The Storm That Wasn’t

We had not expected much from Hurricane Isaias, and as it turned out, we were right. When we went to bed about 2 a.m. Sunday morning, they were still calling it a Category One hurricane. But when we woke up yesterday morning, it had been downgraded to a tropical storm.

We got a little bit of rain in the early afternoon, and it was breezy, but by 5:30 p.m. there wasn’t really much to talk about.  Looking out the window after dinner the light was yellow. We decided to go outside and the clouds overhead were dramatic.

The wind picked up again about 11 p.m. but was nothing to worry about. As I write this at midnight, we are still getting some wind gusts, but that’s about it.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I’ve had enough adventures in my life without being in a hurricane. Of course when you live on the Florida coast, they are a fact life, and sooner or later I’m sure we will have one come by that isn’t nearly as nice as Isaias was.

I spent much of the day writing, knocking out another 4,000 words in the sequel to Tinder Street. This puts me about a third of the way done. As with the first book in the historical family saga, I spent some time researching as I wrote, double-checking some facts.

For some reason, I always assumed that CPR had been around for a long time, and was surprised to find out that it was only in 1960 that resuscitation doctors first combined mouth-to-mouth breathing with chest compressions to create cardiopulmonary resuscitation to save someone felled by a heart attack or injury.

I also spent a couple of hours on my BookBub author’s page. I had heard it before but had forgotten that authors can list all of their books there until my friend and fellow author Mona Ingram reminded me. It took me a while to figure out how to get all my books added to it, and two or three hours more before they all showed up on the site. Hopefully, they will start to get some more reviews. You can look for them at my author profile on BookBub at this link.

My friend Patrick O’Donnell, a recently retired police officer and the author of Cops and Writers – From the Academy to the Street, posted this graphic on the Cops and Writers Facebook page the other day, and I wanted to share it here.

When we were living and traveling in an RV fulltime I saw lots of rigs in campgrounds with signs saying Protected By Smith & Wesson. What a great way to let criminals know you have guns. They will wait until you get in your car and go exploring to come and rip you off. And yes, criminals do cruise through campgrounds. And for that matter, what do you know about the guy parked next to you?

I have to laugh when I see people on social media warning people that getting a vaccine is going to put an imaginary microchip into their body so the government can track them, but they tell the whole world everything about themselves on Facebook and with the stickers plastered on the back of their cars. But yeah, let’s worry about a microchip.

Congratulations Robert Moritz, winner of our drawing for an audiobook of Dead Letter by Catherine Bender. We had 61 entries this time around. Stay tuned. A new contest starts soon.

Thought For The Day – I’m going to cut out a bunch of newspaper articles about one unsolved murder and keep them in a box in my closet to mess with my kids’ heads after I die.