Hard Clay

When I went into my studio on Wednesday, hard clay greeted me.  I really need a damp box or need to figure out a way to retrofit the area where I keep my clay by lining the shelves with some heavy plastic or some other system to keep clay from drying out.  Heat and low humidity are the challenge for Colorado potters.  My friend, Mary Cay, uses an old Fridge as her damp box.  She removed the motor and just kept the shell which works like a charm.  I’m sure I could find one on Craigslist, but I’m not sure where I’d put it.  Anyway, I added warm water to the bags of clay and have been rotating the bags in an attempt to soften the clay so that I can work with it.

Mini bottle

I did find a little bit of soft clay and basically just played around.  In fact, I’m not sure I kept more than 2 pieces – everything else was recycled.

Meanwhile, I’ve become a political junkie.  On the one hand it’s sort of toxic, but on the other, I think this year is one of the most important elections of our times and think it’s important to have as much information as possible.  I’ve watched most of the speeches at the RNC this past week, to balance the ones from the week prior at the DNC.  I’m a left leaning democrat and also in the midst of some great debates with folks on the other side of the political fence – so I have to be able to rebut and defend my position.

I was tagged by Patricia last week, yesterday by Judi, today by Mak, and again by Anne with the same meme – I’m taking some liberties and making this a 4fer1.

Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.

2. Post the rules on your blog. (this is what you’re now reading.)

3. Write 6 random things about yourself (see below).

4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them. (This is only a game.)

5. Let each person know they have been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.

6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six Random Things About Me:

I’m not sure there’s much you don’t know about me since I tend to spill all the beans all the time, but I’ll give it a shot…

1. As an army brat, I lived in Germany for 6 years of my life as a youth and I graduated from Patch American High School – a DoDDs school,  in Stuttgart Germany in 1984.
2. I met my husband in high school when I was in 10th grade in 1982.  He was a junior and after he graduated in 1983, we continued our relationship long distance for 4 years before finally deciding we had better live in the same town if we were going to make it work long term.  We have been married since 1989 – almost 20 years.
3. I took a year off between high school and college and moved to Waynesboro, PA to live with my mom and worked as a waitress at Pizza Hut.  That experience convinced me to do something else.
4. I applied to a few schools and settled on the American College in Paris now known as the American University of Paris where I spent 2 years.  This is about as far removed from Waynesboro culturally, linguistically, politically, and diversity wise that I could imagine at the time.  Despite the name, AUP is an international school with students all over the world, US, Europe, Middle East, Africa – you name it.  Quite an eye opener.
5. I didn’t really do well as a business major, but I sure as heck had a great life education living in a foreign country where I had to find a place to live, apply for a carte de sejours (residency permit), navigate the transit system, negotiate getting utilities turned on (that was a barrel of monkies dealing with indifferent French utility clerks), grocery shop, all in French with only 2 years of high school French under my belt.
6. I lived on $350.00 a month – but this was an era where the $ was 1 to 10 Francs and my standard of living was considerably less.
7. I discovered art after taking a life drawing class as an elective at Parson’s School of Design, which also had a campus in Paris and a reciprocal agreement with ACP, which forever changed my life.  Business administration lost its appeal and I moved back to the US to pursue an art education.
8. At one time I was fluent in both German and French – but now, I can only really speak either language after being plied with a couple of libations.

Couldn’t stop at 6….

I’m going to be a party pooper at this point – and am not tagging anyone else since I noticed that many blogs I read have already been tagged.  Otherwise, I’d have to do some gorrilla tagging on unknown blogs and I’m not sure that would be appreciated.

That’s it for today,

~Cynthia