This and That

This week's posting will be short and sweet.

Overall sales from KDP (Kindle) 0; in person sales 1 (see SC Book Festival Day #2 Posting); total Nook 0; total smashwords sales 0.

Tomorrow, my guest will Carol Baldwin and Wednesday my guest is Faye Tollison. Not much else to report this weekend. See you all in the postings - E ;)

SC Book Festival Day #2

Ann Eisenstein joined our group today. It was nice having someone I know to talk to. She kept me on my feet that is for sure.

The festival was only 12 to 4 today, so a short day. Sarah sold a few books (again, don't know her numbers since she left in such a hurry and didn't even help break down the booth completely). Ann sold either 3 or 4 books (she believes she sold 3, I think she sold 4, but she had to leave to go take care of an Alzheimer's patient and didn't do inventory before leaving).

I sold a bookworm to the guy next to me before the crowds graced our hall today and then had a lady who bought 30 bookworms all at once for a baby shower in July that is "book" themed and she said they would make perfect gifts. I sold 3 more after that for a total of 34 today and 25 yesterday for a grand total of 59 bookworms sold over the weekend. I also sold a copy of State of Wilderness today so yay!!!, someone will be reading one of my state books.

Totally exhausted when I got home but I survived. - See you all in the postings - E :)

SC Book Festival Day #1

The book festival's doors opened at 10 a.m. For a good bit there was a steady stream of folks walking the vendor hall and looking. I saw a lot of familiar faces and even made a connection I was hoping to make this weekend (a little later than I had hoped to do so, but I'm glad she showed up when she did). Sarah says she sold 11 books today, but it seemed she sold more but who knows. I sold two copies of Sybil Nelson's Priscilla the Great and nothing else bookwise. No state stories; none of Finally Home and none of the Leslie Dubois books or Little Prince Publishing books that were available (Sybil = Leslie = Little Prince Publishing who actually publishes a couple of different authors besides Sybil/Leslie).

Now don't feel too bad for me with no book sales. I did sell 25 of my bookworms. Not enough to cover a lot of expenses on the trip but enough to get me dinner and gas in the van and some water and/or a couple of candy bars.

Overall I think it was a good day. --- See you all in the postings - E :)

SC Book Festival Bound

Today, I head out to set up the SC Author Connection exhibit at the SC Book Festival. If you happen to be in the area and are looking for something to do, we would love for you to stop by booth 521 and visit with 2 of the 4 group's authors (Sarah Renee and myself). The SC Book Festival is in its 16th year and the lineup of presenting authors and exhibits looks great. For more information, check out their website. Did I mention this is a free event to the public? Hours are Saturday 10 to 5 and Sunday 12 to 4 - see you all in the postings - E :)

This and That

First, Happy Mother's Day to all my readers who are mothers and hope your day is extra special. It's definitely spring as my allergies are acting up and I've had a hard time with the runny nose and itchy eyes; one reason I try to not to go outside too much.

Yesterday's welcome center event was pretty successful on several accounts. First, one of the folks there was a representative for a hotel in Greenville, which is the town where our local Sisters in Crimes group meets and he gave me contact information for the owner or person who books their meeting rooms. Hopefully we can get the room booked when we need to for months that we can't have the Runway Cafe without paying a fee to book the meeting room. What's even better is they have a restaurant on site.

I did make a sale of Finally HOme from my car to same representative for his niece when I was packing up some of my things (but that is a hush hush sale since we aren't technically supposed to sell anything at the welcome center secondary to it being a Federal Right of Way). When I got home I checked my kindle stats and noticed I had sold a copy of Finally Home.

That leads me into sales for the week. I sold 1 physical copy of Finally Home as noted above, 1 kindle copy of Finally Home and someone apparently ordered a print copy of Finally Home from Amazon as per my createspace accounting. I had a copy of "The Proposal" sell for kindle during the week and yesterday a copy of "The Tulip Kiss" sold in the UK - pretty good week for me - considering that I've not sold any copies of Finally Home since March at the SCASL conference.

All my ebooks are now available for all ereaders - nook, smashwords (which includes the Sony, Kobo, and computer files to read online), and kindle, except "Bride-and-Seek" as I'm waiting for Heather to get me a correctly sized cover for the nook and reformat the interior for smashwords. When Butterfly Halves is released, during my half a century celebration, I'll offer free downloads of several of the stories from smashwords. (My 50-day giveaway postings start June 5 and run through August 2, minus Sundays and holidays (but I may run a special giveaway for the 4th of July, after all, my JGDS series all about the United States, and what better giveaway than red/white/blue themed one.))

