Foothills Writers' Guild Workshop and owls?

This weekend was the annual Foothills Writers' Guild workshop. Keynote speaker Friday night was Richard Speight and Saturday lunch was Edie Melson. Guest speakers included Pam Zollman (Children's author), Jill Jones (Therapist who uses poetry in her therapy), Christopher Branch (musician), and Jane Freidman was supposed to be there but apparently there was a problem with her flight on Thursday so she didn't get to make it this time (she's pretty awesome as she speaks about ways to market and network on the internet). So what do owls have to do with the Foothills Writers' Guild workshop?

We have owls on our property and I've heard them many times "hoot-hoot-hooting" but I've never seen them. The kids have made claims of seeing them before. When I was putting my stuff in my car Saturday morning to head to Anderson University (the place where we hold our conference every year), I heard several owls. Didn't really think about it until I was near the end of the driveway and one flew over my car. I looked to my passenger seat to get my camera and take a picture but had forgotten my camera. I turned my car around and came back to get it. By time I came outside, the owl had flown to a different tree. I saw him and snapped the following picture of him: . Glory be. My first owl. After I snapped a second picture of him, he flew to another tree and lo and behold, a second owl flew up to the same area he was. They hoot-hoot-hooted at each for like 2 seconds and then they squawked like crazy birds. The second one flew away from the first one but in the same tree, just a couple of branches over.

Then the first one took off and flew to a tree closer to my driveway; the second one followed and I tried snapping a picture of the two of them on the same branch in that tree but I wasn't steady enough. While tryng to snap the two together, I heard another one to the side and glanced over and sure enough, a third one had flown into a tree but he was hidden; I didn't get to see him.

So my excursion to participate in the Foothills Writers' Guild workshop this past weekend was well worth getting up earlier than I'm used to as I got to finally see the owls on our property.

The workshops was awesome too. I sat in Richard's, Edie's and Pam's classes and then during Pam's second workshop, I wrangled my adopted daughter who is a student at AU to help me practice my workshop presentation I'll be doing at the homeschool conferences. She brought her boyfriend so I got to do it for an audience of 1 plus her since she had already done part of my presentation before (she's played the game before). After we had our refreshment break, they called some more friends in (four young ladies), and so I did my workshop presentation again for them. I found out that I was incorrect in my "Road Trip" game as there are possibly many more routes than the eight I had originally figured. Now I need to go through the game again and come up with all the possible ways to make it across the United States without entering any state more than once. Thanks to Jess and Vincent and all the young ladies at AU for helping me out.

So now you have it - Foothills Writers' Guild workshop and owls! - E :)