Well, I didn’t make my goal of getting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal finished yesterday, but I’m close enough that I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Unless that light is from an oncoming train, we’re still in good shape. Today I’ll put the finishing touches on the new issue, Miss Terry will proof it again, and tomorrow we’ll take it to our printer in Michigan.

With the paper about done, it’s time to start finishing things up for our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, which starts in just two weeks. Greg and Jan are out soliciting door prizes from local merchants today, and will be most of the week. I need to get the artwork to the screen printer for our rally t-shirts, and finish tweaking the seminar schedule.

One new seminar being presented by Whit Reeder, a district manager for a Verizon Wireless provider, will cover smart phone such as the Droids, Blackberrys, and Palms.  Whit says the seminar will introduce folks to a lot of free applications to make life a little smoother, and will save most people up to an hour a day.

We took a short break yesterday to chat with Terry and Dale Pace, who stopped in to say hello. Terry just got out of the hospital, and it’s good to see him up and about.

Later on, we went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse with Greg and Jan, and Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum. They make an excellent steak at Texas Roadhouse, but why do they always have to have the darned music so loud? For me, when I go to dinner with people, the opportunity to talk is a big part of the experience. At Texas Roadhouse, you have to shout to be heard most the time.

Back at Elkhart Campground, our friends Susie Orr, Marlene Hinman, and Carol Hill stopped in to say hello. With that many pretty ladies in our motorhome, and Miss Terry too, I was about to overdose on cute!

I got an e-mail in response to yesterday’s blog, in which I said I raised eyebrows when I referred to Greg White as my “wife” at a local gun show, telling me that I was insensitive to gay people. No, I am just terribly politically incorrect, and I have a sense of humor.

I can’t say that “some of my best friends” are gay, but I do have several gay friends that I really care about, and I think we know each other well enough that they would have let me know if I had offended them. I won’t go into an entire Bad Nick thing here, but lighten up people. Not everything in life has to be drama. If you can’t laugh once in a while, you’re in big trouble.

But Bad Nick knows that some things are not laughing matters, as you’ll read in his new Bad Nick Blog post Ground Zero Mosque. Check it out and leave a comment.

Okay, back to work. I have a paper to finish!

Thought For The Day – When you can’t control the wind, adjust your sails.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

Being sick last week put me behind schedule getting the new issue of the Gypsy Journal out, so now I’m pushing the clock to get finished.

I know I should have been working on it last week, but my brain was just too darned foggy to concentrate. I’d start to write something and halfway through a paragraph, I’d totally lose my train of thought. I managed to get the blog out and to edit the Todays Hero Blog postings, but that was about as productive as I was.

Fortunately, we are both feeling a lot better now. Terry still has some problems with her ears, and I still have a nasty cough, but compared to a week ago, we feel great. We appreciate everybody’s get well e-mails.

I worked on the paper most of yesterday, except for a quick trip to the post office to mail off some new orders. Meanwhile, Terry waded through a backlog of paperwork recording sales receipts. How can taking a few days off get us so far behind? The weather forecast calls for rain for the next five days, so I guess it will be a good time to be holed up inside working.

Never underestimate the power of the World Wide Web. After I wrote about our new friend Michele Henry and her company, Phoenix Commercial Paint, in yesterday’s blog, Michele said her website recorded 321 new visitors, most from my blog post. I hope it gets her some new customers, because she really does great work at an unbelievable price.

Someone wrote to ask me how any company can turn out a quality full body paint job for so much less than anyone else in the business, and said it seems impossible.

Michele can do what she does at that price for the same reason we have been able to publish a successful RV newspaper for ten years without any staff and without filling it up with ads from the big RV manufacturers. We love what we’re doing and we do almost everything ourselves to keep our overhead low. If it takes working 18 hours a day when we’re against a deadline, we do it. The same with Michele; she loves transforming dated looking coaches with beautiful paint jobs, and she isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty to get the job done. If you love what you’re doing, it’s not really work.

I am going to take some time off this evening, though. The Verizon store is having a free class on how to get the most out of smart phones, and I want to go see if they can give me some pointers on my new Blackberry Storm.

I am really impressed with this new phone, and it has so many features that I’ll never discover how to use them all myself. Can you believe that I was even able to download a free level? It looks and works exactly like a bubble level that you would use to check your RV’s level, or a tripod TV dish, but it’s right there on the phone. I tested it against two levels we have, and it is just as accurate.

What do I need a telephone with a level for? I have absolutely no idea, but that’s why my pal Brenda Speidel calls me Gadget Boy! 

Thought For The Day – Be glad God doesn’t give us everything we ask for.

Register Now For Our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally