understand the purpose of the blinking.

But some people (non-Blog readers, clearly) believe it's okay to flick the stick up or down very briefly, eliciting perhaps one illumination of the respective lights on their vehicle, and then to just barge right in front of someone in the next lane. After all, they must think, they performed the action as instructed on those flashing, over-the-highway signs, which clearly direct: "State Law: Use Directional to Change Lanes" Okay, so these folks aren't breaking any laws.

So, enough of this talking all around the topic. Here's the stuff that pisses me off:

1. Putting your blinker on just long enough for me to wonder if it happened accidentally while you reached to scratch your leg, and then cutting me off.

2. Thinking that putting on your blinker entitles you to cut very close in front of me, before I've had a chance to react to your blinker and give you the room you're ASKING for.

3. Not using your blinker at all and just meandering from lane to lane, as if you're the sole survivor of a world-wide plague.

4. Not using your blinker until after you've nearly come to a complete stop in the middle of the road, before making your turn. This is really annoying. Generally, there's enough room on one side of you for me to go around you, IF ONLY I HAD SOME CLUE AS TO WHAT DIRECTION YOU PLAN TO GO!

So, as I see it (and I realize this is just my opinion), here's how this is supposed to work...

You want to change lanes, turn, whatever. Basically, anytime you're not planning on maintaining the direction you're already going in, USE YOUR BLINKER! You put on your blinker, notifying everyone else on the road of your intention. This is for YOUR SAFETY! If I don't know where you're going to be, I'm liable to be there, too!

Then you look, to see if your intended direction is clear of other vehicles. If it's not, DON'T GO THERE! I'M THERE! (See Physics 101) Once you're sure your intention is clear to those around you and your destination contains no other vehicles, or no vehicles who, maintaining their current rate of speed, will not soon be in your destination ('cause that's rude, too), go there. Go there quickly. Don't dawdle. Do it.

Related to this, but slightly different... those people who use their blinker and think it's okay to hold up all the traffic behind them to take their intended turn. This is especially annoying when I'm in the middle lane of a highway and someone is trying to merge into the right lane, which is backed up at an off-ramp. You can't just stop in the middle of a highway with your blinker on. The people behind you are coming at you at full speed. MOVE! So you miss your exit. Not the end of the world. Take the next one. But don't stop in the middle of traffic because you failed to plan.

Somewhat related to that... those people who find themselves, halfway through waiting for a red light to change, in the wrong lane for the turn they want to make. And so, the light turns green and they sit there, slightly slanted toward where they want to go and with their blinker on, waiting for the traffic in the next lane to clear so they can make the turn they should have thought about making minutes ago. And you're behind them, honking your horn and waving your arms and they just shrug helplessly, as if to say, "Whadda ya want me to do?" MOVE! Miss your turn. Again, NOT THE END OF THE WORLD! Pull into that McDonald's up there and turn around, but GET THE HELL OUT OF TRAFFIC!

Okay, I feel much better now. Thank you.

A Day in the Life

Last week, Chris and I visited Build-a-Bear. If you've never been there, I recommend a visit. Now, you're probably thinking, "Isn't that for kids?" Yes. And no. I can't tell you how much fun we both had picking out our own critters, filling them up just the way we wanted, giving them a heart, fluffing them in the fluff tub and picking out their clothes. Well, I picked out clothes. Chris's bear is au naturel.

So, I birthed a monkey named Max. Maxwell Porkchop, to be exact. And Chris created Rufus.

I've decided to try my hand at some photojournalism, and give you...

A Day in the Life of Max


Max chillin' in his crib (He made me write that.)


Max and his "naked friend," Rufus. They share the same birthday, but not the same "suit."


How does he know where to stop?




I just wish he'd clean out the drain afterwards!


Checking his morning email.


After work, Max gets busy doing what monkeys do.


Max jammin' with the skins. (I swear he makes me write this stuff.)


Max enjoys a good book in the afternoon. In this case, he's learning how to get along with a his two feline roommates.




Max wasn't happy about this shot at all. But he forgave me.


A monkey's gotta grab some rays once a while.


