It's About Time!

Wow, I haven't posted for almost a year! I have been doing a lot of other writing, though. I just finished and need to make a few final changes to 2 new stories: E.J.'s Crabby Day at the Beach and Leah Wants a Ball. I'll get them printed and spiral bound over the weekend. Next I'll be doing a story for my niece, Taylor. Her birthday was in April, so I am running late with it! Also, when the cable repairman came last, Randy found out that it was only $3 to get a package of Discovery channels. The Science Channel has been an awesome resource and their Home channel just became Planet Green, an idea that I've supported for years. Another thing that has been encouraging me to write is that I finally found a small, but viable computer notebook. I call this one a notebook and my HP a laptop because of the size difference, but it was very difficult to hold the laptop on my lap! The new computer is a PC Eee by ASUS. It weighs about 2 lbs.and is about 7 in. by 4 in. Mine only has 2G, the more memory the higher the price and it seemed to be going up $100 for each additional 2G. The memory is solid state, it's an SD card instead 0f a drive that spins, so it protects your data. I got it via EBay for under $300, as well as a 4G Mp3 player for around $20. Too funny that the Mp3 player has more memory than my notebook!

These two purchases may have netted me a new customer. Now first let me say that I have not put any Christian emblems or comments on my business site, http://BizbyDeb.com. I got a call last month from a young woman who wants to have me ghostwrite the story of how her family overcame abuse, etc. with the help of God. I've been working with her to get a query letter done. Once I get her actual story, I'll be doing a detailed proposal for prospective publishers, then writing the story itself. Yes, I'm getting to that new customer, hang on. The Mp3 player is what they call OEM, it's made without logos for other companies to sell under their brand name. The instructions were apparently written by the seller and not easy to read, as the seller was not much of an English speaker. So I wrote in the EBay feedback that the instructions weren't clear. I got an email from the guy, apologizing and sounding a bit defensive. So I wrote back and said that I hadn't intended any slight towards him, but that I could tell he was an ESL speaker because my major was English. It's true, in one of my classes we studied how ESL students misinterpret and struggle with English, especially verb tenses. I offered to rewrite his instruction sheet for no charge and referred him to my business site, so he would understand that writing is my business. Next day I get another email from him and he is excited to have me help proofread his thesis when he gets to that point; he's a Taiwanese seminary student. I love it; I'm finally getting jobs from my website and they keep turning out to be Christians! God is so good and He has such a sense of humor!

You know, sometimes I catch myself and all I can do is laugh. I went to the pharmacy on Tues. morning, around 5a. It often seems that when I get there, someone else will come in behind me and, because they're taller and faster, they get to the counter and get served before me. This had happened once again, so I was grumbling to myself and almost complained to the pharmacist. When I got home, I was just in time to catch Joyce Meyer's show. She was teaching about the sick man who lay by the Pool of Siloam for years, waiting for someone to carry him to the pool after the angel of God stirred its waters. She said, and this is typical Joyce, "How many times did this man lay there and say, 'what about me?'" She uses this line a lot and often does a little robot act, where she'll march around saying, "What about me, what about me, what about me?" Needless to say, I was caught in my moment of selfishness and was glad that I held my tongue with the pharmacist!

A couple of days ago we noticed that Skittle's face was swollen on one side. Randy took her to the vet and they discovered that she has some really nasty bruising around her eye and cheek. Randy says that Skittle took a header the other day. Skittle insists on getting up on tables, which is forbidden in this house, but if you call her on it, she closes her eyes and turns her head away. So she got up on the table and went walking across some papers. The papers slipped, she skidded and took a header, whacking her face hard on the table edge. Since her vet visit she's been getting antibiotics and a pain med, but the swelling keeps getting worse instead of better. At this point she looks like a cartoon character wth a bee sting! Randy is going to call the vet again today, to see if he thinks it's a severe problem or not.

I am in the process of writing what seems to always be my annual letter. If you know me personally and you think you're not on my email list to receive the link when I post the letter online, send me an email. I think that's about it for this post, but I am going to be blogging more, as an aid to my memory problems. I'll post on that next time.