I hope to have at least 2 more afghans completed this week which will be available at the SC Book Festival next weekend. I'd like to have most of them completed, but I took some time away from them to work on a special order and with work and crazy things happening, I just haven't worked on the afghans steadily like I should have. If anyone wants to order an afghan that isn't completed yet (so far Bonbon print is the only completed one but Primary is half completed and Melonberry is started), I will be happy to complete that one before the others. Now is the time to start thinking ahead for presents for the holidays. Afghan orders can be made through my author website or the JGDS website under the gifts tab. Bookworms are still available in all colors and I'm still running my special of 25 bookworms for $30 through Thursday of this week.

Don't forget that chances for the red, white and blue granny square afghan are available throughout the year as well. These can be purchased on either website under the events or calendar of events tab.

This week coming up, tomorrow I'll talk about "website promotion versus book promotion, are they really that different?". Wednesday will be an open day as I've exhausted my WWYWWQ questions and didn't realize I had another week to go before taking a break. Thursday will be a pre-SC Book Festival posting. Saturday evening will be an update of the day's events and Sunday will be a 2-posting day as I'll post my This and That posting and then probably upon returning home after seeing what the event held as far as sales and what not goes. Hope you all have a great week. See you all in the postings - E :)

A day late (okay a few days late) update on the SC Book Festival

Usually this posting goes up within a day of returning if not the day I come home from the book festival. This was a totally different year.

My daughter went to Columbia with me and visited with her sister for the weekend. When we got to Columbia, I couldn't check in (too early) and my master class had gotten cancelled so I had some time to kill. We went to see a movie - saw Confessions of a Shopaholic - and had an enjoyable time. Spent some time with Hailie that we don't get to do much of (well I spend time with her but not like this - just relaxed and no worries).

Of course when we got to Columbia, it decided to rain on us. It was a wet weekend. After the movie, we went to my hotel to check me in and get my stuff taken upstairs. I stayed at the Homewood Suites and enjoyed it thoroughly. I had a pull out sofa if I had needed it; a full kitchenette with a table for dining for two, a king sized bed, a desk and work area. It was great. (yes beats sleeping in my car like last year.) So Heather (my stepdaughter) came by and got Hailie (I was supposed to take them out to dinner but they declined) and I went on about my way doing things I needed to (had to go to Wal-Mart to get a USB cable for my new printer, so went to dinner by myself).

Saturday was a leisurely day as I had planned to attend a couple of workshops and then just hang around my friend's booth and kind of relax. I did volunteer in the SCWW booth for about an hour. I made three book sales over the weekend and that was just from casual conversations and being in my friend's booth and having my wonderful bookmarks available. Those bookmarks were a hit. I probably put a couple hundred in the hands of folks down there over the whole weekend. My friend was also helping by putting my bookmarks in with her sales. It was a great weekend as I got exposure and made a few sales.

Sunday, I came in to see one of the workshops at the beginning. My daughter and stepdaughter came to the book festival about 1:30 and they walked a bit and I chatted with folks for a bit. Finally, they persuaded me to head out since they were hungry and the weather was kind of yucky as it was - rained the whole weekend, which is a first for me in the last five or six years since starting to attend this particular festival (usually rains one or the other days but not all weekend). The three of us had lunch and we went our separate ways, me heading home and my stepdaughter heading back to her home. The S word had come up several times Sunday while I was meandering around the festival. No, it couldn't snow, it was March 1 and that means we should have been having nicer weather coming along. Well, it was raining when I left Columbia and by time I got about 20 miles or so outside of the downtown area, sure enough there were some flakes seen (it was a mix at this time). By time I had gotten about 40 miles up the road, the flakes were even larger and coming down at a pretty fast rate. The ground was starting to show signs of being covered. By time I got to about 20 miles from my home, the weather was worse - snow covered the streets and it was that slushy stuff since it had been raining. The last 8-10 miles towards my town were very slow going since I had to drive at about 30 or 35 on a 55 road - that's how bad they were becoming. By time I pulled in to the grocery store to pick up milk and bread and get over to subway, the parking lots were getting almost undrivable. I made it home in the nick of time because the whole town shut down shortly thereafter - the stores were closing, the food places were closing, although I found out a couple of days later that Hardees stayed open on Sunday, which is ludicrist as the roads were not even drivable and they put their employees in danger.

