Let July Begin!

It's a coolish and rainy morning. I have been up for an hour writing, and the rest of the house slumbers on--even Dave. I'm glad the weather is inclement today as yesterday it was so beautiful I ended up playing hooky with the family and heading out to the Lake and then on to dinner at the East Shore Smokehouse.

Yesterday was a challenging day in the Atlanta studio as the crucible in the glass furnace finally gave up the ghost and cracked, spilling molten glass into the bottom of the furnace. The floor of the furnace is made from soft firebrick and it took the glass almost no time to eat right through it and start pouring out onto the cement floor of the hotshop. I have yet to see the gruesome photos of the carnage, but I did get a wake-up call first thing with a description of the damage. Tadashi has the weekend off which left Domenick on his own to deal with it (and Judy to deal with the people scheduled for dates). All dates in the hotshop for the weekend, of course, had to be rescheduled or refunded (at the participants' option). Fortunately the furnace was designed to handle this kind of failure as it has an inexpensive floor that is a separate piece from the rest of the furnace, attached with a couple of latches to the sides. Domenick even thinks he can replace the firebrick in the floor himself this evening and have the furnace up and running (with another crucible) by tomorrow. I hope he can as the timing--4th of July holiday coming up, Dee leaving for here, etc., couldn't be worse.

Now I need coffee. I had a hard time sleeping all night, and though I felt impelled to get up and write this morning, I can barely keep my eyes open.