After a full day of monkey business, Max is off to dream land.

What I've Been Doing for the Past Few Weeks

Here's the reason I haven't posted much in this Blog over the past month or so. After Chris moved back, we decided we each needed our own space if we're gonna live in the same house. This upstairs bedroom used to be a very boring, and very unused, guest bedroom. White walls, old fogey bedroom furniture, the whole boring deal. I've claimed it as my own. It's hard to get me out of here.

You've Heard Enough of Me. Here's My Shadow

Here's my little guy at about five months old. We entered him in a water retreiving race, and he was awesome. Never did it before, but he jumped right in, swam out to get the little rubber bone thingy, and brought it right back to us on the dock. We were amazed!


Best Puppy Ever!

And here he is last year, at about two and a half. Still just as awesome and my best buddy. He LOVES going for rides in the Jeep in the summer!


Best Dog Ever!

That Thing I Bought Last Year

Bought this last year, to replace my '92 Celica GTS which, of course, still runs like a top. Agonizing over selling the Celica. Can't make a decision. But I love driving this around in the summer with Shadow in the back.

Day Off

I'm sprawled here on my couch with my laptop, Shadow (a.k.a. Best Dog Ever), and a diet Coke. I took the day off. Chris is gone for the weekend, and I'm considering driving down to Queens to visit a friend tomorrow. I wanted at least one full day in this big, solitary house. Just to do this. Sprawl on the couch and do nothing.

I haven't really done nothing. I did vacuum, in preparation for my weekend alone. I like a neat house. And I've already returned from an appointment with an English professor at SUNY, where I'm very seriously considering starting a Master's program in English this summer. I have another appointment with the director of the Master's programs in English, next Thursday. Don't know if it'll come to anything, but I'm taking each step at a time and will just see where things lead me.

I've also been perusing other blogs, and I'm noticing a disturbing trend. And perhaps I've particpated in this trend, and for that I am ashamed. But the general tone of most blogs I've read is pretty cynical. I don't begrudge anyone the right to an occasional vent or rant, but I'm seeing this emerging as its own form of humorous entertainment. This is why I stopped listening to George Carlin. Someone who used to completely crack me up, and who I considered the funniest guy on the planet, presented one of the most miserable, cynical, negative shows I've ever attended here in Albany a few years ago. Maybe I'm getting older, but I just don't seem to have the stomach for it anymore. Life is short. Mine needs to be happy.

So, I'll stay away from other blogs for awhile and just write my thoughts. If people wanna read 'em, great. I'd love the feedback. If not, that's okay, too.

Here's something interesting that happened to me this week. But it needs some background. I came across a letter, while going through boxes of my mom's belongings (She died four years ago.), to my mom from one of her childhood friends. It had been written while my mom was in the hospital, so there was a good chance this person (Her name is Charlotte.) was still at the same address. I wrote to her.

I didn't know if I'd get a response or if she'd even want to be bothered. I knew she'd know who I was, because we'd met once or twice over the years, mostly when I was very small. After about two weeks, I had pretty much given up, when I came home and found a large envelope with 9 typewritten pages inside, and pictures! I read the whole thing before taking off my coat.

Not only was this great stuff about my mom from the time she was born until she was about sixteen (when my own creation began), but it's also fascinating from a social perspective. She really goes into detail about life growing up in the fifties, and what people did and didn't do. No TV until they were six, so their parents played cards and listened to the radio at night. Neighbor families would get together outside in the evenings and actually talk to each other. Your parents knew your friends' parents. Apparently, my great-grandparents, who I remember vividly, were the first on their block (I know, it's a cliche, but it's true.) to get a color TV, and neighbors would pile into their tiny living room every Sunday night to watch Bonanza. I remember watching it in reruns and my mom telling me she'd had a crush on Little Joe. She didn't know I did, too.

