I Was Powerless!

Today has been truly great. This morning around eight-thirty, right when I was fixin' to walk with Leslie I heard a loud clap of thunder outside so I unplugged everything inside the trailer and then shutdown our computers.  Since I was powerless and could not exercise or work on the computer until the thunderstorm passed I turned on our AC/DC Bose and cranked up my music to calm me from the storm.

Around nine-thirty Lisa, Matt and Meghann showed up with two new volunteers, but since it was still storming outside we invited them inside the trailer for a really fun visit. As we sipped our coffees we huddled around T.'s computer sitting on the breakfast-bar and watched a slideshow of his latest pictures while my iPod played one great song after another.

When Michael McDonald started singing his version of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" I cranked up the volume on the Bose. Next came a couple of Beatles songs and everyone seemed to be enjoying the music except Tony because he doesn't like loud music or anything that isn't old Country. When a Lynrd Skynrd song started playing Lisa asked me to crank up the volume because she loves them, too.

Thirty minutes later the storm passed and the sun was shining so everyone went outside to help Tony with his chores and to walk dogs except Lisa. After everyone had left the trailer she told me that I was going to love Mark's present and then she teased me by dropping a few clues about his gift, which of course, didn't seem to help me guess what was coming from Mississippi, so she left the trailer laughing.

While I was plugging everything back into the wall sockets I decided to walk six miles with Leslie and then I changed my mind. I decided today was the day that I had to finish my book and push the buttom to get the printing process started.

Around noon T. came inside and told me not to worry about fixin' him lunch because he wanted me to finish my book. Around one o'clock Tone came out of his office and fixed himself a big bowl of Blue Bell's Butter Pecan as I typed away on my laptop.

An hour or so later I half-hollered down the hall, "Tony! I need your help!" When he came into the Big Room I said, "I have it done, but I need to print it out one more time to make sure I have the Table of Contents pages correct. Could you please punch holes in the pages so I can load them into my notebook while I am back in my office watching the printer?" I handed T. the hole puncher and he set up shop on the breakfast bar.

The next forty minutes was a scream. After every five pages that were printed I would grab them and take them to Tony and then return to my office to gather another five pages to give to him. We were an assembly line in action until I had a paper jam on page 147! Three minutes later I was back into printing production and running from room to room as Tony carefully punched three holes at a time on five pieces of paper and then putting them in order into my pink notebook.

After we were done with the printing and punching process, Tony went back into his office to do some plowing on his multiple farms while I carefully double checked the pages for the Table of Contents. When I was done with that, I made a few more corrections to my book and thought I was ready to go online to 48hrBooks.com to get my book published, but there was a small setback.

When I put the CD with cover art into my computer that Trisha at Copies Plus had burned for me my Mac told me that the disc was unreadable. I tried again, but I got the same message so I called Copies Plus to ask them to e-mail me the artwork.

When I told Marcie, who works for Lisa and Rodney, about the problem it was quickly fixed in two minutes. The reason for the problem was that I had forgotten to tell them that I use a Mac and the CD had been formatted for a PC.

Fifteen minutes later, after I filled out 48hrBooks.com's form and uploaded the files—I pushed the button—Submit!  I am so thrilled that I did this today and I cannot wait to see the printed proof that should be arriving on Wednesday or Thursday of next week!

To celebrate that I had finally pushed the button on my book, and because we hadn't eaten lunch together, we decided to go to Randy and Lisa's Save Inn restaurant. On our way to Kerrville we realized that the Save Inn was closed so we ate some Mexican food instead and then we came home.

This evening Kinky called me. After I told him about pushing the button on my book he told me that Jon and Sandy Wolfmueller told him that my book looked great and so did he! Yeah!

I'm fixin' to go to bed because I have to get up early to do "The Harley Show" at 7:45 tomorrow morning.

Y'all have a great evening!