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The Fireside Writer’s Conference is only 2 1/2 months away and registration is now open!  I am still looking at various venues, but the final location will be somewhere in Gap, Paradise or Strasburg.

So, our first promotion is here!

The first 20 people to register will be entered in a drawing to receive a free night’s stay at the Ellmaker House in Gap, Pennsylvania. It’s a beautiful bed and breakfast, and the innkeeper, Verna Fisher, is as friendly, hospitable, and knowledgeable of the area as they come!  So get your Fireside Writer’s Conference registration filled out and mailed in.  You can find it HERE.  By registering now, you can also take advantage of the discounted rate of $110, good for those who register before September 1st.

There’s also been a few questions about how many people will be attending. My goal is to provide an intimate gathering of artists where interaction between attendants and speakers actually happens in a spontaneous and informative way.  We will probably need to cap attendance at around 100 people.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.  Looking forward to seeing you there!

My apologies to those folks whose comments on Thursday didn’t show up right away – I was on vacation last week, didn’t have access to the internet, and apparently my spam blocker was on high alert.  So head back to Thursday’s post if you have a minute.  There were some great blogs highlighted.

Last week I stayed in a cabin in the woods with 16 family members. Maile and I took turns sleeping in – on the mornings I had to get up early with Sam, he and I usually walked out into the living room, sun streaming through the large windows.  It was completely quiet and peaceful.  On the mornings I slept in, I usually woke up to the sound of 8 kids under the age of 8 running in frantic circles after eating grandparent-supplied bowls of Captain Crunch.

The week supplied some much needed relaxation – late morning naps followed by lunch and swim time followed by late afternoon naps and dinner, then board games long into the evening.

Mostly I was reminded that sometimes we just need to get away.  I didn’t think I had time for an entire week off – lots of major (self-imposed) deadlines looming, too many projects that weren’t getting enough of my time.  But I needed that week.

And the world didn’t collapse.

I think last week was also a metaphor for my daily life – I’m not taking the quiet time I need EACH DAY to get refreshed and focused.  Just as taking an entire week to relax helped get this year back on track, perhaps taking 30 minutes every morning would do the same for each of my individual days.

What do you do to stay focused?

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.