So, the letter made me cry, as I more fully began to realize how much my mother has actually lost by dying so soon (52). She had a lonely and somewhat unhappy childhood, as far as her relationship with her own mother is concerned, and she spent her adult life living for other people, never really finding the happiness she kept trying so hard to create. She raised me and, when I was seventeen, she had my brother. She raised him until he was18 ,and then she died. She married a wife-beater and then an alcoholic, always trying to turn them into something she could be happy with. It never happened. She never learned.

She had just started enjoying herself and told me, a month before getting cancer, that she was looking forward to my brother going out on his own so she could really begin to live her own life for the first time. She died five months later. When I think about it, I just cry. It just seems like such a waste to me. What was the point? Why did she live?

Granted, I wouldn't be here if she hadn't, but there must have been more to it than that. If we all have a purpose in being here, what was my mother's? And if it was only to raise two children, shouldn't I be doing something more important with my life?

So, there's a very good chance I'll be starting this English program in the fall. And if I happen to write some stuff and people happen to read it, and it makes a difference in their lives, I will have honored Linda Ruo's existence. And that's enough.

Nothing To Do

There's nothing to do at work today. No, really. Nothing.

This is how it works. There's a bucket. Not a physical bucket. A figurative bucket. We logon to this web page, click some stuff and there's the bucket. It's full of tickets. Figurative tickets. You see, people from all over the State call into this Help Desk (a.k.a Level 1) and open "tickets." They can't logon or their server's down or they forgot how to turn on their monitor or whatever. Level 1 takes all the information and sends the ticket to us, at Level 2.

Side note: Level 1's real job is to troubleshoot the issue and send the ticket to Level 2 ONLY when they can't resolve the issue. But Level 1 does not troubleshoot. Level 1 answers phones and types inaccurate information into the tickets, creating the need for Level 2 to call the person back, get all the correct information and begin troubleshooting. This completely invalidates Level 1's existence.

So, the bucket... Typically, there are 50-60 tickets in the bucket at any one time. Some are easy to solve and you can get rid of them in an hour. Some are sent directly from hell and stay in your own bucket (Yes, we have our own personal buckets, too.) for several months. For quite a while, there were at least 130 tickets in the bucket, on an on-going basis. This sucks. It means you're busy all the time. You can't stop. You just keep working and working and working and you feel like you're accomplishing nothing, because they just keep calling in more tickets. You feel guilty going to the bathroom.

Then we have days like today. I have three tickets in my own bucket, and am waiting for those people to get back to me. And there are no tickets in the Level 2 bucket, so there are no more tickets to take, so I can wait for more people to get back to me.

So, there's nothing to do. I'm planning on a long blog posting for the post-sushi afternoon.

Pottery, continued

So, it's been a while, but I didn't want to leave you in the lurch. (Where is this "lurch?")

I was describing the intricacies of pottery, with its bats and wheels and facial accidents, etc. I believe I'd just gotten to the point of creating a lump on my second night. Discouraging, but I learned a lot. I learned how to make a lump and, more importantly, how NOT to make a lump. Valuable information.

Second night, we ventured into bowls. But let me take a moment here to ponder the existence of the "bylinder." Initially, I thought this was an official pottery category, such as the platter, the bowl, the cylinder. (Those more astute readers are already onto something, I know.) For instance, Doug came over to Chris and commented on his nice bylinder. Chris smiled, all proud and puffed up. It only took a few seconds for him to make the connection. "Wait, what's a bylinder?" A bylinder, as you might imagine, is a combination bowl/cylinder. But it was a damned nice one.

Apparently, cylinders have a propensity for working their way into being bowls. It's like they secretly want to be bowls, but their parents are pressuring them to go to cylinder school, like their grandfather. You see, because of something called "physics," which a very nice woman in Bellport, NY tried, in vain, to teach me about in 1984, clay naturally wants to fling itself toward the outer-most regions of your wheel. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to keep the freakin' stuff from doing that, by pushing on it with your left palm as it spins. A lot. Hard. Harder.

So, enough of bylinders. You get the idea.

That second night, I made four bowls. I was unaware of how proficient I was becoming at making bowls until the fourth night, when we had to pull out all the stuff we'd made and I had all these bowls. I like bowls. My goal was to make a bowl. So I was happy.

