Whoa! Lots of catching up to do!

Man, it's been a busy two months! We celebrated my daughter's birthday, had a great Christmas...then decided we needed a new front door and a new entertainment center. The front door part was easy--pick the one you want and order it. The entertainment center part was a bit more difficult. The one we wanted is a huge wall-eating beastie that meant we had to rearrange the furniture in the room. Now, that probably isn't a problem for most people but we are the King and Queen of Don't-Throw-It-Away-It-May-Come-In-Handy. Nevermind that if the item ever was needed, we wouldn't be able to find it. Certainly we wouldn't have been able to find it in our basement--the repository for all that DTIAIMCIH. We had wall-to-wall STUFF. And we needed to put the old entertainment center in the basement rec room.

So okay. Imagine a whirlwind of cleaning/sorting/ruthless decluttering (I've mentioned that I follow the FlyLady tenets, haven't I?) Well, we now have the rec room pretty well cleared out and organized. We've got a load to stuff waiting for the Salvation Army pick up -- maybe someone else will find it handy :-) -- we put a load of stuff on the curb for trash pick up and then moved the old entertainment center downstairs. Cool!

During that whirlwind activity, I entered a slogan contest for FF&P. Imagine my surprise when I discovered my slogan was selected by the members to represent our chapter! I won a t-shirt with the FF&P logo on the front and my slogan -- Where Imagination Rules! -- on the back. I also received a coffee cup with the logo and slogan. Very nice. Both items came from Cafe Press which the FF&P chapter is using to offer chapter items to members. I'm impressed with the shirt and cup. Very good quality on both.

During the whirlwind, I had to start working longer hours at the day job since it was the beginning of the semester and whenever I tried logging on from home, my dial up ISP would stall, making it almost impossible to do more than read a few emails. I get a lot of email and having to use Task Manager to quit the program, log on a second time, read a few more, use Task Manager again, log on again, etc was time consuming and annoying. So...I've now gone to a cable modem. This is slick, speed wise, and it beats having to go through the hassle of logging on to dial up every few minutes. I still have a few set up problems but I'm sure they'll be worked out before long.

I also sent Triskelion Publishing a query regarding my manuscript HEARTSTONE. Triskelion has offered to publish HEARTSTONE! I'm waiting for contracts and all that good stuff but my book now has a home and I'm delighted!

Well, Wookie, my writing-muse-cat is telling me I need to pay attention to her so I'd better run.

Oh, and the new entertainment center is here and looks spectacular!