where were u durning rita?

it is friday and we are here in the woodlands waiting for rita now.

we have had sunny -very- hot weather all week - up till about 2:30 pm and now we are seeing clouds move in and wind pick up to occasional gusts of about 20mph.

paul is here. it took him 3-4 hours in the middle of the night thursday to get here (60 miles).
marcus et al went arlington tx. it took them 17 hours to get there (200 miles). there is no gas anywhere so we are not driving our cars for now to conserve what we have. the kroger shelves are just bare in some areas - peanut butter, charcoal, water, canned meat, bread, milk, paper goods. (there is plenty of salad dressing and bbq sauce tho.) many people here (100 miles from the coast) left to go to waco, college station, austin or dallas. people are traumatized by the sensational news coverage on cnn. will it BE LIKE KATRINA?... I'm glad people in galveston and along galveston bay and many low lying bayous and rivers are able to leave and go some place safe.

looks like we will at least get rain and tropical storm force wind from late today (friday) getting steadily worse until about noon saturday then tapering off.

to prepare, we took all our yard stuff inside - chairs potted plants and bird feeders etc. and we took a bike ride and filled all the containers we could find with water. i'm sure we'll be fine.

i hope you all are safe too.

feet of clay

i have started making things in my clay class which is very fun. we started doing pinch construction and then we did coil pots and now we are trying to make slab plates. platters and bowls. here is a photo of my foot of clay.

and here is a photo of a start of a plate - still wet clay here.
 top 
 and bottom.

Mo

I am taking ceramics one at Montgomery College CE (continuing education). My teacher is Robby Wood. The class is just getting started. I am going to build a bunch of pinch pot animal creatures to try glazes out on. and possibly some coil pottery too. Saturday i am going shopping for clay. for now we are using the free remixed clay from the college. it is cool. not as elastic but it works and its the right price. i also bought what Texas Art in clear lake had sandy buff w/grog. so i plan to try to make some whistles with that and some texture stamps too. yahoo.


I also finished up 3 watercolors today. here are pictures.
 
 


I did a brick workout for my tri in october. Bike 16, run 3. I run very slowly. It is important to have rest days to avoid injury.