Third night, we made plates and platters. Difference? Apprarently, one is a platter. Two are plates. This begged the question, on the way to our third night of pottery, "Is plate just the plural of platter?" Can you say, "Please hand me that platter?" and if there are five of them, can you say, "Please hand me that stack of plate?" Like gander or mice? Is there no such word as "platters?" Alas, these questions were not answered.

But I made a damned good platter (I made only one, you see). Platters are more difficult than they sound. You figure, how hard can it be to make a flat disk? Just smush some clay onto the wheel, right? But no! Everything starts with a cylinder. If you can imagine turning your coffee mug into your dinner plate (platter?), you're beginning to understand how hard this is.

First you make your cylinder, but you make it with a wide bottom. Then you have to sort of coax the sides down by pushing with the flat part of your finger, from the inside, against (and over) another finger located on the outside. You keep doing this until the point JUST BEFORE the whole thing collapses onto the wheel. Of course, someone asked the question, during the demonstration, "How do you know when that is?" The answer? "You don't. I do."

Well, I was nervous and yes, I did push the limits a bit. But I had the edge of that platter almost horizontal, and it didn't collapse. I was impressed with myself. I made a platter. I even put little lines (decorations... adornments... flourishes...) in my platter.

So, the fourth class we learned how to trim our pottery. They are dried out, not kiln dried, just kind of leathery. And we grab one and have to center it on the wheel. I hate this part. I heard other people say they hate this part which, of course, instilled in me a sense of challenge in that I would vow not to hate this part and would make this the thing I became expert at. But no, I hate this part. It's all trial and error, heavy on the error.

You stick your thing (whatever... cylinder, bowl, platter) on the assumed center of the wheel. And then you spin the thing ever so slowly while holding your finger as still as possible to see where the pot hits your finger. Then you stop and nudge the pot just a little bit. And you do it again. And again. And again. And again. Until you're convinced you're just pushing the thing back and forth across the wheel and accomplishing nothing. This results in the "It's close enough" philosophy, which I readily adopted.

You also have to decide where to put the foot. Didn't know mugs had feet, did you? Me neither. There's a formula based on some pythagorean geometrical theorum, no doubt involving derivatives and hypotenuses and probably even amortized interest over several years, that I won't get into, but you eventually find a location for the foot. And you start trimming away everything that isn't feet. You're trimming off the bottom of your pot. It's upside-down on the wheel. Almost made the mistake of marking the location of my foot and then trimming it right off. But you have to trim inside the foot and then outside the foot and then lots of trimming from the foot along the side of your pot, toward the top which is really the bottom right now 'cause it's upside-down, remember.

At some point, and I might hate this part even more than the centering part, you take the thing off the wheel by unsticking some of the wet clay you used to stick it on. You look at it. You turn it over, back and forth very quickly, to compare the inside shape with the outside shape, to decide whether you need to trim more. And if you're new at this, you need to trim more. I would say, if you've never done this before, don't even take it off the wheel. Just keep trimming until you're convinced you're about to bore holes in the thing.

Then you try to stick it back on in the EXACT SAME PLACE it was before. Ha! I believe this is physically impossible. (I think I remember that nice woman in 1984 telling me this is impossible. I'm pretty sure we did a pottery lab.) But I got close. More trimming, blah, blah, blah (see first post).

Voila! It's an ugly cup!

I chose to trim the thing I liked least. Figured it was good to practice on. But it meant my first trimming experience was very unfulfilling.

We ran out of time, and I didn't get to trim anything else that night. And the night of the fifth class, we got some pretty nasty weather so we had to skip it. There's only one class left, in which we're supposed to glaze our pieces, assuming they've all been trimmed. So, we'll need to trim while others are glazing. Kind of a bummer. But we'll make up a class and, eventually, bring home all these mugs and bowls and plate.

Oh, and one bylinder.

Verbal Pet Peeves

List of things I've heard today that annoy me:

1. Paged out. (As in, "If this issue occurs this weekend, on-call personnel may be paged out. But if the change is made beforehand, they shouldn't have to page anyone out.")

