getting older

It's quiet in my room, and it was slow at work today. I had only one customer to myself, first thing in the morning, and most of the rest of the day was spent bonding with co-workers and blowing the bowls of goblets and throwing them away. There's something in glassblowing where nothing special really has to be said, but sometimes, you'll lend a hand to someone you barely know, or they'll do something a different way from the way you would, and maybe you won't say a word about anything other than the glass, but from that moment on, you know you'll always dig working with that person.

And then sometimes you run into these fantastic egos, and it takes a minute to get used to the person. If you ever do. In glass, there seem to be a few rock stars in every shop. But I'm getting used to it, and learning from them too.

I came home and did the dishes, made dinner, and studied the web stuff for a bit. I was puttering around a few minutes ago, and I wondered if I'll ever get bored of this. I've been here for three weeks, and my mind drifts more than it did in Philadelphia, I work less, stay home more. I study and I think, I spend time looking at things in the museum, I watch better glassblowers, I get thankful that I've made it this far. I smile more. I study videos, objects, books. And I'm happy just like this.

I was always a quiet kid, I always liked a little time alone, but the older I get, the more I appreciate the quiet times between the chaos.

Everything is new

Today, I started work at CMOG. Got the walk-through of helping customers in the morning, and spent most of the afternoon blowing ornaments with another new-ish girl. As I was blowing ornaments, this Venetian glass master named Gianni Toso wandered out of the flameworking class he was teaching to mess with William Gudenrath and heckle me. After watching us go back and forth a bit, he kicked us off the bench to demonstrate a goblet for us.

It was the best first day at work ever. I got messed with by the guy who made this:





Over the spring, I saw a picture of Gianni both in Glass magazine (featured in a photo essay documenting the beginnings to middle of the Studio Glass movement in the United States) and in the CMOG catalog (next to the description of the flameworking class he is currently teaching). In both images, he had the most fantastic old school bushy beard, in real life, he kind of looks like the Kris Kringle of glassworking with a soft Italian accent. I think you have to be a great glassworker to rock a beard like that and not be afraid of setting your face on fire.

I had the last week or so off between jobs, and I landed in Corning a few days early. I spent it jogging, doing yoga videos, stealing wireless signals, catching up on all the TV shows I missed last year online, studying javascript and borrowing books on PHP, hanging with computer nerds, recalling the ability to cook an awesome dinner out of a microwave from a far distant, impoverished and somewhat transient early-twenty-something era, and generally having a good time. Life is really, really good today.