Finalist for Most Fun Cracked Pot Use (a.k.a. Finalist for Blog Entry with Most Verbose Treatment & Smallest Payoff)

Preamble A (skip at will)
I have a big jar I made last year that is possibly the best wax-resist glazing job I’ve ever done. It is about 6.5 inches high, maybe 5 inches diameter, and the sides veer in a bit at the top. I was supposed to make a lid for it and have a fun tea jar but I forget why I didn’t. Anyway it cracked in the glaze firing so the lid would be moot. I have not had the heart to get rid of it because the glazing is so fun; I put wax resist in a big stripe around the middle (this keeps glaze from sticking so after firing the piece will have a patch of natural clay color showing instead of glaze) and glazed the top and bottom with two of my favorite natural colors. I finally decided I would use it as a giant pencil holder someday but it has just sat on my desk for ages.

Preamble B (S.A.W.)
One of the very few things I don’t like about Hal is that he has no cupholders. Also the bucket seats do not lend themselves well to putting a drink in the seat next to me as I go. Cold drinks just get crotched (bad image but fun word and you know what I mean anyway so you can just lump it). Hot drinks must need receive alternate treatment. Ahem. Sometimes I get a huge plastic bowl out of the hatchback which I use for a pottery mold once in a while and put it in the passenger seat and put a drink in the middle – it falls over just as much as ever but at least it doesn’t spill all over the seat when it does. Not a great system.

Epiphany
I don’t know how it dawned on me but last week I was going to go get coffee at Dixon (new mini-Starbucks!) before going to the office (DURING SPRING BREAK FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, but I digress, plus most of you have already heard me bitching about this) since Haley coffee is always closed during breaks (because at times non-student = non-citizen at AU so why have coffee places open when students leave town?!) and of course that meant I was going to have to drive with a drink in the passenger seat (since I was being lazy driving to school)… ANYWAY I had got out that jar from the desk the night before just to admire it and see if I could figure out something to use it for in the kitchen so it would be more visible, and it was sitting on the sideboard… I guess it was Paul S. Clay genes that made me connect the two… I put the pot in the passenger seat – it is heavy enough that it won’t tip and the mouth is perfect to have a coffee sitting in the top at an angle so that even tho the pot is leaning, the coffee can be level. (Which is not a little freaky, when you think about it.) The jar is just a tad bigger than the cup of course so minor spillage usually falls into the jar instead of onto the seat (luckily it’s not cracked badly enough that it gushes out the bottom). Anyway: Eureka^7522149!

As for the truth of the alternate title for this entry… you be the judge… and blame the Sara L. Booth genes.