PAGED, people! Just PAGED!

2. First off. (As in, the thing that comes before... what, second off?!?!?! You see where this can get pretty stupid.)

3. Supposably. 'Nuff said.

4. Anyways. (One anway. Two anyways?)

5. As you already know... (Why are you telling me? Please stop.)

6. Save off (If you're in the computer field, you've heard this one before. As in, "Do I need to save off my documents before I do that?" Similar to "page out." Also in this category... call up, load on, and any other verb that is followed, unnecessarily by a preposition.

7. And my favorite of the week, of course, "Cold enough for ya?" If one more person says this to me (By the way, my rearview mirror thermometer read -15 this morning, without a wind chill.) this week, I'm gonna page out someone to, first off, dump a bucket of ice water on them and, second off, save off their dismembered head in the bucket.

Magnetic Poetry

I've decided to try something new. I thought it would be interesting to grab a fistful of magnetic tiles and turn them into something.

I would come and tell you so
Day will begin as above
Who must judge against evil soul

It's hard to be cheerful when you scoop out judge and evil.

Brrrrrrr!

I know you’re all waiting (all three of you) with eager anticipation for the thrilling conclusion of Pottery, but I’m afraid that will have to wait. I’m sure the disappointment is great, with questions about the Leaning Tower of Pottery’s fate, but I assure you all will be answered, in time.

Friday morning, I stumble through the bedroom door to the living room – the room that’s supposed to be warm when I wake up – to find myself involuntarily shivering and a thermostat that reads only 58. Hmm, strange. Well, it is very cold out. (We’ve been having temperatures consistently in the single digits for over a week now.) I guess the house just hasn’t gotten up to temperature yet, after being turned down most of the night. But geez, it usually doesn’t take this long. I shrug and take my shower.

Later, Chris and I are both in the kitchen and my nose and fingertips are nearly numb. “Cold in here, huh?” I say. “Yeah, it is,” he replies. Or something to that affect. More shrugging. Mutual comments about the frigid weather, blah, blah, blah.

Side note: Ever since discovering that very cool guy, Miles Thirst, during a movie theater Sprite commercial, I’ve adopted the “blah, blah, blah” as my very own. I use it often. Beware.

We took hot showers, both of us. But something is nagging at me. It’s just not usually this cold in the house. Even in this kind of weather. Then Chris says something profound. “The blowers aren’t blowing.” (This would have repercussions later that night.)

Normally, when the thermostat is set to 65, and the house is only 58, the blowers in the living room and kitchen are blowing. You know, hot air. Blowing around. Heating things up. Making my nose less numb. Not so last Friday. More shrugging.

And more nagging thoughts. I’m thinking, “What would I do if I were here alone?” I think I’d go downstairs and stand around the mass of dusty copper pipes and valves, scratching my head and wishing someone were there who knew what was what. I’m thinking Chris might be that person. I test the waters. “You think, maybe, we should check things out downstairs?” I offer. “Do you want to check things out downstairs?” he replies. (You see, we’re trying out this new “make your own decisions” kind of thing.”) “Yeah, I do,” I answer.

So, we head downstairs, do a little of that standing around and scratching our heads stuff. I should mention here that neither of our fathers prepared us with the general household maintenance knowledge most of our peers seem to possess, and also seem to have gained at birth. But we are intelligent and we can follow a logical train of thought. After all, we’re computer people. We troubleshoot things. That’s what we do.

Okay, so Chris is feeling pipes. Some are cold. Some are warm. None are very hot. “Are those supposed to be hot?” I ask. “I don’t know,” he replies. Hmmm. We stand around some more. “Maybe there’s a valve shut or something,” I offer. “I didn’t shut a valve. Did you?” he answers. Well no, of course not. Hmmm.

“The furnace isn’t even running,” he says. “Oh, yeah,” I agree. Hmmmm. Now’s where those uncanny troubleshooting abilities really start to kick in. Pay attention, it gets really complicated here.

