Exploding Glass

My old PCV neighbor, Erick, emailed me yesterday. It was just a short line: "Hey Lizzy, I was driving down the road with my mind wandering and I remembered the time when you and I almost lost our eyes burning your trash :)."

I thought the incident he reminded me of could only happen via Peace Corps experience. The first week I moved to my site, Erick came up to stay with me and teach me how to live like a PCV, which involved learning how to burn my trash. There was a fire pit in my side yard where you burn burnable trash...things that are not burnable include glass and metal and things that are wet. Those you dump down the toilet.

Well, unbeknowest to me, there was a glass honey jar in my pit, dumped there by the volunteer prior to me. About halfway through the trash-burning lesson, the honey jar violently exploded sending white-hot glass shards flying through my lawn and hitting both Erick and I in the face. Erick got hit worse than I did and apparently still has a scar under his right eye.

Well, this afternoon, I was burning a candle in a glass jar. Well, sort of burning. The wick had burnt out, but the candle still had lots of scented wax in it, so I was dropping matches in the bottom of the jar and letting them melt the wax so the scent would still permeate the air (covering the cat poo smell). Well...apparently, that's not always a good idea because about 20 minutes into my venture, the glass candle jar got to hot from the concentrated flames and shattered across my desk sending tiny glass shards flying. I cut my hands a little, but definitely learned my lesson. Once more, glass and fire don't mix.