Day 49

I'm back.  Not just physically but back in the game.  you can probably tell by now that I need blogging breaks every now and again, I find I get a little too absorbed in my online world and need to duck my head out for a breather and just be for a while.  Then it's like I slowly crank up the wheels again and get writing again, even then it takes a few days to get my writing mojo back.  I'm cool with this, I don't fight it when it needs to happen, I don't panic, I just take a break.

Time to get going again now though.  I had a heart to heart with the Husband while on our fabulous family holiday in Fiji, and he's like, "if you want to make this writing gig work then go for it, just don't faff around, get writing and get productive".
I used to work for with The Husband and he always needed to give me "pep' talks regularly as in "I know you can use this financial planning model, you're brilliant and smart and gorgeous and my future wife, and the future mother of our 3 beautiful future boys, and if you just actually try to use it instead of thinking you're crap with numbers, then maybe one day I will say yes when you write in the sand "Marry me?" on a secluded beach on the East Cape of New Zealand".  Or words to that effect.

And he's right.  I have heaps of little writing projects on, I love to write and the only reason I'd want to go back to a corporate is so I can wear pencil skirts and tight white shirts with killer heels (and go shopping in my lunch hour).  The things I loved doing when I worked in banking was thinking up ideas and writing about them.  I'd just rather do that about other stuff now rather than banking.
So, here I go again.

As for my Year of Self Improvement, I have a zillion bits and pieces to write about.  So here's Day 49.  (I know, this is the slowest year ever!).  This one is for Rafe who asked me on the way to school this morning - how do you make glass.  I mumbled an answer about melting together lots of "minerals and stuff" and making it REALLY hot.  Umm, and then it becomes glass.  So lets find out how do you really make glass?

The glass making process hasn’t changed much since it was first discovered in ancient times. Glass is still mixed at extreme temperatures and then cooled down into a molten glass that can then be made into several shapes such as glass blowing or placed into pre-designed molds.

Glass is made up of several ingredients but the most important is sand (also known as silica) as well as lime and flux, which is used to prevent oxidation during heating. As a flux, wood ash or sea salt can be used. The important property of a flux is that it is a fixed alkali (whatever!  vague memories of 4th form chemistry). The flux and the silica source are ground into powder and heated at moderate heat for 5 to 6 hours while being stirred. After this, the mixture is pounded and is then ready to become glass. This occurs at a temperature of about 1500 degrees C, which causes the mineral particles to melt together, a process called vitrification. 

In the glass making process, glass can virtually be made into any shape and also be given any color. Color is added by adding another ingredient that will give it the color property, for example adding cobalt will give a blue colour.

There you go!  I actually wasn't that far off.