“So, if the blower’s not blowing, it’s because the water in the pipes isn’t hot enough, right?” I ask. Chris agrees. “But the furnace should go on to heat the water,” he explains. Hmm, makes sense. “But it’s not,” I add, unnecessarily. “Nope,” he says. Hmmm. “Unless,” he says, “there’s no oil.”

No oil? How can there be no oil? That’s just asinine. I mean, we pay for oil at the beginning of the season. For the whole winter. Up-front! They fill it automatically. We do this so we don’t find ourselves in subzero wind-chills, standing around in our basement scratching our heads and wondering why we’re freezing our asses off. Of course, there’s oil!

“There’s got to be oil,” I say. “We pay up-front! They fill it automatically.” And two heads turn in the direction of the oil tank. It’s got a little gauge on top. If the floaty thing is at the top, it’s full. The bottom? Empty. It’s only about ten feet away, but even from here, I can see he’s onto something.

I walk over, examine the floaty thing and make my pronouncement. “Uh-oh,” I state emphatically. And, just for good measure, Chris comes over and bangs on the side of the tank, producing a sound you never want to hear while in the vicinity of your oil tank in the third week of January in the Northeast.

“Bong!” A sound that resonates throughout the cinderblock basement and reverberates for several seconds. “That’s not good,” I say. “Nope,” Chris agrees.

So, I call in late for work. Chris calls the oil company to let them know they haven’t kept up their part of the bargain. Ours being the part where we give them money, and there’s being the part where they don’t freeze our asses off. They promise they’ll be out to fill it that afternoon. We go to work.

Chris calls the oil company around 2, and is told our tank is full. Whoo hoo! (Homer Simpson this time. Not Miles Thirst.) “And the furnace will start on its own?” he asks. “It should,” the woman says.

Okay, here’s something I’ve learned in my 38 and three-quarter years. When you ask someone if something will or will not happen, you are asking a very specific thing. There are two very discreet answers. Either it will, or it won’t. You should never, especially in the middle of January in the Northeast when you’re discussing the future combustible state of your furnace, be told, “It should.” Customer service reps, take notice.

Well, as you may have already guessed, it didn’t. I have a meeting that night, and spend most of my meeting fantasizing about the possibility that I might return to a home with a roaring fire, some flickering candles and, most importantly, HEAT. When I drive up the driveway and see Chris coming down the spiral stairs with his coat on, I think two things. One, he just got home. Or two, we have no heat. Well, you know, I didn’t really think much about the second one. ‘Cause she said, “It should.” So, I assumed it WOULD.

The first thing Chris says to me is, “Guess what we don’t have?” He’s a funny one, that Chris. “What?” I ask, hoping really, really hard that the answer is milk or toilet paper or horseradish. Anything but what it is. “Heat,” he says. My whole body deflates. I’m cold (see previous section regarding frigidly cold temperatures ALL FREAKING WEEK LONG!) and tired and it’s the end of the work week. I just want to be comfortable. I want to be warm.

He’s called the oil company and they should have someone there in a few hours. FEW HOURS?!?!? Well, we can go out back and get some wood. Ugh, just the thought of putting on five layers, trudging through the snow and lugging a bucket of wood back to the house gives me the heeby jeebies.

Soon, though, the oil guy shows up. Really nice guy. John, his name is. Looks a bit like Danny Devito. We point him toward the basement, which is way warmer than the kitchen. The kitchen is about 45, for the record. The basement, I believe is a pretty constant 50, year round.

John gets the thing running. Apparently, there’s some kind of button or knob or other obscure apparatus that needs activating to get this thing going. At least, now, we know. Then John points to a part (it’s all just parts to me) that is slanted at a funny angle. And I say, very excitedly, “Hey, I can see the fire inside!” (This is the first time the realization hits me that, while I’m sleeping and, more importantly, while I’m not here, there is a raging inferno taking place inside my home. I don’t like gas stoves because of the pilot light. This is, like, a zillion pilot lights. I feel queasy.) And John points out that that – seeing the fire inside – is a problem. “Oh,” I say. He explains that there’s this “part” that is old and needs replacing and soon. Very soon. “John, you should know you’re scaring me the way you keep saying ‘soon’ like that. Like, how soon?” I ask. “Like, this week,” he says. “Oh,” I say again.

