dog days and sweat

I've not been making much progress on the diagrams for the A&M job, the small animal hospital, even though I've been liberally applying the I-don't-care tool, taking out lines and rearranging things to make it easier. The glass is due to be delivered this week so I'll have plenty of time to get the one I've been working on finished. Friday and Saturday and Sunday morning we worked over at the shop clearing out the bay that we have been using to store some stuff like lumber and florescent light fixtures and bulbs from the old shop in the city, moved the kiln out, and got it swept of cobwebs from all the daddy long legs that seem to think our shop is a great place to live and shop-vacced of dirt and leaves and sawdust while Marc built two racks to hold the glass while we work on it. We need to move the big work table in there as well. Because these panels are so big and heavy, we're having to work in the small bay of the shop instead of the large bay. I could explain why but it's not important. Well, not important to you, no need to understand all the minute details of working with glass panels too big and heavy for us to easily lift and move. Long about noon every day, we were drenched, hot, and tired. There is no shade over there. Did I mention we're in the Dog Days?

Speaking of August and the Dog Days, I checked the 10 day forecast last week which had us in triple digits this week and today the 10 day forecast gives us high 90s for next week but by the week of the 22^nd maybe low 90s and maybe even high 80s. And I swear, the past few mornings, while it is still getting up to high 90s during the day, felt almost as if...dare I say it? Dare I tempt the gods? Um, best not. Regardless, whatever the forecast says, and it depends on which weather service you check, the rest of this week is supposed to get up to 100˚ and already the heat index today is 111˚.

And speaking of the kiln I know, we weren't speaking of the kiln, the new controller board did not fix the kiln. It won't come on with the old board or the new one. Marc did, however, plug in the old kiln, the one we haven't used in probably 10 years or more and hasn't even been turned on for at least 5 (we had loaned it to my sister and her husband and after his death we got it back) and it came on and he ran a short firing program and it seemed to function well so we're doing a test firing today, one of the bark molds. Sort of annoying, all these months I could have been getting some pieces made if we had just turned to the old kiln right away.

And speaking of the kiln again and the shop in general, our friend and fellow glass artist has been given a certified letter from his landlord terminating his occupancy and he has to vacate his studio and the property by mid-October. He's been at that location for 40 years, bought and moved a small house onto the back of the property, and easily has three times the amount of crap and equipment that we do. He has no idea what he is going to do, where he is going to go, what he is going to do about his house, but he is selling off all the stained glass stuff and lots of other things he has accumulated. He wants to take a year off. He wants to move out of the city. He will be bringing his kilns and glass and tools and cold working equipment and storage units, what he decides to keep or what we want, out here where we will have full use of whatever we want while he gets his life settled again. So, of course, all this will be going on while we are working on this stupid job.