It’s The Big Guy’s Big Day

Before I do anything else, I want to wish my buddy Greg White happy birthday. Years ago Miss Terry read something that said more Americans were born on October 5th than any other day. I think that’s because they all just wanted to copycat Greg because he gets to hang out with me. But that may be my ego at work.

We were teaching for Life on Wheels when we first met Greg and his pretty wife Jan, who came as students. Because people seem to think we look alike just because we have white beards and are bald, they kept coming up to him between classes and giving him money for subscriptions to the Gypsy Journal. Nice guy that he is, Greg passed their addresses on to me. But I’m not sure I ever saw the money.

Since then we have traveled together, gotten into some mischief together, shared some adventures, Greg and Jan helped us at our Gypsy Journal RV rallies, and he has fixed everything in, on, and around my vehicles, never once grumbling out loud. It’s probably just as well that I can’t read his mind, though. Trust me, the few glimpses I’ve had inside the big guy’s head convinced me that nobody really wants to go there.

Happy birthday, my brother from another mother. We’re looking forward to seeing you guys in a few days.

Thank you to everybody who purchased my new book Strawberry Slugbug, to those who told their friends about it, and to those who shared links to the book’s page on Amazon. Thanks to all of you, it’s doing very well in terms of sales and it’s already received its first five-star review.

We kept busy yesterday getting a lot of little chores done around the house. The first order of business was to move the regular trailer for my pontoon boat from the big concrete parking apron in front of our house over to our little community storage yard. I wanted to get it there before now, but had to wait until they rearranged some things to make space available. It came with the boat, but I have only used it twice, once to bring the boat home from the dealer, and the second time was to put it in the water for the first time. When we brought it out of the water I put it on my other trailer, the scissor trailer, which cranks down low enough to allow us to put the boat in our garage. It sits too high on the original trailer to fit through the door.

Then I spent a couple of hours making some changes to the new book that managed to slip through the first three proofreaders somehow. I’m never sure how that happens, but it does, no matter how many sets of eyes read a book before I publish it. Just about every author I know says they have the same thing happen to their books. Personally, I think little gremlins invade my computer at night and make last-minute changes just to mess with my head.

When that task was finished I had a couple of little things I wanted to get done in the garage, including hanging a remote control for our roll-up garage screen door, cleaning the filter in the window air conditioner in the garage, and some other busywork.

While I was doing that, Miss Terry was busy painting one last section of wall in the kitchen that didn’t get done when she originally did the painting, because she ran out of paint and had to wait to get some more. This involved taking the doors off of several kitchen cabinets and then putting them back on when she was finished painting. It really looks nice.

By the time we wrapped everything up it was close to 7 PM and I didn’t think Terry would feel like cooking after everything she had been doing. So I ran down to the Joy Luck Chinese restaurant in the Publix shopping center and picked up takeout. This is the second time we have ordered food there and both times it has been delicious. Usually I can’t eat a full order of their fried rice, but I must have been extra hungry this time around because I had no problem polishing it off.

Today we’ve got a few more little things we want to do here at home before Greg and Jan show up next week. Because we know once they get to Florida it’s going to be playtime and we won’t get much accomplished. Well, we will get a lot of playing accomplished. That’s something, right?

Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an audiobook of Big Lake Blizzard, the fourth book in my Big Lake mystery series. To enter, all you have to do is click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.

Thought For The Day – My wife accused me of being immature, so I told her to get out of my blanket fort.