He does some patching up of this “part” with some stuff that looks like cotton, but which he assures me is not flammable. Or flammable. Or inflammable. Whatever, it won’t burn until it gets to about 4000 degrees and, apparently, our furnace never gets that hot. Could have fooled me, I think, eyes firmly riveted to the raging inferno.

He’ll order the parts, and call us when he’s ready to come install them. “Sounds good,” we tell him. He tells us he’s not gonna charge us for the whole time. You see, there’s some confusion and awkwardness about the cost. We were prepared to fight any charge because, as Chris put it to John, “We were pretty pissed off that we ran out of oil.” But then John may have saved our lives, the lives of our dog and two cats, and the lives of the swarm of ladybugs that have taken up residence in our mudroom. John’s only charging us an hour of labor and we “consider it a blessing in disguise that you had to come out here, John.” We are happy to pay for an hour of labor.

The good news? Our heat came back on. The bad news? It took a good twenty-four hours to get up to 65. But the really good news? We still have a house. We didn’t freeze to death. We have suffered no major catastrophes, and we consider ourselves damned lucky!

Even the frozen pipes (another new experience) in the upstairs bathroom the next day, resulted in nothing more than a temporary inconvenience.

Thank you! (to whoever’s in charge)

Pottery

The hardest part of writing, for me, seems to be finding a topic. So, I've decided to just pick a topic, sit my ass down and write about it.

Started this pottery class last week. Last night was the second class. I've never done pottery before, you know, with a pottery wheel and all. I was a little apprehensive at first, trying something new. Well, half of me was apprehensive. The other half of me, or maybe three-quarters (I have a hard time judging quantities), couldn't wait to do something I've never done before. And, admittedly, I wasn't about to jump out of a plane or anything. But still, I didn't want to be the one person in the class to have my lump of clay fling itself toward the fluorescent lighting overhead and land on someone's face.

It takes about an hour, right after work, to drive to Saratoga. The class starts at six thirty. The first night, the fog was so thick, we could barely see the white line on the side of the road. Got there about fifteen minutes late. But they hadn't gotten started yet, so we didn't miss anything.

We, by the way, are Chris and I, recently reunited old married couple (ten years).

There were three other people in the class, all women. I was under the impression we'd all be starting out at the same level, but the other three seemed to have taken classes before this one. I felt like the new kid. Tried to get past that feeling, as that can really affect my enjoyment of something, especially something I've never tried before.

The first thing Doug, the half Warren Beatty/half John Ritter pottery instructor, first demonstrated was wedging. This is where you mercilessly squish the crap out of a lump of clay for some undetermined amount of time, in an attempt to make it look like Donald Duck. Well, I have some kind of mental block about this wedging business. Every time we do it, I watch the other people, who are standing right next to me, and yet, I always turn the clay in the wrong direction. Hopefully, in the third week, I'll get it right without having to be corrected. It's getting embarrassing.

At the point when you don’t think your wrists can handle wedging another second, and you ask how long you have to do this, the answer is always the same. Do it another thirty times. So, if you ever find yourself wedging a lump of clay and you’re wondering how long you need to do it, that’s when you do it another thirty times.

After wedging, we split the lump in two with a wiry gadget. It’s really a wire stretched between two small rods of wood, to hold onto. Looks like a cat toy. After the clay’s split, you roll the two halves into balls and you’re ready. Well, you’re ready after you’ve gathered your bucket of water, funky little pottery tools with weird names (every hobby, it seems, once you get deeper into it, seems to have its own funky little names for things), and sponge. For instance, the round, flat thing that sits on the pottery wheel (See? Did you even know something goes “on top” of the pottery wheel? I didn’t.) is called a bat. I don’t know why. It doesn’t look like a bat. And just so you know… the sponge is called a sponge.

Now it’s time to clean your bat. When I first heard this, I thought for sure it would involve the local animal control team, thick gloves and rabies test kit. Wrong again. You turn on your wheel, typically with a foot pedal. I have a heavy foot when it comes to pedals, and this tendency brings me dangerously close to the “clay face” situation described earlier.

