scruffy looking potters

(These are the finished bowls pictured below, which were just prior to glazing and glaze firing to about 2200 degrees. That is what is so sweet about pottery: the transformation of the catepillar to the butterfly!)

So I am at the busy grocery store mid-day buying cat food and go to the ten and under line. There is this seedy looking dude sort of near the line, looking at Soap Opera magazines and eating an apple. I wait for him to go ahead, and tell myself ‘hey, its Ithaca, he may be a particle physicist, and dang, you look pretty seedy yourself, Gary’. Well, I do sometimes, after all, I am an artist. So the guy goes to the checkout lady and holds out the finished apple core in one hand and a dollar in the other and says "I want to pay for my apple" but the lady says "I have to weigh it, but I can’t weigh that!" And it goes back and forth, until finally the seedy guy shrugs andwanders off.
Then last night the missus and I go out to a massive costume party, and I went dressed as a scruffy potter. Well, we had forgotten the costume part, and I was less scruffy than most of the day, having put on a clean flannel shirt. I can dress up nicely, and once or twice a year I do, but anyway, there was this guy at this party dressed like a homeless teenager, although my wife, who worked with him once, says he always looks like that, no costume needed. The irony? HE IS A PARTICLE PHYSICIST. OK, like I was sayin’.....