Allegheny Echoes and Home Again

60 this morning, after a night of torrential, intermittent rain. 

I am home! A week away, and a week to prepare to be gone pretty much absorbed this month. 

But all is well. My weeklong writing workshop for Allegheny Echoes went great; 15 students, 9 of them teens. We had a good time and did a lot of writing.

 I was onstage for the first time in 3 years and while that went well too, it confirmed my decision to never perform again. The stress just isn't worth it. But the concert was nothing short of amazing. Such talent.

I stayed at the old camp on the Greenbrier River again. It was so good to be with friends, talk about books and music and history and just, well, talk. 

We even had a dog at camp and she visited the writing class one day. She was quite the star!

One of the best things of the week was getting to meet and listen to Jerry O'Sullivan play the Irish bagpipes and discuss the link between Irish and Ulster Scots music and the music of the Appalachian region,  specifically West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. I was lucky enough to have lunch with him and really enjoyed that special time. And what a musician!

I worked myself silly trying to get everything in good shape before I left,  but can one ever really get it perfect? I weeded, stringtrimmed, mulched,watered and fretted. And of course, cleaned, did all the laundry i could, and made sure Larry would have easy to fix food on hand. All that in addition to getting all my workshop plans in place, keeping the Master Writer informed and prepared for her day with us, printing handouts, etc, etc. 

I got home yesterday happy and exhausted. Today has been spent just getting unpacked etc. While I was gone Larry got to work on the bathroom renovation we have been planning. He got most of it done, but as you can imagine I had plenty of cleanup to do. He also got his new-to-us pickup truck, so he was a happy man when I arrived.

Now we just need to get the gardens weeded.. again. All the rain in the past week sure brought them on, and Larry has little time to do all that needed to be done, so that's on the list for this week.

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