Updates

Thumper seems to be doing okay appetite wise.  The blood test results indicated that her thyroid is fine, so the vet has placed her on high calorie wet food that we are mixing with dry.  She devours the food, so we know she's eating well.  I think we will weigh her once or twice a week from here on out just to make sure she doesn't lose anymore.  It's been a stressful time for me and my wife since we treat her like our baby.

The book is doing well at church.  I am up to 12 orders and the deadline is next Sunday.  After church next week, I will order the books online.  After shipping, we are close to making $45 for the youth group which is nice.  I hope we can get 3 more sales so I know we will go over the $50 mark in profits for the kids.  

I decided that I will be going up to my school on Tuesday and Wednesday to get my classroom in order and work on lesson material.  School starts here on August 13 and the week of the 6th will be packed with professional development, so I need to get the classroom in order.  Starting a new year is always stressful since you don't know how the kids are after the summer off and just starting in general.  I look forward to getting back into the routine.  I know my wife is ready for me to go back (heh).  I plan to write more tomorrow on a more religious nature because I have so many things to say.

Checking In

Sorry for the lack of blogging. I've been working on getting Scorched Earth ready for the next issue. (Submission deadline is July 30th) and we have a graphic design project that I've been working on. Until it comes out, I have to keep it under wraps, but I can say it is going to do a lot of good here locally. It is a paid job, so I've been devoting a lot of time to it. I am going to get back to getting school work ready tomorrow. I don't have too much more I can do here at home and I plan to work next week up at school.

I've started taking orders for the book at church and after the announcement, I have 5 orders already. I'm taking orders until August 5th, so I am hoping for more. I would love to get 26 orders so I can get a discount and give more of the money back to the youth group. I'm also planning to set up my own web site soon to advertise the book and I'm going to go to the local paper and get a story about the book. I'm thinking about asking the public library about doing a poetry reading, but Becky thinks that it would bomb. It won't hurt to ask the librarian if they've had any in the past. I know I won't sell a lot of books. Most poets, unless they are the giants, are lucky if they sell hundreds. My goal is to sell at least 50 books between local and online. If I can do that, I will consider myself a success.

My book arrived!

I was working on a project today and decided to take a break.  When I went outside, I noticed a package on my porch and behold, my book had arrived!  I went in and like a kid on Christmas Day, I tore opened the package and started looking through it to make sure everything looked okay.  I can honestly say that Lulu.com did an excellent job putting it together.  It is exactly the way I had designed it.  My book is now on sale at Lulu.com.  All the proceeds are going my church's youth group to help fund their trips and activities.
You can click here to see it and purchase a copy.  

Important News

I had planned on posting more this week, but I have been busy.  Between getting materials ready for school and other miscellanous stuff, I had an important project.  That project in question, is the self-publication of my first poetry book entitled: Along Life's Path:Experiences Through Poetry.  The 71-page book is a collection of my poetry taken from parts of my life.  I'm going through Lulu.com to make the book and it will be sold on their site only since I couldn't justify getting the ISBN number since this book will be a small audience. The book isn't up for sale yet because I want to get a copy of the book to make sure the quality is to my liking.  Once I feel comfortable, I will open it up for sale to the public.  I don't plan to make any money on this book, in fact, when I tell fellow church members about the book, I plan on taking orders and just charge an extra amount which I plan to give a good amount back to the church as a donation to either the youth group or seed money for next years VBS.  

This is truly an exciting time and I can't wait to get my copy.