So this was a weird but good book festival. I was not a volunteer for the festival, but for the SCWW group for a short time, I attended workshops that were very good and I got to spend time with my friend and my daughter that I normally wouldn't have been able to do and it snowed on the way home. Next year, with six books available, I'm hoping that 4RV will have a booth and that I can get on as a guest speaker. Hopefully, hopefully.

I really encourage all authors to attend a book festival in their area as a volunteer or an attendee and then work on getting on as a guest speaker somehow. Books are our friends. Happy reading - see you all in the postings - E :)

Book Festival time

Yep - you guessed it. I'm heading to Columbia (SC) next weekend for the SC Book Festival. The weird thing is that I'm going in a capacity I haven't been in since I started attending book festivals. What, you may ask, is up with that? Well, usually I am a volunteer. This year, I had tried to get on as a guest speaker but didn't get selected and I wanted to be there as an exhibitor but funds prevented from or the company from doing this. I wish the other authors for 4RV would see that book festivals are beneficial way before their books are actually published. They allow one to get their name out there and be associated with a publisher who is putting herself out in the public's eye. They are great places for networking. You never know who will stop by your booth and buy tons of copies of all the books and pick up information on other persons in the publishing house. I can't persuade them though to contribute funds to book festivals. It's frustrating and the economy is so bad that not many folks are really buying books; they are going to the libraries where they can get them for free, read and return them for more.

Although I'm not an official SC Book Festival volunteer, I will be manning the SCWW booth most of the weekend, other than the few times I'll be visiting a couple of folks' workshops. It seems that there are quite a few people who won't be able to help out this year, so if you happen to be in Columbia, SC, this coming up weekend, make sure you stop by our booth and speak. State of Wilderness will be on display as a published author of the SCWW. My books, along with several titles from 4RV - Trockle, Lion in My Living Room, Bubba and Giganto, Al-the-Gator and Freddy Frog, Case of the Missing Coach, Midnight Hours, Hidden Lies and other stories, will be available but not in the arena of the book festival, so stop by and let me know if you are interested in getting a copy of the books I have available.

See you all in the postings - hopefully I'll see you at the book festival - and I'll post more after the book festival. This year I made reservations at the Homewood Suites (which is part of the Hilton Family Hotels, since I've become a member having stayed at the Hilton twice now for the SCWW conference in Myrtle Beach), so I know I won't be staying in a rundown, flea ridden hotel and I won't be sleeping in my car either. Luxury. Hailie is going with me this weekend but she will be spending the weekend with her sister who lives in that area so I will have a nice hotel suite to myself. It should be a very good weekend.

See you all at the festival and in the postings - E :)

Time flies, yet again

Over a week has passed since the SCWW writer's conference in Myrtle Beach and I have yet to post anything about the conference nor other updates. So I figured I'd take a brief moment and get something posted. So here goes:

1) SCWW conference was a blast. Because of being able to lock the complete building where the silent auction items were held, most of my volunteer duties got taken away from me. I felt bad because I wasn't being used for what they paid for me to do (the SCWW covered the cost of the conference for me in exchange for working half the conference). I felt it was a successful conference and seemed to run pretty smoothly. We didn't have any incidents like last year (someone stalked one of the agents or authors by gaining entrance to their room and leaving a manuscript on their bed or some folks got a bit disorderly from drinking too much). The slushfests were fun and the workshops I attended were pretty cool too. Karen Petit and I shared a room and got to know each other better. In February, I will be staying with her when I attend the SC Book Festival (probably as an exhibitor this year since I've not heard about being a guest speaker or panelists or anything). I found out who is chairing the conference next year and I may have an in as a guest speaker/panelist with Karen. We can do panel discussions or workshops and share a room again - lol - it will be a lot of fun for us both (fingers crossed and will keep you all posted on that as things develop since nothing can really be done until after the first of the year).

2) State of Quarries is completed except for a few minor edits for Vivian. The teacher's guide is finished as well. State of Wilderness's teacher's guide is completed. I am using my NaNo month/goal to get ahead on the state stories. I can't wait to see the illustrations for the book and see it laid out (will keep you updated on that as well).

