Sunrise, near miss, more travel

I stopped on the way to work this morning to take a picture of the sunrise. I get to see the sun come up almost every morning on my way in, but this morning was worth the extra time to try and get a picture. The problem is finding a place to stop that will allow a good picture – no house, no power lines, no oil tanks, etc. – and still have time to get the right shot. It happens so quickly, you can only appreciate it as you watch it happen. Once, many years ago, when we first moved to Victoria, TX, I took the family to Seadrift, TX to watch the sun set over the bay. I remember everyone being shocked by how fast the sun sank beyond the flat, watery horizon. So it is with the sunrise. It starts off an orange ball that you can actually look at directly, but a moment later it is so bright that it will blind you. It took a little extra time to morph this morning. My phone takes terrible pictures, but at least I tried.

The only issue with watching the sun rise was that I almost hit a deer as it ran across the road in front of me. I was driving Mama’s Sequoia this morning so that would have been an especially bad incident. I did not ever have my eyes off of the road completely but I had not been watching out to the right side of the road – where the deer came from. When I saw it, it was catching it’s footing in the lane directly in front of me. I very narrowly missed hitting it with the left front corner of the car. I had the cruse on during the encounter. I never touched the brake. The truck behind me must have thought I never saw the deer. That would have been mostly correct. I have noticed a lot more deer out lately so I should have been paying more attention, but, thankfully, it was only a near miss.

I will be leaving tomorrow at noon to drive to Abilene. I will spend Thursday with a client there training with them for a couple tasks for which I am currently writing a large training package. The training I am writing will be presented at Leak City in September during a national training event. I am grateful to my company for sending me to get the background information from seasoned professionals. I will spend the morning training at their facility and spend the afternoon in the field applying what I have learned. That will be a great benefit when I present the training later this year. I may not be an expert, but I will at least have had a good exposure to the practical application of the information in a real-life setting. I will have the sweat and blisters to prove it.

Vacation Bible School continues through Thursday night. Last night was the first of the four nights and Mama made sure Yilin and Cheyenne got there on time. I did not go last night. I got out from the chiropractor’s office very late, but I will go tonight. Last night Alex (Cheyenne’s father) took the time to go and see what was going on. Mama said he really enjoyed it -all the excitement and confusion. He even made sure to help the girls win in the offering portion of the competition. At our VBS we use a balance with two large buckets; one for the girls and one for the boys. The kids compete to outweigh each other. To encourage the accumulation of weight, the church sells rolls of penny’s and bricks. A roll of penny’s costs 50¢ and a brick costs $5. Alex bought a brick for Yilin and Cheyenne to put in the bucket. As Mama describes it, the competition went on for some time but the girls finally won.

I’ll see if I can help the boys tonight.