Arson Is My Middle Name

Since I paid a reasonably large sum of money to enroll myself in Sheridan College’s Flameworking Glass 1, allow me to share with you some of the important lessons I learned tonight in my first class.

1) I do not have the patience required for glassworking.

2) I do not, apparently, have the basic intelligence required for glassworking. Or survival.

3) One of the odd properties of glass is that, when heated to temperatures in excess of one thousand degrees celsius with an oxygen-propane torch, it takes quite a while to cool down.

4) Another of the odd properties of glass is that, should you attempt to touch it before it has fully cooled, you will witness the fascinating phenomenon of molten sand attempting to fuse itself to your flesh.

5) This hurts.

I’m trying to see my pain as educational. My teacher, who is very like Jenna Elfman of ‘Dharma and Greg’ fame, and my nine classmates, who are very like a bunch of bored retirees with money to burn, certainly found it educational. They learned that not only am I a total idiot, but I possess an enviable vocabulary of epithets and expletives. And a great set of lungs.

The best part is, I did it TWICE. Once is excusable. It’s my first time working in this medium, I’m young and inexperienced, and our instructor failed to expressly warn us against touching the glass after heating it. But during cleanup I nonchalantly hoisted a bundle of rods, one of which I had just finished heating, and burned the living daylights out of my other hand.

Actually, I take that back. The BEST part was my brain, trying feebly to wrestle my screaming nervous system to the ground by reasoning that if the glass fused permanently to the bone, I could at least have it sharpened to a razor-edged blade and turn vigilante. I actually had a brief vision of myself as the ill-conceived superhero “Glass Justice”, striking down evil on the streets, screaming “Who wants some? Do YOU want some?” at various villains. Some coping mechanism, eh?

Sigh. At least I didn’t sign up for glassblowing. Otherwise odds are extremely good that I would have tripped over my shoelaces and plunged headfirst into the kiln. I would have met my end like the bad witch in Hansel and Gretel. As it is, I now resemble another well-loved mythical character from a story not at all suitable for children to read. Oh, my poor bandaged mitts.

If I’m feeling super masochistic, I’ll post an image of the broken pieces of scrap I managed to manufacture today on this page tomorrow morning.

[Note! This entire entry was typed with my pencil/mouth wand. A small taste of what work tomorrow will be like. FYI, tastes kinda like lead.]

Tags: burning, Dharma & Greg, epithets, flameworking, glass, Glass Justice, Hansel & Gretel, hurts, impatience, Jenna Elfman, molten, nervous system, screaming, sheridan college, superhero, torch, villains

Salty Goodness

Isak Dinesen once wrote, “The cure for anything is saltwater–sweat, tears, or the sea.” I have rarely read anything so simple and true. The last few weeks for me have been mighty salty.

I spent the bulk of mid-July camped stodgily on my sofa, fuelling a boom in the logging industry by soaking through many and several boxes of Kleenex (and when those ran out, rolls of Cottonelle). Poster girl for the new puffy, runny chic. Very attractive.

After a few days, I decided that I’d had enough of making my own water and got a hankering for someone else’s, so I relocated to the lakeshore. Friend and skipper, Jana offered the solace of her big beautiful sailboat, the Ciaccona. I spent a good deal of time there, musing on the aft deck with Jana about the opposite sex, listening to her daughters play, watching the sun play over the waves and looking terribly glum. I tied and untied reef knots, drank a lot of wine, and pondered the demented, mutated fish passing in the soupy darkness beneath our bow. It was soothing. The freakish exertion of cycling an hour there and back was a lot less soothing, raising me to new heights of salty goodness. So I joined a gym, where I have been dutifully sweating ever since.

This week I had the brilliant idea of finding a recreational sport that would allow me to mingle my two favourite activities of late: sweating and crying. Motorcycling! My feverish attraction to two-wheeled vehicles becomes completely irrational when you strap a motor under the seat. Since I locomote around Toronto on a wing, a prayer, and a hot pink bicycle, I decided I have the necessary combination of bravado, idiocy and good balance to make me an excellent candidate for initiation into the seedy underworld of riding hogs.

In a two-day, aptly named ‘crash course”, I learned how to gear shift, not stall, speed into curves, not stall, brake in curves, not stall, emergency stop at speed, and not stall. I also learned how to wring the throttle and make absurd amounts of noise and toxic blue smoke billow forth from my puny two-stroke dirtbike. Never before have I killed the environment so dead. After twenty sweltering hours on the tarmac at Sheridan College, my instructors ManyHat John and BigMan Terence had taught me as much as my clutch-blistered palms and gas-tank-bruised knees could learn. I was soaked from the rain and befreckled from the sun. As John watched me navigate my last practice curve, shifting from first into second with all the mechanical delicacy and fine motor skill of a drunk, rage-filled Bruce Banner, a tear came to his eye. He walked over, brushed past me, and pressed something cottony and damp into my hand. It was his cherished Bad Boys II hat, a sign of his confidence and pride. I had not stalled. It was time to take the MTO test.

My test taker was a solid, gruff man named Doug, who bore a striking resemblance to Maurice from the TV show “Northern Exposure”. He sized me up, spat a slow loogie onto the shimmering pavement that evaporated into repugnant salivary mist well before it hit the ground, and told me to initiate slow-speed maneuvers. I sailed through all five sections of the test with nary a stall, although I nearly failed emergency braking because I couldn’t bring myself to rev up to the necessary speed while zooming towards Terence’s testicles riding on 300lb of overheated, stressed steel. I am fairly certain that Doug only looked up from his clipboard once. Nevertheless, I passed. I am now the proud owner of a license to smear my delicate jaw structure and expensive orthodontistry all over the highways and byways of Ontario. Mama just couldn’t be prouder.

Tags: bicycles, motorcycles, saltwater, sheridan college