Best Laid Plans Run Amuck...

Well, here I am sitting at Dunkin' Donuts again. Our Internet connection at home must have been struck by lightening, but there was no time to deal with it before leaving on the next road trip. My best laid plans were to figure out how the write ahead function worked, so I could write a week worth of posts and have blogger automatically post them for me. Under the best of circumstances this would have challenged my techno abilities to the max, but given the lack of Internet at home it totally put me over the top.

We are leaving for the lake in VA today, where we do not have Internet. I am hoping that I can show up with my computer at a local business and hook in at least a couple of times during the week, as there are several things on my mind...

In the meantime, we made it home from Florida uneventfully and jumped right back into home life without skipping a beat. It looked like hurricane Dolly had made landfall in the middle of my family room, but what the heck, we're leaving again, so I don't have to look at it! But it was a bit of a problem only having one day to pull things together.

Some of the highlights of my day were:

• Spending a little bit of time with Matt and his girlfriend Carolyn. Included are a decent and crazed photo. They have their dog Finn with them, which added more chaos to a household that in Howie's opinion already has too many animals.
• See the photo of the back of my car? Well, all those bags contain clothes that I will somehow squeeze into the two apiece free luggage allowance I can take to Honduras with me (leaving on August 7th, no doubt another Category 5 storm will land in my family room sometime between now and then...). A very generous gift was made from an area thrift store to take clothes down for the children of Honduras, for which I am very grateful. Faith without works is dead, so I try to find ways to keep it alive and well, especially for those who need it most.
• My mother, bless her, took Nicole and her friend to a local swimming pool and sat with them all day and still doesn't like getting ice cream for hot kids. I remember too vividly when I was growing up and used to swim at a small lake that when the Good Humor truck would jingle in to the parking lot I would beg to get an ice cream bar and inevitably the answer was no. Well, the answer was no to ice cream at the concession stand yesterday too, until Nicole called me on the cell phone I gave my mom to carry and I promised to pay her back (OK, now you know where my penny pinching tendencies come from...)
• Had a conversation with a Little League mom about how a Danville LL team FINALLY beat a Pottsville team. More on that later, because apparently the coaches couldn't stop talking about the team that lost to Pottsville several years ago that I also remember pretty vividly as Matt played on that team.
• Am still in negotiation with my mother over whether or not our fifteen year old dog will come to the lake with us. She keeps threatening to stay home if we don't bring Tino, even though we have an overfull car. My mom, us, the girls and a friend for each girl. In addition to the seven of us, Matt and Carolyn are coming (with their dog), Howie's sister and two of her grandchildren, and a friend from college and her daughter.

So we're off for a week and then I have three days till I leave for Roatan to write!

Oh, and other good news: I have another book proposal in circulation that is being seriously considered by two publishers. Oh my!

So check back, I intend to find a connection somehow, somewhere...