Tomorrow, Wednesday, is Gabi's funeral, although everyone will be celebrating her life as her male name. I have a long drive to get there for 10.30 am BST but I'll do my best to get there.

Afterwards I'm going to walk along the Ridgeway Path, to see the White Horse of Uffington and Wayland's Smithy, both of which are prehistoric monuments. I'm sure Gabs would approve of my taking some time to reflect upon things before driving home.

Angharad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uffington_White_Horse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayland%27s_Smithy

Having dinner with not one, but two pastors can be a tad nerve wracking. Now, imagine you're meeting one (who's known you for 20 years) as yourself, for the first time... And then imagine that you're meeting the other for the first time and he will be your pastor as you transition. Can we spell butterflies?

In case you're wondering, this is a post about drabbles, not magic. ^.~ After posting my last drabble, I had looked through my stories and realized there were enough 100-word stories to make a collection. So, to make it easier for anyone who likes one of my drabbles to find the others (and to appease my obsessive need to organize things >.< ), I've created a new heading called Heather Rose's Drabbles, and placed the following stories under that heading:

We had a great time at the picnic on Saturday and Beth and I had an adventure in San Francisco Sunday complete with phantom elevators and aggressive potholes, I'm sure it will all end up in a story by one or the other of us. :)

Thanks again to everyone who showed up and made Saturday such a lovely day. And thanks to Beth for the good company on the trip.

And thanks to Piper and Bob and everyone else who kept watch on the site while I was gone. Piper had to do a bit of rescue Sunday night while Beth and I were out with my brother and his wife for dinner. Thanks!

Since I started writing for my Retcon stories again, I've received several private messages addressing a problem with my earlier stories. You see, when I first started writing these, I had made the mistake of assuming that the target audience would be primarily fans of the comic book genre (who were also interested in TG).

So I would write as if everyone knew about the characters and situations I was talking about. Just one example, in 'When Lightning Strikes' Chapter 1, I make an off-hand reference to "Akira", by Katsuhiro Otomo, when talking about a minor character.

In about three hours, we will hit the 15 millionth visitor to BCTS since the beginning of the new count in June of 2005. If it's you, duck!

And thanks!

Hugs,
Erin

Well, I was taking a count, and my next story will be my one hundredth story or poem here. Just think, at this rate I will have almost as much as "bike" by sometime in the next century (assuming no more entries come from our pal Angharad there in the meantime...)

We had a great time at the BC picnic yesterday! We stayed so late, we had to take down the tents in the dark. LOL.

I'll let someone else who's better with names list who all made it, I'm afraid my memory would fail me and I would leave someone out.

It was great to see some old friends and meet a few more new ones in person. I think we talked about everything from document hassles to where to put the period at the end of a quotation. :)

I don't know when we can have another of these but we can probably talk about it in chat.

Hugs to all,
Erin

I just tried to go to Fictionmania and it won't load. I wonder if it's down? I tried one of the stories in my bookmarks and it worked. I'm wondering what the deal is?

This has to be a new record: 89 comments and counting. I know that many of them are replies by the author; however, this is what a good story is about: great writing that stirs up even the most reticent of commenters. Great job, Lilith!

Portia

Well, Oklahoma is in the middle of a severe drought, we've had less rain for the year than we normally get just in March. Grass fires are a daily occurrence across the state. If we don't get a lot of rain soon, there will be no wheat or hay to harvest. People had better get ready to pay much more for food as well as gasoline. On the bright side, we here in Oklahoma do have the lowest gas prices in the country. :)

I was reading Lilith's little rant about people taking the time to comment on stories. I want to give some examples from my own stories on how your comments make a difference to me. I wrote "Vision Spring", and the first official story "A little nudge" got 11 comments, more than enough to encourage me to to continue. I wrote "This is how a heart breaks." which got seven, but I figured I would do another one anyway. I worked very hard at the third story, taking time to research many aspects, and even found a song that fit the mood of the story.

For those who don't know, I have two wonderful 10 year old girls. Yup, they're twins.

Anyway, the two of them went to a friends birthday party tonight and as 10 year olds do, they had a blast.

When I went to pick them up, everyone but my girls had already left. As usual they weren't ready, they and their friend and her brother were too wrapped up in playing. They were playing dress up. They all were dressed as their favorite Disney princess, even the brother. He was made up as Snow White. It was all very charming and I just couldn't help but smile.

Down to Earth

I shall be heading up to see my mother, an invalid, in two days and spending about five days in total with her, for her 77th birthday. I am hoping my brother may come out for the meal, but as he hasn't spoken to me in years those hopes are a bit feeble. As a result I will have no time or link to put up any more of Annie's story for a few days after this weekend.