Once the wheel’s turning, you wipe your bat with the sponge, until you’ve cleaned all the old clay off it. Wait for it to dry and then slap (literally, with a loud slap) your lump of clay as close to the middle as possible. This procedure seems to often be accompanied, for beginners at least, with the word, “shit” – which here means (for all you Lemony Snicket fans), “Damn, it’s not anywhere near the middle.” Start the wheel going slowly, very slowly, and then squish your clay into your bat, until you’re sure it’s good and stuck. I am quite proficient at this step. You could say, I am an expert at getting my clay good and stuck. I have mastered this. I am very proud.

Now, having mastered something so involved, and on my very first day, you might think I’d just pack it in and be happy with all I’ve learned. But no, I pushed on! (I often surprise myself in this way.)

At this point, I soak the lump with water, using my handy little sponge, wet my hands, and hit the pedal. Full speed, baby! Brown water everywhere! Whoo hoo! What a rush!

Okay, it’s exciting, but it’s not that exciting. This next part is exciting.

Now’s the time when you really get into the good stuff. You’ve got this lump of clay spinning around in front of you. You’re pushed all the way forward so the wheel is right between your legs and you’re leaning way over the thing. This next part is kind of one-part yoga, one-part wrestling, one-part making bread. You’ve got to lean your left elbow on some stationary part of you, like your leg or your hip or something, and you butt the palm and heel of your left hand up against the lump. Your right hand stays in contact with your left, usually with your thumbs linked, and you wrap your right palm around the other side of the clay. With your left palm pushing, really your body pushing and using your left arm as a tool, you squeeze the lump by squeezing your palms together. Magically it seems, the lump of clay straightens and rises in your hands. Then you move your right palm so you’re pushing at it diagonally from the top and down into the wheel, and the clay (magically again, of course) falls back down to a round mound, which sometimes resembles boobs. Well, one boob, anyway. You do this, like, three times. I do it more, ‘cause it’s fun. And water. LOTS of water. My big mistake at the beginning was to let my left palm get too dry and start rubbing the clay instead of letting the clay slide past it. Then the clay wobbles and gets all crooked and that’s just bad. On your way to “face clay.”

So, you’ve done this up and down thing, which, by the way, is called coning up and coning down. (More funky terminology) And then you have to decide what you want to make. Or, like me, you could not really decide and see what happens. I like this better. Especially since I’m new at this and don’t really know what different things will do to the clay.

The first night, we practiced cylinders. You know, that’s pretty much self-explanatory. You try your hardest to make something that looks like a dog food can. It’s harder than it sounds. The clay seems to want to just spread out. Your job is to make it stay upright and straight. I made one cylinder, although it is kind of short. But it’s relatively straight, and I received sufficient praise from Doug and the other students.

Armed with this praise and newly found expert skill in pottery, I slapped the second lump onto my freshly cleaned bat. Slathered on some water, cone up, cone down, cone up, cone down, stuck my thumb in the middle to make the hole, checked the depth, blah, blah, blah, moving right along, gosh this pottery stuff is easy! Okay, nice lump of clay, good hole, maybe a little bit wobbly. Nothing to worry about, I say to myself with complete and utter confidence. Then I stick my right middle finger down into the hole, to pull the wall closer to my left palm, in an effort to widen the hole and WHOA! What the hell happened? Hey, Doug, look… I’ve created a miniature version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I’m a freakin’ pottery genius!

Another thing I’ve recently learned about writing. I don’t need to tell the whole story all at once.

Finally!

I've figured out how to create new posts. Sucks to only comment on my original post. It's like talking to myself, but somehow crazier. So, here's my second post. With any luck, I'll have something to write soon.

Oh, my buddy Errique' has suggested I include my Magnetic Poetry here. Well, here's the first one:

Watch the sky-blue morning snow
beneath a floating winter cake of cloud icing
Together in my warm cocoon we whisper simple summer words
that shine like magic light flowers.

(Words are limited, you know.)