3) NaNo - November is National Novel Writing Month and the goal is to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. I have adjusted my goal to 20,000 words in 30 days (there is a lot of family stuff going on this month, will be in a virtual book tour and have two book signings scheduled) which will basically be (hopefully) three new state stories and the teacher's guides to go with them. I will post my "excerpts" which are my updates on where I am on my goal on my NaNo site. So if you want to see if I am on track with my self-adjusted goals and getting things accomplished, check out www.nanowrimo.org and look for elysabeth42 (you can check out my profile and click on novel info to see everything I've posted).

4) Cybil award nomination: State of Wilderness and Prairie Dog Cowboy are in the running for this award in the middle grade fiction category. Trockle has been nominated for the children's picture book fiction category. Winners will be announced in February. Nominations are made from anyone (but you have to scan through a lot of posts to see if the book you want to nominate has already been nominated as they only want one nomination per title and each person can make one nomination per category - there are 9 total) between October 1 and 15. Then the group of folks decides if all nominations are valid (checking to see when the books were published to make sure they fall into this year's timeframe) and then they have to contact all the publishers and/or authors to request review copies which are not mandatory but do help the panelists. Then after receiving all the books, they have the fun job of reading and picking a winner. So here's to the three 4RV books nominated and hopefully one will take the award or maybe two (one in each category would be nice). (I'd like them to add another category to cover books that present facts with fictional characters like my state stories do but for now, I'll have to take whatever nominations and the categories I can get.) The finalists will be listed in January with the winners announced in February - so stay tuned for more updates.

That about covers all my goings on for now - see you all in the postings - E :)

Good times - Part 2 of SC Book Festival Review

Okay all horror aside, the rest of the weekend was so awesome. As a volunteer, I usually am a greeter at the top level where most folks enter and I so enjoy getting the folks to fill out the surveys and hear their reactions and all about the different activities, panel discussions and the book festival in general.

Saturday started with a book club breakfast with the authors and that was so awesome in and of itself. I got to mingle with Gwen and Cathy and some other authors as well as some book club folks (I don't belong to a book club because I just don't have time but I would if there was one local and I had the opportunity to do so).

This year, TJ had other plans for me - I was a room monitor part of the time and a greeter part of the time (well I was scheduled to be a greeter half the day Sunday but ended up being a room monitor all afternoon which was fine with me).

As room monitor, your duties include making sure the water pitchers are full and that there are clean glasses on the tables for the speakers, making sure the temperature, lighting, sound, et cetera are good and holding up signs so the moderators and panelists know that they have 10 minutes left in the session and 5 minutes (so they can wrap things up and get on over to do book signings too).

The first session I got to monitor was entitled "Bartenders, Cops, & Priests, Oh My!" - I had no idea what to expect but I'm glad TJ assigned this one to me. Julia Spencer Fleming writes mysteries with a priest or preacher as the amateur slueth. Interesting concept and not one I think I've seen done before. With my father being an ordained Orthodox Priest and all, I think I need to check out some books by Ms. Spencer-Fleming. Con Lehane is an ex-bartender and so naturally his protag is a bartender. His series sounds very interesting too - it's amazing how mystery writers are creating new and unheard of characters for their stories. James O. Born was the last speaker on the panel. He is an FBI agent/cop or some such thing - I believe he has worked as a DEA officer at some point. He writes more real-life experiences of course with a fictional twist. The panel was very interesting and the moderate, Paula Benson, did a great job of questioning each of the authors and bringing the whole discussion together.

The next panel I got to monitor was "SHE Did It: SC Women of Mystery" with Gwen Hunter and Cathy Pickens (both of whom I have met previously in other venues), moderated by Carla Damron (again someone I knew from other places). Now talk about a funny, Gwen and Cathy both have such southern backgrounds and a great rapport and definitely are not conceited about being an author, that I don't think anyone walked out of that panel not laughing. Cathy has a posting on her blog about the book festival and her newest book that just came out. Check it out here for more details.

Gwen on the other hand is absolutely schizo (her words not mine) because she has to be two different people (writing under Gwen Hunter and Faith Hunter and she said if she were to write romance she would write under yet a third name - I honestly don't know how she keeps up with all novels she has out there). You can check out her blog postings here.

The rest of Saturday I just hung around and did my greeting in the late afternoon. I don't feel I did near the job I usually do with the greeting because I was only there a couple of hours. I hope there were plenty of surveys filled out for the book festival.

Sunday - wonderful day. Panels I monitored were: Cassandra King (The Queen of Broken Hearts - novel that came out last year). She was a very good speaker and of course her southern charm and stories came out. Like she said, you can't make up some of this stuff (the reality is so much more interesting than the fiction and her novels are based on her life experiences of having grown up in a small southern town and everything in between that has given her some great fodder).

