Pottery & Excessive Water Consumption

Last night Mindy and I went to our awesome pottery class where we took the cute little pots (yes, the very ones in the picture you see) and learned to trim them.  I think my pots had dried a little too much and so it was a little tricky, and I was inhaling clay dust...which, by the way, is not good for you.  We learned how to do some final shaping, create a bottom for our pots, create little grooves around the outside of the pot - if we so desired - and do some final smoothing and what not.  Two of my pots turned out pretty good if you ask me, and one was quite lopsided...what do you expect from a beginner!  I was quite proud of my trimming accomplishments! :) 


Aren't they cuuuute!!


So after she showed us how to trim, she then started showing us how to make a bowl.  Well, by the time I finished trimming to my satisfaction there was only about a half hour left for me to attempt a bowl. On top of that, by the time I got to it I couldn't remember the steps to making a bowl anyway!


So I grabbed the clay and threw it down and started to try and center it on to the wheel and I think that because I was feeling rushed and wanted my bowl to work out so badly that I just couldn't get my clay to center!  It was waaay off, and when it gets way off it kind of pushes you around. The only analogy I can think of for you(though its quite extreme) would be like trying to steady a small jack hammer or something.  So I ended up with clay and water spinning everywhere and had a giant pile of wet sloppy mud in front of me!  I'll admit, I was a little sad, but had enjoyed trimming and working on my other projects so much that it really wasn't that big of a deal. Good news though...the teacher said that we could do whatever we wanted next week!  I think I would have been more sad if I didn't get another chance at making a bowl!  So that made me very happy!  So look forward to my blog next week about my successfully developed bowl making skills! :) Along with some pictures to prove my natural talent! (If I remember to take pictures! :-/ )


Thats all for you about my pottery class...


You are probably wondering what I meant, in my title, by excessive water consumption.  Well...here is story number two for the day! My co-worker Amie and I decided, today, that we were going to try to start drinking the right amount of water each day.  It all kind of started with somewhat of a water guzzling challenge around 9:00 where we both drank our mostly full water bottles in 2 minutes! (2 minutes is not a lot of time to drink about 20 ounces...just so you are aware.)


After this little challenge we looked up how much water a person should have in a day and found that women should have somewhere around 2 to 2.2 liters of water and men should have 3!  Well, on our water bottles it said 1pt 7.7oz.  2 liters is around 64 oz or something (I think).  For some strange reason, neither of us paid any attention to the 1pt part of the label and we were both convinced that our bottles were 7.7 oz!  Therefore we had it in our heads that we would have to drink 8 water bottles a day in order to get our required, daily water consumption!!


The plan was to drink 1 bottle every 2 hours...and mind you, we kept accidentally procrastinating and so we would guzzle our water down the last 10 minutes of our 2 hour goal.  I think we both went to the bathroom once every hour today!


Finally with the help of another co-worker it was pointed out to us that our water bottles were actually 23oz, NOT 7.7 and that we only had to drink about 3 of those a day to get our daily amount.  At that point we were both suffering from 'water up to your eyeballs' syndrome and side aches!  Ha ha! I thought it seemed extreme!  I just kept thinking to myself..."if this is how much water a person is supposed to drink a day, then there is a very small percentage in the world of fully hydrated people!  :)


Now drinking the correct amount of water seems like no problem at all!