What A Difference A Day Makes

As I write this, a little before midnight on Wednesday, I keep thinking about the fact that when I wrote my blog 24 hours ago, Hurricane Dorian was bearing down on us and we didn’t know what the night might bring.

What it brought was a lot of wind and a lot of rain, but not nearly the destruction that could have happened if the storm had moved just a few more miles inland. By yesterday morning it was pretty much gone, making its way up the coast toward Georgia and the Carolinas.

There was a stiff breeze blowing off and on for much of the day, and a few scattered showers, but nothing to be concerned with. When I went outside and walked around our place to see if there was any damage, the only thing I saw was a dead limb from a tree that had come down. We mentioned not long before that we needed to cut it off, but the hurricane saved us the trouble. I took a drive through our neighborhood, and except for a lot of palm fronds down, I didn’t see any damage, and very little standing water. The storm surge everybody was telling us could be a killer amounted to nothing at all. Oh well, I’ve got lots of sandbags for the next time around!

As if to apologize for being so mean and nasty for the last week or so, Mother Nature gave us a very pretty sunset at the end of the day.

This little funny meme that a friend of mine shared with me is the kind of thing that a mystery writer really understands.

I spent most of the day writing, getting about 5,200 words done in my new John Lee Quarrels book before I knocked off for dinner. While I was doing that Miss Terry was busy watching some videos on fiber arts to learn a new technique, along with baking some delicious banana nut bread. Between that and all of the cookies she baked the other day in anticipation of the hurricane, I’m going to be loaded up on carbs for the next couple of weeks.

We both have a bit of cabin fever so we will probably run out and get some errands done today and make a stop at our chiropractor’s. That and putting the sandbags away and getting the garbage cans out of the garage and back where they belong for trash pickup on Friday should keep me out of trouble.

Before I close for today, I want to take a minute to wish my good friend Mac McCoy happy birthday. Mac was one of the first people we met when we became fulltime RVers, and for years we worked the RV rally circuit together, him teaching RV fire safety and us doing seminars on all aspects of RVing. One of the things we really miss about the RV lifestyle is all of the wonderful people that we met along the way. And of all those many people, Mac has always been a favorite.

It’s Thursday, so it’s time for a new Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an autographed copy of Big Lake, my first novel and the book that made me a New York Times bestselling author. This particular book is a bit special, because it’s the last one I have with the original cover, before I commissioned Elizabeth Mackey to redo my earlier covers and make all future ones. To enter, 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 – I don’t understand your particular kind of crazy, but I do admire your total commitment to it.