Civil War - with Orville Vernon Burton, John Wesley Brinsfield, Jr., and Andrew Billingsley - Andrew Billingsley has written a memoir based story on Robert Smalls entitled "Yearning to Breathe Free..."; John Brinsfield's book is about the chaplains of the civil war - "Spirit Divided ..." (I found this interesting because of my father being an Orthodox priest and wondering if he would read something that is civil war based - an idea to look into later). Orville Burton's book is called "Age of Lincoln". He takes the civil war way past the end of the war and into the reconstruction. This panel was different for me because I'm not a big history buff although I do have some roots in the civil war due to my grandmother's family having killed a soldier on the property and burying him, no questions asked.

Southern Writers: Exploring and Revealing Their Passions - Panelists Marti Healy (animals and God - her book "The God Dog..."), John Lee (wild turkey hunting and God - I forget the title of his book but it is about Wild Turkey hunting and being a novice hunter) and L. D. Russell (NASCAR and God - his book "God Speed...") all spoke on their passions. Even though each of their books has a religious undertow, the discussion was not overtly religious and was very enjoyable.

Last room monitored of the day was a poetry reading session with Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, Joyce Brinkman, Marjory Wentworth, and Lisa Starr. I have never been in a poetry reading room before and this was interesting because to me poetry is rhyming, follows a certain beat or whatever my preconceived idea was at the time. I left the room with a different perspective of what poetry is. The one thing that really fascinated me was the "simultaneous poems" - they are basically two poems written together that each line of one completes the line of the other but they should be able to stand alone too. I can't even fathom writing something like that but I guess it is the equivalent of writing a dialogue based story where each person's voice is very distinct and complements each other, but if you read them without the other, you would still have a sense of the voice.

All-in-all, I had a great time. Check out some other fun postings on the festival - Daisy's Dead Air; Shannon's posting; Arts Institute Blog. I'm sure there are many more postings out there but for now that is a taste on the variety of folks who attended the festival in one capacity or another -

See you all in the postings - E :)

Bad times - Part 1 of SC Book Festival Review

The SC Book Festival was this past weekend and as you can see I had good times and bad times. Let's get the bad times out of the way so I can really talk about all the good times I had.

I headed to Columbia Friday afternoon, later than I had originally planned because of daughter being sick during the week and having to take her to the doctor's office and then taking her to school (sinus headaches were the culprit so not "sick" in that way). After dropping her off and having my day interrupted, I rushed home to get my work done and then back to the school to pick her up and drop her off at a friend's house. I was supposed to have dinner with some friends but because of my leaving later than planned, that got cancelled but at the last minute (I was almost in Columbia and had just told them to meet me and they called back and said they couldn't because of the 2 hour delay and they had things to do. So woe was me; I didn't get to meet my friends for dinner to celebrate my new contract. Oh well, maybe another time.

So I went on to the hotel to check in. I was staying at a local hotel on the other side of the bridge from "downtown" Columbia. I signed in, got on the computer for a bit and then went to dinner. Came back and worked a bit more and then finally crawled in bed about 1:30 a.m. I laid there for a bit and then jumped up and tried brushing the bed off because it felt like something was crawling on my legs (I never saw anything). Laid back down, jumped up again several times. About 3 a.m. after fighting this feeling and not sleeping, I packed my car and went to the front desk to check out. The girl, "Tolley" was her name, at the front desk was rather rude. I told her I needed to check out because 1) I had a family emergency - I just wanted to leave; and 2) it felt like there were bugs crawling on my legs and the bathroom floor was dirty or moldy. She didn't hear the second part. I handed her my receipt (had paid for two nights, cash since I was supposed to be there for the weekend) and she hoitily said to me, "Oh you paid cash. We'll have to mail your check refund to you in about a month." I didn't want to leave without my cash since I was now faced with finding another place to stay and my money was limited. I had the business card that was on the front desk. I asked if this was the owner's name on it and she said yes and I could call the number on the card (which went directly to the hotel - hahaha - like I would have been able to speak to him had I called that number). So I asked to speak to the owner; for her to call the owner so I could speak to him. She refused, telling me that he wouldn't want to speak to me. She did call him but wouldn't let me talk to him. Another 10 minutes went by and she called him the second time and again refused to let me talk to him and even asked if she should call the police on me. So I asked her if she had a phone book so I could look something up; she refused to let me have the phone book and told me I could walk across the street to the phone booth at the gas station (this is a 4-lane road and pretty busy even at 3 in the morning because it is a main artery in the area). So finally at 3:30 I told her to call the police. They came and I was escorted off the property for harrassing and causing a disturbance - all because of her rudeness and refusal to let me talk to the owner - whatever happened to "The Customer is always right" in a service business?

