Texas PCA, A fantastic trip halfway across the country, all for glass!!!

At the end of June, Katie and I took a trip out to Waco, Texas as we were invited by the Texas PCA to present. Dealer Bill Pitt was the invited dealer and also presented. It was great to share the trip with him as we have known him for a few years now from the New England meetings. Timing was everything, and for awhile this past winter, we were nervously questioning if we would be able to go. Because of all the snow days Katie's school district had, the schedule took us right up to the day before we were leaving to fly to Texas. We all lucked out, and were able attend the Texas PCA meeting.

 The meeting of the Texas PCA was in Waco Tx this time around and was was extremely well organized. Everything is informative, attractively presented and enjoyable. President Sue Soy is very generous and along with other members and officers arranged homemade snacks, gifts and giveaways, and Dr. Pepper floats. The Dr. Pepper was originally called a "Waco" and many of the attendees including ourselves, did pay a visit to the Dr. Pepper Museum. There were two dinners organized for each night, and we tried our best to take over the restaurants with our huge number of Texas PCA attendees.

 I presented a 2-part talk. The first half was my new mini-documentary called, "Working at Home". It highlighting working and living in Berkshire County, MA. The second half was a Prezi presentation entitled, "The Evolution of the Frog", where I talked about how my frog paperweights (favorite subject matter) have evolved from their meager melty squishy beginnings in 2006 or so, to what they are today. Katie and I also were able to take advantage of the fact that we had never been to Texas, and we decide to stay in Texas for almost a week.

Thank you to our parents Mike and Sue Malone and Mimi Brown for watching our son Charlie. Charlie has an awesome pitching arm and loves balls, so paperweights being in the particular shape of, say…a ball! Well…it just wasn't going to happen.

 Katie and I spent several days in Austin, which is a fantastic city! We did everything. We took a a Pedi-Cad ride where our driver was from 3 towns away back home. We ate real incredible Texan BBQ. East Coast BBQ just doesn't do it for me anymore. We made sure we saw a lot a live music on Rainey Street and downtown on 6th street. And finally, Katie is very much into alternative and historic processes of photography. We visited a mobile tintype studio where we got our tintype done! It was really cool to see the entire process from the camera to the processing in the tiny darkroom. We hope to visit Texas again in the near future, what a great state! Thanks for checking this out!