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In the next few weeks you’re going to hear me talk a lot about the Fireside Writer’s Conference. Here are 5 things you should know:

1 – The first 20 people to register will be entered into a drawing (the prize is AWESOME). If you don’t even need to hear the prize and just want to make sure you are in the first 20 people, then register now…

2 – Anyone who registers before September 1st gets a discounted rate.  You don’t even have to be in the first 20 for that one.

3 – I’m going to release the schedule of events, which will make you literarily (and literally) salivate with anticipation.

4 – Even if you don’t plan on attending, stay tuned – you will have the opportunity to win some almost-as-cool prizes just by sharing on Facebook, your blog, or Twitter.

5 – If you don’t need all the hooplah and just want the details, go HERE

I’m redoing my Google Reader next week so I’ve got two questions for you:

1 – What is your blog address (if you have one)?

2 – If you were only allowed to read ONE BLOG (besides your own), what would it be?

This is a re-post from earlier in the year, when we had just started our no-tv-for-a-year experiment.

First of all, happy birthday to my brother-in-law Ben, who turned 35 on Saturday. He runs a first class tennis academy right here in Lancaster County, so if you are interested in tennis you’ve got to look him up at Ben Halvorsen Tennis.

Anyway . . . the reason I bring him up, and the fact that he is getting really, really old, is that we went to his birthday party last night. We were hanging out in the kitchen, and at some point someone went into the living room and turned on the television to watch the Vikings/Saints game.

INTERESTING TELEVISION DILEMMA #1 – so this is the first time this has happened, but I’d imagine that it won’t be the last: we go to someone’s house to hang out and (gasp!) a tv set suddenly turns on. What to do? I ask you . . . WHAT TO DO!?!

Option one – watch television, breaking the fast but realizing the whole point of the thing is to become more involved in life, not less involved (I would consider hanging out alone in an empty kitchen being less involved in life, vs. going into the room where the tv is on and people are cheering and arguing and having fun)

Option two – go into the room where the television is but don’t watch the television, either by sitting where it is not visible or by wearing some sort of blindfold or sophisticated blinder device

Option three – break the television (accidentally on purpose) since our obviously subversive goal is to rid the world of the idiot box

Option four – find something even more fun, like Twister, and do that in the kitchen so that everyone wants to hang out with the cool, we’re-not-watching-tv-and-we’re-so-much-better-than-you couple.

Option five – just go with the flow

Okay, so I chose option five. And since enough people stayed in the kitchen to keep conversation interesting and fun, that’s where I stayed. And, yet again, in some small way I feel like my life was a bit better because of this decision not to watch television. Not I-won-the-lottery better, or I’ve-just-had-another-child better, but slightly better. For example, the few times I peeked into the living room, the folks watching television weren’t jumping around and giving each other high fives but were mostly just staring at the television like zombies. There was some polite conversation, but it was mostly along the lines of:

“So what do you think of that Brett Favre?” (still staring at the tv)
“Huh.”
“Good quarterback. Indecisive.”
“Yeah.”
“Good sausage bites, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s up with that Saints emblem?”
“I think it’s a floor-d-something.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah.”

In the kitchen I was catching up with people I hadn’t seen for years and talking, actually talking and not just letting sounds escape from my mouth. So that was fun, more fun than watching television, which is what I would have done if this happened a month ago.

Have a great Monday. INTERESTING TELEVISION CHALLENGE: Sometime tonight, when you’re about to turn on the television just stop and think for a moment – isn’t there something else you’d rather be doing?

This is a re-post from my old blog.

Seriously, guys, I’m about to be a millionaire.

Check out the following email I just received. I’m so giddy about it, I’m literally shaking. Don’t worry, I’ll still blog from my mansion.

The letter is as follows:

My Dear ,

How are you,first i will explain my self little to you before we continue.
I am the manager of bill and exchange at the foreign remittance department of BANK OF AFRICAN . (BOA) Ouagadougou, Burkina faso , I am writing to seek your interest over a transaction.

– I’m not worried that they don’t know my name. In fact, they are probably just trying to protect my identity from anyone who may have picked up this email by accident. I’m also not worried that when I searched this dude on Google the first thing that came up was “Scam 419”. That is a coincidence.

In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of $18.5m US dollars (Eighteen Million Five Hundred Thousand ) .
In an account that belongs to one of our foreign customer who died along with his entire family in 31 July,2000 in a plane crash.

– At first I wondered at this person’s inability to write a complete sentence, or to use correct punctuation, but then I realized that this inattention to detail completely lines up with someone who would misplace $18.5 million in their department. This is called compatible evidence. This makes me more comfortable with the situation.

Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless somebody applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidelines but unfortunately we learnt that all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him at the plane crash leaving nobody behind for the claim.
You can confirm the accident from bbc news website:

– The entire story summarized in a 74-word sentence using only one comma. Amazing. And the fact that there is a website attached showing the accident only confirms my suspicions: I am about to be a millionaire.

The Banking law and guideline here stipulates that if such money remained unclaimed after five years, the money will be transferred into the Bank treasury as unclaimed fund.
The request of foreigner as next of kin in this business is occasioned by the fact that the customer was a foreigner and a Burkinabe cannot stand as next of kin to a foreigner.

– The accident was in 2000. The money has to remain unclaimed for 5 years, which means these folks have been searching for me since 2005. That also means they have been working really hard for a long time to find me. I like that. Plus, they used the word “Burkinabe” which not everyone knows means pertaining to or originating from Burkino Faso. Only a genuine Burkinabe would know that.

