Adding to My List

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.

Lakeville, where we live, typically seal-coats the city streets every 7 years with a combination of what looks like a sticky sprayed on tar which is covered over with small stone granules. My curiosity was piqued the other morning by the sound of something outside that was gradually getting closer. It was the occasional loud foghorn moaning sound that mostly had me wondering what it could be. I found this. It was making spot repairs to the street.

I finished the first of two panels that I'm doing for friends of ours who moved to Montana last year. I believe they're going to place them in some double doors that lead to their bedroom. They'll be in town in two weeks so I've been pressing to have them done in time for them to take them back with them.

Tammy came up with the overall design and I added a few tweaks. Paul and Kate gave us some suggested colors to work with and I tried to balance them throughout the piece. I think it will look nice when both panels are side by side in their final setting.

The latest phone game we're playing is Ruzzle. It's fun—give it a try. I'm getting a little burned out on Wordfeud and Draw Something so a change is nice.

A friend at work recently did a project with his son where they launched a weather balloon with an attached camera to photograph its journey. He estimates it reached an altitude of around 90,000 feet or more (27,400 meters) before the balloon burst and floated back to earth with a parachute. He got some incredible images. Ben followed the basic outlines of a plan some students from MIT used. There's so much to consider and they've done a good job of taking in all of those considerations and outlining solutions that can reasonably be duplicated.

I happened to think of Ben's project when I came across a video online a few nights ago. It got me thinking how if I had a boy, I'd love to do the same thing with him or even just to do it for my own amusement. Oh, a daughter would be great to experience this with too but I did try the Estes rocket thing with Rachel and her friend Camille years ago. I'm afraid it never quite lived up to expectations for them.

If nothing else, this project sounds like another thing to add to my to-do list for when I'm retired. That list is growing nicely.