Happy Thanksving to All

Here's the latest mug shot of the group. We ended up taking this before everyone got there because a couple of people had to leave. It's gotten harder and harder to get everyone together at one time. Still, we had a nice dinner (in shifts), company (in shifts), and lots of picture taking. Jenny went around snapping outlandish photos of people eating, touching their noses or at odd angles. She got one of my right ear, one of my left ear, one of the clip in my hair, my nose, my chin, my left elbow, my open mouth and others too weird to mention. At the end of the day, some of us trooped next door and watched a slide show on Lori's Wii.

Today was my day to get back into the groove of work. I can say I gave it a valiant effort although I didn't actually write anything but emails and one query letter. Managed to do a small bit of organizing, clean up in my bedroom and sorting out piles of clutter. Can now say that I don't have a single notebook that hasn't been marked with colored post it minis telling me what's inside them. Have files for my current WIP's ready to go. Put the extra computer away for parts. (Since the hard drive crashed, I've decided to just use that pc for extras. When I can afford a hard drive, I'll put an extra in this pc.) As of today, almost everything is saved on the pc (still have a few files on the laptop yet.) ALL my photos are on disk or flash drive - twice!

If I can do two more crits and a long book share crit, I'll be caught up with crits!! If I write two more worksheets tomorrow, I can send out a batch and get paid next week. Feel like there is light at the end of a tunnel.

Also, got a nice email yesterday. The day before Thanksgiving, just on a whim, I decided to cut and paste a short trivia article I wrote on PEEPS, the marshmallow candy. Had found a history magazine that accepted trivia and it sounded like fun. An email came zining back that he accepted the article and it would be in the April, 09 issue! They'll send the check out on publication---hooray!

As if that wasn't good enough, he mentioned that if I had any suggestions, comments, etc. please feel free to email him back. So, I wrote back to ask if I should send queries to him. Had a couple of ideas on the Drummer boys of the Civil War and Sybil Ludington, the female Paul Revere. He zinged back an email while I was still online--yes, he'd love to see the queries and would give me a Feb. deadline for the Drummer boy and March deadline for Sybil - like he already planned to accept them! Sent back a nice query with more details on the drummers - no word yet. Maybe tomorrow???