We agree that 30 % of this money will be for you as foreign partner, in respect to the provision of a foreign account, 10 % will be set aside for expenses incurred during the business and 60 % would be for me and my colleagues.

– This is where I began to get a little unhappy . . . 30%? I don’t think so, buddy. I need at least 40% plus travel expenses. What do you think, I’m some kind of writer with no regular income and will go through all this hassle for chopped liver?

There after I and my colleagues will visit your country for disbursement according to the percentages indicated. Therefore to enable the immediate transfer of this fund to you as arranged, you must apply first to the bank as relations or next of kin of the deceased indicating your bank name, your bank account number, your private telephone and fax number for easy and effective communication and location where in the money will be remitted .

– A logical request. Although I thought all the relations or next of kin died in the plane crash? How can I then apply as one of them? Maybe he forgot that part. Oh well, not a big deal.

Upon receipt of your reply, I will send to you by fax or email the text of the application. I will not fail to bring to your notice that this transaction is hitch free and that you should not entertain any atom of fear as all required arrangements have been made for the transfer .

– I was feeling a molecule of fear at first, and then a polyatomic ion amount of fear. But when he reminded me not to entertain even an atom of fear, well, then I was reassured.

So I’ve sent an email to drhenryjombo@sify.com to collect on this huge fortune. I’ll let you know how it goes. I won’t forget you all, when I’m rich.

This is an excerpt from the family history book I’m working on.  The first part was posted on Friday.

The kitchen table – these were the hubs to the wheel of life.  Breakfast together around the table, then out for chores or school or work, then back to the table for lunch, then out again, then back to the table for supper: tired eating at the end of a long day.  The kitchen lantern hissed late into the night over those tables.

And there Samuel lay.  He would have been feverish by then, perhaps clutching his gut in pain.  He may have required help to walk to the table, assistance to rise up on it and then lie down.  The doctor fumbled nervously through his bag as Samuel was given something to drink, something to numb the pain, and something to bite down on.

The eyes of the children peeking through the windows would have widened as Samuel Lapp’s shirt was pulled back.

“Come away!” their parents yelled from across the yard.  “Get away from there!”

And they scattered, relieved to be torn from that sight.

The doctor that no longer has a name pulled the small scalpel from his bag, hands shaking.  Perhaps Samuel felt the cold steel slide into his skin, or perhaps the pain he had been in for days was already clouding his mind.

His blood ran out on the sheets covering the family table as the drunk doctor pulled him apart.  But he would not survive.  Removed, along with the offending organ, was his life, and it fluttered around the room for a moment, then vanished into the cold December air.

My great-great grandmother, in her early 20s, sat in the back room with her three children: Anna, Benjamin and John.  A widow.  Her family gathered around her, hugging her, wiping her tears.  The children sat there, probably wondering what kind of a doctor brought this into the house.

I wonder how that doctor felt on the train back to Philadelphia.  Relieved perhaps, that it was over?  Stone drunk?  Would he remember the surgery in the morning?  Would his life be racked with guilt because of the Amish man with appendicitis that he killed on that December day?

If I were a ghost, I would hover over him in that train and shout.  I would tell him not to feel bad – his slight of hand, his willingness to try, may have killed Samuel Lapp.  But on that day, December 10, 1898, that doctor saved my life.  And the life of my mother’s family.  The life of my son.

Because Catharine went on to marry my great-great grandfather, Amos King.  And they gave birth to my great-grandmother.  And so on.

One death leads to so many lives.

This is an excerpt from the family history book I am working on.  I hope you enjoy it.  Have a great weekend.

The doctor arrived at the Gordonville train station.  In 1898 there were four tracks slicing their way through the small town (population 413), and nearly 200 trains passed through every day.  I can imagine the Amish relatives of my great-great grandmother (Catharine Lapp at the time – she was also Amish, as were all my descendants in the late 1800s) waiting by the tracks, perhaps still sitting in their buggy.  This doctor was their last hope.

The intriguing part about history is that we know what will happen.  We know who will live and who will die.  And in his own strange way, this doctor saved my life that day.

I can only imagine what the doctor was feeling on his way to the house.  Had he done many appendix operations before?  Doctors had only recently begun treating appendicitis by removing the appendix, as opposed to draining it as they had for centuries.  Opening a body up, removing organs, cleaning the infection, sterilizing and suturing the internal areas, knitting the flesh back together, stopping the bleeding – the skills that allowed these things  to happen were still in their infancy.

In the late 1800s appendectomies were rarely successful.

Apparently our kind doctor was nervous – he arrived intoxicated, wreaking of the alcohol he had been drinking all the way from Philadelphia.  In those days the patient needed alcohol to dull the pain.  The doctor sometimes used it to calm his nerves as an antidote against the violent, bloody scene an operation like that could become.  He was driven to my great-great grandmother’s house on a cold December day in 1898.  He got down from the buggy and carried his bag into the house.  The horses’ mouths threw steam up into the air, their hides smoking with heat.

The doctor was ushered inside.  The panes of glass were coated with a frosty glaze from the cold, but that didn’t stop the neighbor kids from huddling around outside, wiping away the frost with their cold fingers, watching as the doctor asked the family to lay Samuel Lapp on the large kitchen table.

(to be continued on Monday)