Say What?

I came home from work last week to find our newly ordered glassblowing pipes waiting by our front door. Exciting! We were able to try them out Thursday afternoon and I can happily say that we both really like them. These feel so nice in our hands as they're not quite as heavy as what we're used to using with Foci's shop-pipes. We ordered two but I think ideally we'd like to have three to be able to keep the rotation of pipes going smoothly between us while we're working. This will suffice for now though. I can't wait to get back in the studio and use them later this week. Foci has a new 800 pound crucible furnace that recently went online. It's being referred to as a new heart for the studio because that's exactly what it is. There hasn't been a steady supply of molten glass to draw from for the past several months because of some breakdowns between the studio's two main furnaces but with this new addition, that should no longer be a problem....

We had a nice time at Foci on Friday. We didn't push the limits of our abilities, we just had fun working on the skills we've acquired to this point. Some days it feels like I'm fighting the glass rather than working with it but not last Friday. It was a day of harmony between the glass and me. I like that. While I was there, I was thinking of how the original plan was to wait until we're both retired before we began to dabble in glassblowing. I'm glad we decided to jump in when we did and I'm excited to begin pushing our limits more and getting better. We ordered our first two glassblowing pipes last week and hope to have them with us when we return to the studio on Thursday. Fun! Foci has shop tools that everybody is welcome to use and they're just fine for where we're at but still, it will be nice to have our own pipes to work with especially during those times of the year when there are more illnesses present. Glassblowing tools don't come chea...

My most recent upload to Instagram . I'm onekgguy, meet me there! David Baerwald is a singer-songwriter whose music has been a very big part of the soundtrack to my life for the last 25 years. His songs resonate with me in ways that only the music of a few other artists can. The melodies behind the words are always strong and satisfying but it's his lyrics that draw me in and beg to paint a picture in my head each time I hear them. His music runs the gamut from soft acoustic offerings such as Hello Mary to hard-edged, anger-fueled tracks like The Got No Shotgun Hydrahead Octopus Blues . In the early days of my online experience I stumbled onto a website dedicated to David . The site was put together by a fan and came complete with a message board where others could join in and offer their view on whatever topic was being kicked around. More often than not the subjects were political in nature. Those were the days when I was lost in a world of ill-conceived and not to...

I was on the elliptical the other morning contemplating my struggle with parts of the Old Testament that I can't seem to reconcile from my puny human perspective. I'm not one to give up easily. I understand that we live in a much different time from when Moses penned much of the square peg that I'm trying to fit into the round hole. The part that is troubling to me is that we're taught in the church that God's word is the same then as it is now. Isaiah 40:8 says, "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever." I want to believe that. Returning to one of the verses that troubles me so much:  Deuteronomy 22, verses 28-29 . People are quick to discount the inhumanness of this by saying that God gave these instructions to Moses because of the world in which the people lived at the time. It would be better for the woman in this case to live with her rapist than to fend for herself in a society that looked down upon such victims....