Brontosaurus!

You guys will never believe what happened at work today!  I was sitting at my desk working sooo hard and all the sudden this Brontosaurus came walking down the road!!!  I couldn't believe it!  Some guy had tamed it and was using it to help with some of the construction going on across the street from us!  As you can see, I got a picture and everything!!!  And you thought dinosaurs didn't exist!!! Ha ha ha! Well you were wrong!!

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!

Planning

Sorry blog, I neglected you for a few days!  My sister Tricia came down and hung out with me all day on Saturday.  We had a really great time!  We went to eat, hung out at my house and talked and went to go see Sherlock Holmes, the second time for both of us.  (We tried to see The Avatar or When in Rome, but they were both almost sold out, and I am not a happy front row sitter!)  Remember when you were little and you thought the front row was the most awesome place to sit?!  I do...Anyway...I actually really liked Sherlock Holmes the second time around!  It was cool to know what to look for. And instead of guessing what was going to happen I found myself paying closer attention to other details that I would never have pick out the first time around.

Enough about that...part of our time was spent talking about what we need to do, places I can play and what not.  So we made a list and we are working on getting a hold of some places to see what I have to do to play. 

I was thinking that I would like to open shows and things like that, but Tricia was thinking more along the lines of Colleges and city/county fairs, you know...summerfest, peach days, rasberry days, Farmington Days...stuff like that.  Honestly, I don't care where I play, I just want to play for people!  I really do have a passion for performing!  But all of the foot work and promoting sure slows me down. And in all honesty it discourages me.  But I am going to keep trudging forward with this if it is one tiny step at a time!

Hello friends that read my blog!  I hope you are all doing well!  I have great news!  As you probably saw on facebook or twitter or my website, I wrote a new song!  I always get very excited about new songs.  Well I finished it up yesterday and now I am just working on making it sound solid.  I am putting a little guitar solo-ish part in it and I am going to have to really get it down and get comfortable playing it before I show it off to anyone.  Still don't know what I will call it, and I am not ready to tell the world what it is about yet.  So, I apologize for leaving you in suspense.

So this is random...but...I am really bugged because I don't have spell check on my blog anymore!  I don't know what happened!  I think I downloaded the new version and it just doesn't have spell check on it now. So sorry if you see spelling errors! Grrr!!

Well, I don't have any fun plans for the weekend yet...I am sure Mindy (my roommate) and I will figure something out.  We usually end up reverting to dancing (West Coast, or Lindy)  Maybe we will go se When in Rome or something.  I have been wanting to see that.  I do need to get some press kit type stuff together sometime this weekend to start sending to different Venues.  I have a friend working on my bio right now.  One little step at a time right...? :)

Good things happen during hard times

Yesterday was a little rough for me.  I have just had a lot of things on my plate to deal with and I think they all combined together yesterday and attacked! Fact of life...everyone has hard times. However, I have good news! Even when you have hard days, good things CAN still happen in the midst of your trials!

So here are the good things!  My car is finally all fixed and so happy to be back with me!  I missed driving it soooo much!  So I was very excited about that.  My mom brought it back to me after I got off work so I got to go to dinner with her which was very good.  Moms always know the right things to say, at least my mom seems to!

Then I went home, picked up my roommate and we headed off to our first pottery class!  I AM IN LOVE WITH THROWING POTTERY!  I made 3 successful cylinders!!  It was great!  I love messing around with the clay and spinning it threw my hands and shaping it!  It is so cool! 2 hours might not be enough time each week!  It went by really fast!  I did get a sore on my hand from the grainy clay, but it was totally worth it!  I just hope it doesn't still hurt by next Tuesday!  Our teacher is going to show us how to make plates and bowls and pots!  It is going to be so great!

I learned another Muse song on my guitar.  It is hard to play Muse songs acoustic because you just can't seem to get the full effect!  They are just way too amazing.  But I think this one will be a good one once I have it down!  The song I decided to learn is called Falling Down off the Showbiz album.  It is slow and takes a lot of air, so I am going to have to work on it for a bit before I will be covering it at a show.  Ha!  Mabye I will have it down by the time I get another gig!  Just keep hanging in there with me!

I get my car back!

I would just like to announce that I am getting my car back today!!!  I think that everything is finally fixed!!  And I am starting my wheel throwing pottery class today.  So there you go!  Two good things happening! And that is really all I have for you! 

I am trying to find places to perform, but it is a slow process, so bear with me! :)  Let's keep our fingers crossed that by April or May I am starting to play pretty steady.

Skiing, Guitars and Pottery!

Sadly, I have neglected the world of skiing for a very long time.  My excuses? 1. too expensive, 2. I didn't have people to go with like I used to, and 3. it had been so long I actually thought I didn't really mind not going anymore! Sad, I know!! Don't worry! Those feelings were taken care of this weekend!

I went to Solitude with my friend Scott on Saturday and it was so much fun!  I forgot how much I enjoy being up on the mountain!  It was beautiful!  Blue skies, no wind!  It was a little crunchy/icy in some places, but we still just messed around and had a good time.  Scott is a really great skiier, so he was totally taking it easy and I was doing  my best to keep up to his easy!  :)  Ha!  It was really fun to go with someone who knows their way around.  Scott took me on some really cool runs through the trees and gave me some good pointers about my turns and stuff.  I felt very accomplished by the end of the trip! :)  So now all I want to do is go again!! 

On our way back from skiing we stopped at a great little guitar shop called, Acoustic Music, and I fell in love with a few Taylors.  Now I am asking myself..."am I a Taylor kind of girl?"  I almost feel like I am cheating on my Martin or something.  But they sounded really great!  And played great too!  I guess we shall see what happens...you might see me bustin it out on a Taylor one of these days!

One last thing for this blog entry today.  MY POTTERY CLASS STARTS TOMORROW!!  I am super excited!!  It is the class where you use a wheel!  My roommate Mindy is taking it with me.  I am going to make all kinds of fancy stuff!  It will be great!! :)  I'll make sure to tell you all about it!