105 Ways to Give a Book

M-Reader

On Friday morning, my website went down. I was not alone in this malfunction. Some of my best friends saw the same error message that day. But I felt like Blogspot was cheating on me. There was anger. (What did I ever do to you Blogspot?) Regret. (Was it something I did with the coding, Blogspot? Just tell me.) Embarrassment. (Yes, the site is down. No, I don’t know what happened.) And, after an anxiety-ridden morning in which I imagined all my content deleted (After all that I gave you, Blogspot!), finally reconciliation. (We can work this out, Blogspot. I know we can.)

By the time my site was up and running, so was I. That is, running the errands and tasks necessary to going on a camping adventure with twelve Girl Scouts while packing up the Brownie for her own camping trip. Oh, and squeezing in a birthday party that both girls were invited to attend.

The camping trip went fine, though the weather was overcast and drizzly for most of the day. And the shelters that we were assigned were three-sided with a heavy rubber curtain for the fourth wall. A heavy curtain that was covered in black mold and mildew. A curtain that we did not use, relying instead on a plastic tarp and a shower curtain. If it had actually rained, we would have been screwed. But at least if it rained we would have had water, since our pump worked rather haphazardly. We took to leaving it on with a bucket underneath for the occasional times it would decide to bestow some water upon us. We also appeared to be the furthest site from pretty much everything, including the parking lot.

That said, we had a good time. My Brownie girl had a nice time with her troop and didn’t miss her mommy. My troop of fifth graders worked very well together and learned some valuable skills, as did I. They didn’t complain (much) or bicker. Some of them may have even gotten a decent night’s sleep. I think everyone had a great time.

I did not get a good night’s sleep. Apparently, sometime after say, thirty your body is not made to crash on a wooden floor with only a thin foam pad separating you from the boards. And when your pulled-together plastic tarps don’t go all the way to the floor of the shelter, the outside air blows in right on your face. Who knew? Anyway, I came home on Sunday morning and got to work on a piece for Edge of the Forest. And, oh yeah, I’ve got my big booktalking session tomorrow at the middle school. At 11:00 at night it sure would be nice if I felt like I had that under control. But here I am writing this instead.

But most importantly, I’ve got a new license plate. Whaddaya think?
Category: 8 comments

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool plates.
Suz

Little Willow said...

Very cool. :)

Mary Lee said...

Way cool! You should write in your URL with Sharpie marker...or get a URL bumper sticker so you don't get arrested for defacing a license plate.

Anonymous said...

Way cool license plate!!

Bkbuds said...

Oooh, nice plates.

Greg Pincus said...

that totally rocks, MR

Kori said...

Nice plate!

Anonymous said...

Greetings, I'm hopping over from Semicolon. Love the books, too! And the license plate. I'm a fellow Virginia too (southwest). I'll be on the look-out for M-reader!