dawn, teaching, and a birthday

I'm up early this morning, woke at 5 AM when the cat wanted out. How does she do that? It's always around 5 AM when she wants out. Usually I can go back to sleep but not this morning. I laid in bed for nearly an hour and then just got up. That may not seem very early to many of you but I don't normally wake up til around 7 or 7:30 and sometimes sleep til 8 AM.

The nice thing about getting up when it's still dark is seeing the sunrise. Sitting here I am facing east looking out the windows and I have a nice view across the yard and the agricultural field. The not so nice thing is that I'm facing east and once the sun pops up this time of year, it shines right in my face over the top of my computer. The big tallow in the little back yard will block it out but I have to constantly shift my position as the sun rises past one big branch or another. Once the trees leaf out it's not so much of a problem.

Today is the last full day before we leave to drive to Austin for a 5 day workshop. We're teaching at Helios Kiln Glass Studio and will have 8 students. We like teaching there. It's a small place but Paul and Karen are such wonderful hosts and good friends and it's been a couple of years since we have seen them. Our students will be making a small decorated cup in the pate de verre lost wax casting technique. If you want to know more about that process you can read about it here.

Emma the cat is going to be left behind, housebound for the week, with my sister coming over every day to check on her. We always took her to our daughter's house before but in the two years since we went out of town to teach, they acquired a dog and two cats of their own.

I made two new cups (4" x 4" x 2") to go with the two I already had to show as examples for the students. I intended to document the process to show them in pictures what they would be doing before I just turned them loose but that was only partially successful. I tend to get absorbed in what I am doing so there are some gaps in the photos. Oh well. It will be better than nothing.

I also wanted to mention that it rained yesterday! A lot of rain for a long time. Lightning and thunder kind of rain. After it passed through there was water in the ditch and standing in low spots in the yard and on our way in to the city yesterday we passed the little creek that had gone dry over the summer and it has water in it again. I don't know how this affects the drought. We've been getting some fairly regular rain but they are still predicting drought conditions for this year. I guess we'll see how the summer goes.

Well, the male cardinals are singing their love songs and the females are chirping back at them and the wren is screeching at the cat and it's full blown day and the sun is shining in my eyes.

Oh, and today is my third blog birthday.