We had an unwelcome visitor yesterday afternoon, and it made things interesting for a while. Terry and I were working in the garage, loading several plastic bins into the bed of the pickup for our move, and we had been out there for a couple of hours when I saw this timber rattlesnake coiled up […]
People are asking me how we handled the snow and ice the last few days here in west-central Alabama. I can’t tell them because I didn’t experience any snow and ice. You should know by now that my rule is if it snows, Nick goes. So at the first mention of snow, I packed my […]
In our society, men are hesitant to admit when they are being abused at home. But it happens more often than you might think. I know, because I’m a victim myself. My wife has been verbally abusing me for quite some time now. I sort of brushed off the first incident, thinking it was just […]
Anybody who knows me has heard me snivel and say how much I hate cold weather. I have lived in places like Minnesota, northern Ohio, and New York, back when they had serious winters with many feet of snow, and I know all about cold weather. I’m not a fan. That’s why I don’t live […]
When we bought our house here in Alabama, I set a goal of being able to pay it off in two years. Yesterday, two years and six days after we signed the papers to purchase it, we wired the last the money to the mortgage company to pay it off. It would have been paid […]
Sometimes you live with something because it works, even if it’s not always convenient. I do that with the characters in my books. For each series, I have a list of the main and recurring characters, their physical traits, and a small bit of their history that I can refer to as I’m writing. That […]
Before I do anything else today, I want to wish our son-in-law, Kenny Conrad, a happy birthday. Kenny is a great guy, a loving husband, and a fantastic father. What more could we want for our daughter? Well, to have them live nearby. But aside from that, no complaints here. I hope you have a […]
Like a lot of people in this part of rural Alabama, we have a burn barrel to get rid of cardboard and paper and such, but I would much rather do the world a favor and recycle anything I can. However, that’s a concept that seems to be foreign to Pickens County. Residents are required […]
Before I do anything else today, I do want to remember the tragedies of September 11th, 2001. I don’t think any of us will ever forget where we were when we heard the news about the first airplane hitting one of the Twin Towers. We were in our motorhome in Traverse City, Michigan, where Terry […]
I worked late on Tuesday night, trying to get as much done in my new book as I could. Of course, when I work that late I can’t just flip a switch and turn it off and fall asleep. It takes a while for my mind to unwind and relax. So it was sometime after […]
We are being invaded again. I’m not sure how much more of this we can take. When will it ever end? Our little corner of the world is usually pretty quiet, and even this time year, with all the snowbirds around, it’s not too bad. Sure, you have to wait a little bit longer in […]
We have had a cold snap here in central Florida. Wednesday the high was only 59° and it got down to 39° overnight, and yesterday it warmed all the way up to a high of 60° and overnight it dropped down to 40°. Now, compared to what the folks in the Midwest and New England […]
Yesterday was a busy day for us though we never left the motorhome. Which was fine because it was a rainy day and not really good for playing tourist anyway. I worked on book projects most of the day and well into the evening. The first order of business was uploading Big Lake Scandal, my […]
I apologize for forgetting to announce the winner of last week’s drawing for an audiobook of Jason Deas’ Birdsongs. We had 161 entries and John Huber was the lucky winner. Congratulations John, enjoy your audiobook. Stay tuned, because another contest starts tomorrow. I guess for every winner, life gives us some losers too. In Sunday’s […]
We spent much of the weekend working on projects here at home, and though I was pretty much parked at my desk for ten or twelve hours, I didn’t get much accomplished. That’s frustrating. I’ve been trying to format two of my e-books, Overlooked Arizonaand Overlooked Florida, for print. Usually that’s not a big deal […]
Even though they call me Gadget Boy because I always like to check out the newest electronic gadgets, that doesn’t mean I understand how any of them work. And I usually get as much frustration as I do enjoyment out of a lot of the stuff out there. Our Verizon 3G air card and wireless […]