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.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
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.
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)
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)
Friday, January 21, 2005
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.
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.
Friday, January 07, 2005
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.)
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.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)