Hope Springs Eternal

Mississippi River cruise

Greetings, Fire Enthusiasts. How is everyone? I am well. As I pen this we have just recently returned from a vacation that a few of you may have heard about. More on that later.

Usually, all I do is complain about the day job, and the length of my work day - the 12 hours days and all of that. However, I can report some very good news. Since I took this supervisor position at my company's Cold Storage Facility, I had really been in an unofficial acting-Manager role. Now, I am pleased to announce that I have been officially promoted to Facility Manager. It's a big thing for me, and they will be making it official this week.What's big is the recognition of the hard work I had already been doing.

For book news, it's taken a bit longer than I'd hoped, but I should have my edits back any day now. I guess that's what I get for writing something that is about 40k words longer than I usually write. The hope is to have the book available in all formats by the middle of May. We'll see. As soon as I get those back and begin the final phase of this production, I will begin sharing the cover more - as well as teasers.

I was interviewed recently by Fiona McVie for her Author Interview site. It's been a while since I have taken part in one of those. It was a bit of fun, and she's a cool new buddy. You can find it here.

The bank of the Mississippi

Breakfast, anyone? 

We just had the opportunity to follow our 17 year old's high school Jazz Choir to New Orleans. Many have asked me how the choir did - and they did fine. They took silver in the festival; however, the performance was secondary to the trip. Originally, there was supposed to be a New York trip, but that fell through on New York's side of things. The choir teacher then began looking for some other trip to take the kids on. I had hoped we wouldn't do anything since my wife and I celebrate twenty-five years of marriage this summer. I wanted to find something just for us in June. However, when the idea to visit New Orleans came up, it proved too tempting to pass up. We called it early celebrating.

Cemetery Tour

In any event, we took in a swamp tour, an old cemetery tour, a ghost tour, cruised down the Mississippi River for lunch and visited the National World War 2 Museum. Perhaps New Orleans might not have been the most appropriate city for the teens to be visiting; however, all in all, I think they had a good time. It might be one of those deals where they look back at some future date and look upon it very fondly. It's not Disneyland. It's a historic and old city, and one might need to be a bit older to fully appreciate where you're standing.

KHS Jazz Choir

Thanks for stopping by.

Rian & a 3-ft gator.

Oh, and it's baseball season. I'm wearing one of my Cubs shirts as I pen this post, and my beloved Cubbies start the season Easter Sunday night by playing against the hated Cardinals. "We" haven't won a World Series since 1908, and haven't played for a championship since World War 2 ended in 1945. But hope springs eternal. Let's Go Cubs! This is the year!

Yeah, I'm a glutton for punishment.

We'll talk soon.

At the Bourbon Street Hard Rock Cafe w/ Morrison.