Volunteers Needed

How would you like to help my books travel all around the country? I have signed up with BookCrossing.com for their "read and release" program. I will send out (drop off somewhere) two of each of my books which will be marked as "Free Book" with stickers and a bookmark which direct the finders to log onto BookCrossing.com and make note of when and where they found the book, read it, then pass it on (leave it somewhere for someone else to read). By setting the book free in public places like motels, or doctors' offices,the mall, or interstate rest areas, they could conceivably travel far from their original release point.

So, I'm looking for volunteers from around the country and the family in various parts of the country to "release" one or more of my captive books into their "freedom" to be read by anyone who finds them. Let's see, there's Washington State, Vermont, Maine, North Carolina, Missouri, Wisconsin, Florida, and Arizona (that I can think of) all represented here on FFF.

Email me if you would like me to send you one of my books to "release" in your area. Let's start these little guys on a fabulous journey which we can track on BookCrossing.com.

Thanks,

Ruth

Bountiful Blessings

Bountiful Blessings

cranberry delight
pumpkin pies, apple dumplings
cornbread and corn pudding

melt-in-your-mouth good
mashed potatoes and gravy
tasty brown turkeys

families gather
around bountiful tables
feasting on love

thankfully joyous
prayerfully silent
together again

Sure hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I heard from Esther and from David, Peg and Eric (and Alice and Fred were eating at the fish place with them), but let's hear from the Arizona, Maine, Vermont/Florida groups and anyone else who might read this. How was Thanksgiving day celebrated in your neck of the woods?

My New Favorite T-Shirt

Inquiring Minds Want To Know

The Christmas season is fast approaching and I've heard through the grapevine that many are wondering what we are doing as far as presents and/or stockings are concerned. We had last talked about doing our next family get together in the summer of 2008 so that those visiting the Seattle area would have more to do with the nicer weather. So here are the questions:

1. Are we still planning our next get together this coming summer?

2. Are we doing presents and/or stockings this Christmas and just mailing them to each other or are we waiting to do presents and/or stockings for the summer?

3. What is the budget for presents and/or stockings?

4. Are we doing presents or stockings or both?

5. How many of you realize that Apollo needs his own stocking?

Who IS This Guy?

Okay guys and gals, it's getting close to that time again when we need to put together our new family anthology "Family Matters II" (Or name it something else - you decide).

If it is to be Family Matters II, we need for Peggy to duplicate that heart and send me a new cover pic with two hearts joined together.

We will also need a new dedication and introduction so start thinking.

I have had contributions already of:

"Collections" - a short story by David
"Enough is Enough" - a short story by whom??? (Fred I think)
"The Pen" - a short story by Peggy
"The Towel" - a short story by Tarja
"Graduation Day" - Peggy's speech at Summit
Various poetry - by Tarja
Various poetry - by Ruth

That puts the book at approximately 85 pages. The last book was 120 pages so.... what else do you have that we can use? I look forward to hearing from you.

Ever just had one of those days??

OK…so much to tell…

Michelle and I went to Anacortes today because Summit has training classes on Thursdays for their dogs-in-training and said we were welcome anytime we wanted to come. So we thought we’d give it a try. We arrived a little early so we drove to the Starbucks to get some coffee-to-go. Michelle went in and got the coffee while the dogs and I stayed in the van. She came back, put my coffee in the drink holder and held on to hers, and off we went to training. Of course, there were other people and dogs there waiting for the one with the key to the building to show up when we pulled in. Michelle and I sat and pondered for a moment or so on the best possible way to get the dogs out of the van (they were quite excited to see the others…up to that point they had been very calm and well behaved the whole trip up). So anyway, Michelle pushed my unlock button so I could back up some and then went to try to get Hayden out of the van using the side door on the driver’s side. Hayden bolted out the door (no big deal) and Apollo came running in front of me…his butt hit the coffee (pumpkin spice latte) in the holder and whoosh there goes latte all on the floor and Apollo. You had to be there, but all one could do was laugh.

Class went fine, and they were all so tickled to see Apollo’s new thing of pulling off my hat.

After class was over, Michelle, the dogs, and I loaded back up in the van and headed home. They are doing some construction on I-20 and at one point just after going through a light, they narrowed the road from two lanes into one by merging the left lane into the right lane gradually forcing you over with those orange barrel things. We were in the left lane and merging nicely into the right lane when out of nowhere comes this SUV speeding past us on the left. Now honestly there was no room left for him to get by us, but somehow he managed and scared us both to death in the process. Michelle then says to me, “Did he hit us?”. I didn’t think so, but she said the mirror was off kilter so at the next light, she put it in park and quickly opened the door to take a peek out. She said she saw some scratches on the front bumper area so she tried flashing the lights and honking at the guy (who was right in front of us) to get him to pull over. He did not so Michelle picked up her cell phone and called the police to tell them what happened and to give them his license plate number. The lady said that we should pull over and she would dispatch someone to come and take a report so we pulled into the market there at the intersection before getting on to I-5. There is a light right there and the guy was still in front of us so as we went by him to pull into the market, Michelle motioned for him to roll down his window. The passenger did, and she told him that we had reported him to the state police. His response, “Yeah good luck with that.” And then the light turned green and off he went. So we waited for the police who showed up in about 10 minutes. He looked at the damage which is really minimal and basically said there wasn’t anything much he could do. The damage wasn’t serious enough to charge him with hit and run. If the guy had pulled over, he would have gotten a ticket, of course, regardless of the damage. The cop said he would keep an eye out for him as the least he could do was read him the riot act, but that chances are his boss would not find it serious enough to give him permission to take the ferry over to the East Sound (he ran the plate number we gave him and that is where it was registered) to track the guy down to read him the riot act. He said to get some rubbing compound and that most, if not all, of those scratches would probably come out. In all honesty, had the guy pulled over when he did it and apologized, I would have probably not worried about it at all…the scratches are no worse than what Eric had done when parking the van in the garage at the apartment that one time…it was just his attitude that made both Michelle and I so mad.

