I was actually a bit worried, nothing was past due but things were getting tight. And knowing that everyone has their own expenses I wasn't sure anyone would be able to help out. But plenty of you cam through with donations and in two days, we reached goal for June and got a start on July.

Yay, us! :)

I'll be gone for a week in July but I'll have my laptop with me and Piper and my other helpers will be around to keep things on an even keel. Let's have a great summer!

Hugs to all,
Erin

Ranting in the comments on someone else's post is not a friendly act. If you have some subject about which you feel strongly enough to post a rant, please do so at a site where ranting is allowed. It's not allowed here.

I overheard some men enjoying this rather rude joke at a party on Saturday, so as part of the language studies that my brother and I are doing, I translated it into my semi-bad Spanish:

Una vez Caperucita Roja estaba caminando por el bosque, para llevar una cesta de cosillas buenas a su abuela. Caminaba sola cuando un conejo se acercá³ a ella y le dijo: "Me temo para te, Roja. Hay un lobo en el bosque y él podrá­a intentar herir te."

I went out to eat at a fast food restaurant and felt a bit lonesome and bored afterwards. So I did something I do once in a while and headed over to the nearby casino to people watch.

As usual when I do this, I leave my purse and money in the car, taking in only myself, my keys and my phone and a small amount of cash in case I get hungry.

This link is to the blog of an acquaintance of mine, Mark Evanier, who writes the Groo comic book and the Garfield television show among many other things. Mark is a whiz at words and here he does a marvelous job of expressing part of what I mean when I say, give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

http://www.newsfromme.com/2012/06/03/the-olaf-story/

Hugs to all,
Erin

What with vet and doctor bills, repairs to the house and other expenses, I just had to borrow $800 to pay this month's bills. Accordingly, I've increased the amount I'm asking in the Hatbox because, quite frankly, the time I spend running the site could be spent doing something that would earn money. Expenses on the site have gone up also, since running websites and servers is Piper's actual job, I feel I have to pay her at least some for the time she spends working on the site and the servers as well.

We passed 19,000 stories on Sunday, 19,001 to be exact. We'll probably hit 20,000 sometime in July; Fictionmania may get there first. :)

Here's his lesson for this morning:

It's almost the end of the month and we are still a bit short of our goal for the month. Please, if you can, help us keep BigCloset up and running by subscribing. Thanks.

Hugs,
Erin and Piper

I’m not sure how long we stayed with Ma and Pa that time, not more than a few months I’m sure. We moved into a house in town that wasn’t much more than a shed for a short time and then into a place I called The Little Red House. It had asphalt siding made to look like red bricks and it sat between the schoolhouse and The Big Red House where another bunch of cousins lived.

Mom took an immediate job in one of the agricultural sheds since Aunt Opal would stay at home to take care of me and John. Dad soon joined Mom, sorting fruit and vegetables for shipment. I seem to remember this as being cantaloupes, but that doesn't seem right since we arrived in fall after most of the melons would have already been harvested.

The song, "Big Rock Candy Mountain" may have saved my Aunt Opal's life back in 1951. It happened like this:

BigCloset is not a social media site, it's not chaos and it's not a place without rules. One of the rules is don't post as a story something that isn't a story. A piece of a story that doesn't have a title yet, that's perhaps posted to draw comments and be developed later into a story should not be posted as fiction. It should go probably as a blog or as a forum post under one of the writing categories. There are places here for such posts but they don't belong with the stories.

Not a lot of enthusiasm for this here at BC, so the consensus among our admins is also no. At least, not for BC. We have two other sites we are attempting to bring up within the next six months that reader tags might be just the thing.

However, this discussion gave us some parameters for this:

1. It would be opt-in for authors whether they allowed any of their stories to use user tags. Default, no user tags. And a switch where authors could turn off user tags for one or all of their stories.