And the hits keep coming

I’m still taking the bead class, and still liking it. I’ve purchased the bare necessities to start practicing at home, and I’ve signed up for the second installment. I’ve gotten better at it, and while I don’t pretend to possess any true talent, I think I have some good ideas. This last lesson we played with millefiori accents and with accent rods for making patterns on the beads. I made fewer beads this week, and spent more time actually playing with the molten glass, getting a feel for consistency and what it will and will not allow you to do. Frankly, the beads I made this week are ugly, but it’s because I over worked them trying to get the feel for the techniques.

We had a wonderful “Irish Wake” at the tea room last Saturday night before they closed their doors forever. It had originally been scheduled to be their St. Patty’s Day event anyhow, so when it turned out that this was going to be their last hurrah the proprietor turned it into a big thank-you party. The tea room was arranged so that they could set up the maximum number of tables, and it was crowded and noisy, but in a good way. There was a great Irish duo there who sang a nearly two-hour set, and the owner and her partner made speeches and toasts. The owner has been very upbeat about this. She says that she has no regrets, and that the important thing was that they tried and that they made some good friends along the way. This week is the first in many months that I didn’t have the tea room for hanging out while job hunting on the web and reading and people watching, and it’s been depressing. I go right by the place when I go out to take care of the shelter cats, and it feels wrong not to be pulling in for a pot of tea and some company.

No luck yet on the job front. I still haven’t heard anything from San Antonio, and although it’s probably too soon to worry, I figure that each day that passes with no news reduces my chances. I need to complete my application for employment with Uncle Sam; it’s going to be another job I hate, but I don’t think I can afford to be picky much longer.

The Little Black Shit cat has been ill for a week now. She started eating less and less until after a couple of days she was refusing food completely. She was diagnosed with severe constipation, was hospitalized for overnight for a couple of enemas, and came home the next morning. She ate at first, but by the end of the day she was refusing food again. We took her back in this morning for another set of X-rays, and there is definitely something abnormal going on in her stomach and proximal small intestine. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they find a foreign body – some random bit of plastic or other trash she ate and became lodged in her stomach or small intestine. You can’t always see those on X-rays, and a foreign body isn’t inconsistent with what we’re seeing on the radiographs. There are other, bigger problems that are also not inconsistent with what’s on the radiographs though. LBlS will be undergoing exploratory surgery in a few hours, so I’ll know better what we’re up against then.