On another subject…

Tuesday I got a letter from the local social security office giving me my temporary online password and instructing me to go online before the end of the month and create my permanent password. It said that if you were a new beneficiary not to do this until you had received your notice of benefit. Of course, this led me to believe that I might have been approved, but I had not received a notice of benefits letter. Eric thought maybe the local office was just “on the ball” and that I would be receiving my letter shortly so I decided to give it a few days (besides it was after hours when I got it so I couldn’t call anyone). Last night I went online to my banking account, and I was surprised to see that a deposit had been made by social security…still I had no notice of benefits in yesterday’s mail. So this afternoon when I got home, I called the 800 number in the password letter to see what was going on. The nice lady informed me that I had indeed been approved and that I should be getting my notice of benefits any day. She went over the information I would be receiving with me so here it is…the amount deposited will be my monthly amount, and my deposit will go in on the 2nd Wednesday of each month. The deposit I got already was for the middle of October to the middle of November (they pay one month in arrears). I officially became disabled when I stopped working back in the middle of April and social security does not pay for the first 5 months of your disability so my sixth month started in mid-October. So I should only have about one month of overlapping payments between what social security deposited and the check I got from Cigna (long-term disability insurance) to deposit into my account tomorrow which covers October 19th through November 18th. I will contact the Cigna people tomorrow to let them know I’ve been approved so they can take the overlapping payment money out to pay themselves back for that one month. I am also curious if they will now continue to pay me the difference of what they were sending me and what social security is now paying me until my federal retirement gets approved. As soon as I get that notice of benefits letter, I will call OPM (the federal retirement people) to get a fax number so that I can prove I now have social security and they can move on with my federal retirement application.

I guess that’s all I have to tell you for now.

Happy Anniversary

Happy 21st Anniversary Fred & Alice!!

Just a Growing Boy (aka No More Puppy Photos Please!)

Do these photos tell you how much Cody is growing?!









Here's Batman. Where's Robin?

Scrabble Quilt

I come home from work today to a GREAT surprise...well, two surprises, actually.

I've been calling my room my "Fortress of Solitude" ever since I bought this house because it's not attached to the house and it allows me to escape from the world with no one to bother me. It's a reference to Superman's secret home in the arctic which he also called the Fortress of Solitude. So, I get home today and walk out to my building and there, above my door, is a beautiful wooden castle silhouette emblazoned with the words FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE. I'm told that Peggy asked Mom to make the sign for me, but I'm assuming Merle actually did the work, and Fred installed it above my door, so my thanks go out to all of you for the gift.

So, anyway, I'm laughing and smiling at my new sign...it really tickled me to no end, and as I walked into my room I was hit by the second surprise. The SCRABBLE quilt, which I commissions from Mom a year or so ago, was laid out on my bed. Pictures are below...



This is a king sized quilt made in the likeness of a SCRABBLE board. All the squares and edges are just like a real game board. All the bonus spaces are there in wonderful colors. And as if that weren't enough, Mom made a full set of quilted letter tiles so we can actually play SCRABBLE right on the quilt! On the back of the quilt (I'll need to get pictures of that too) are all the names of our family members, laid our in Scrabble tiles. Mom did a GREAT job and I was really happy and surprised to have it all here when I walked in this evening.

Thanks to Alice for putting the quilt on the bed.

Update 11/10/2007: Fred and I played Scabbleon the quilt this morning. We only had time for three turns each, but I was ahead 60 to 59..so I count that a win for me. :-)

House For Sale Update

We received an offer on our house Thursday night. At first glance it appeared unacceptable. Currently our home is listed at $175,000. They offered $167,000 plus requested that we pay $7,000 in closing costs and down payments on their loan. Combined, that is equal to an offer of $160,000 which is $15,000 less than our asking price. It's a little too soon to drop that much. The reason they are asking for us to pay $7,000 is because they have no cash for their down payment. They are 1st time home buyers and we were told they only qualify for a 170,000 loan. Well why didn't they at least offer $170,000 instead of $167,000. I mean, if you are going to ask me to pay your down payment shouldn't you at least make an offer for your max loan amount? A little insulting.

So we countered with $170,000 and they pay their own down payments, which is a drop in our price of $5,000. Quite a nice offer if you ask me.

So our people talked to their people, who said they just don't have the money for the down payment. So we offered $177,000 and we would pay their requested $7,000 which is basically the same offer we gave them before. But we didn't expect it to be acceptable since they only qualify for $170,000.

They countered with $175,000 and we pay the $7,000. (apparently the $170,000 wasn't accurate.)

So we said OK. It's equivalent to $168,000 which is $7,000 less than our current asking price but still nets us after all expenses $5,000 more than we needed to pay off all debt incurred in fixing up the house. It also represents an $8,000 increase from their initial offer. It also represents an increase of $19,000 more than we paid when we bought the house.

There are 2 potential snags. First, if the house doesn't appraise for $175,000 they either have to come up with some cash to cover the difference or we have to lower our price or a combination of the two. Second, they are getting an FHA loan which means if the home inspection comes up with any list of necessary repairs, then they must be done or the contract is canceled. There is no negotiating repairs.

We are going to try to get them to do the appraisal within a week so we know quickly whether that's an issue or not. We will let y'all know more as we find it out.

Oh and by the way, we are still holding an Open House this Sunday, just in case.

Happy Birthday Merle

Happy Birthday Esther!

John & Amy's Cats

Well I thought somebody from AZ should post on the blog, so while I am visiting I will do it. Here are some cute pics of the cats.