After leaving the hotel property, I drove around Columbia for a bit wondering where I could just crash for a couple of hours until I had to be up for my duties. I went to IHOP and had a breakfast of sorts - they were packed and it took a long time to get service and all and then the waiter got my order incorrect but fixed it, finally. I left IHOP about 5:30, drove around a couple of blocks and pulled into the Hilton drop off area (I had to use the restroom and the book festival was using the Hilton facilities for some of the activities this weekend). I explained to the desk clerk the situation and she was nice about things - told me I could crash on the sofa in the lobby and no one would bother me (not the problem for me - I snore and I could just see myself waking up with drool all over the place and being kicked out of the Hilton for snoring off the rafters - lol). I refused her kind offer, told her I was going to park in the garage and crash a couple of hours in my car. I did just that. Found a nice spot on the second level of the garage, leaned my seat back a bit and slept for an hour and a half.

Saturday, I was so busy with book festival stuff, I didn't feel tired really. Saturday evening, I came back over to the Hilton and of course different staff at the desk this time and I explained the situation to the girl again and even offered to give them my credit card if they would hold off billing me until Friday since I didn't get paid until then (my credit card is a debit/credit card and is linked directly to my checking account and I knew I didn't have any funds in my account to cover hotel costs). She told me she needed to speak to her manager and she would see what they could do. I went to supper (Wendy's) and when I came back in, she told me that the manager said they couldn't do anything but she had made me a goody bag and even told me if I happened to crash on the sofa, no one would disturb me. I sat on the sofa for a couple of hours and attempted to read "Summer of the Monkeys" that was so highly recommended by my son (sorry to disappoint him in that I couldn't really get into the story, maybe it was the way it was written or whatever, but I just couldn't get past chapter 2). Finally about 10 p.m., I told Joy (the desk clerk) I was going to crash in my car for the night (again parked in the parking garage for the Hilton - I felt very safe there). In my goody bag was a sleep mask and I used it and actually got several hours of sleep. My car isn't too bad for crashing for a few hours (my biggest problem was the cup holder because my leg tended to rest against that and so I think I have a bit of a bruise on my leg from that). I woke myself up several times thinking it was later than it was (disoriented slightly because of the sleep mask and being in my car) but I did get about 5 hours of sleep.

Sunday morning, I entered the Hilton lobby again and Joy was again on duty (she worked 3 pm to 11 pm Saturday and returned at 7 a.m. on Sunday for her next shift). I got on my computer for a bit and left a couple of messages for a friend and then went to get a towel and washcloth and went to the handicap bathroom to do a sponge bath and wash my hair in the sink - did wonders for me.

So that is the horror part of the weekend. When I got up Sunday morning and after having my creamed chipped beef on toast breakfast from Lizard's Thicket, I realized I had left my towel at the other hotel (bath towels aren't big enough for me and I so I use a beach towel for my bath towel) and I was going to have to go over there and get my towel. When I entered that lobby, I was informed that yes they did have my towel and that they had a "refund check" for me. I doubt they intended to mail it to me since it was not in an envelope and it was just in the desk drawer, but needless to say I did get a one night refund (not that it did any good at the time sicne it was a Sunday morning and no banks were opened to cash it, and none of the grocery stores would cash it because it was considered a two party check - it was handwritten and signed). So coming home I had $2 cash to my name and just less than half a tank of gas (I drove around a good many more miles than my normal trip down that way) and I was so hungry and wanting a place to cash my check so I could at least get some dinner and put a little bit of gas in case I needed it. I stopped at Wendy's again and got a burger (in my goody bag was a bag of those filled pretzels - Combos and some fudge striped cookies and a bottle of water - so I had a drink, a substitute for fries and a dessert). I was concerned that I wouldn't make it home on the gas though. I prayed and drove the speed limit most of the way to try to be as conservative as I could - not accelerating too much and overdoing the gas. I got home and still had some gas to spare and my "idiot light" never came on, not until I was out and about Monday.

(end of part 1 - see part 2 for good times) - See you all in the postings - E :)