It's been a while...

since my last post. So what has happened? The Appalachian Fair came and went and our Kiwanis booth did real well. We sold hotdogs, hamburgers, funnel cakes, fries, and nachos and cheese. The booth was jumping every night. Here's some pictures.

We also had race guests. The two Bristol race weekends are a boon for hotels, B&Bs and private homes. We rented our guest room to a lovely young couple from NJ. He's a race fan. She just came to the US about a year ago from Bejing. It was her first race weekend and she seemed to like it. They might be regulars for the March and August races.

It's been so dry here that the leaves are turning early and falling. There are a lot of trees here and I think I'll be raking until December. LOL

We have the month of September coming up, bur I'm thinking about October already. I have a love/hate relationship with the month. I love that the National Storytelling Festival will be here before you know it. With it comes lots of my storytelling friends. We have three staying with us along with a mom and daughter who won the ISC gift basket, including festival tickets at our KY/TN Kiwanis convention earlier this month.

That's all why I love the month. I hate the month because all the wonderful fall colors will be overshadowed in the stores by the color pink. Now don't get me wrong. As a breast cancer survivor, I support Komen and ACS in the fight. But I have a very hard time with pink M&M's, pink KitchenAid Mixers, pink boxing gloves, SpongeBob SquarePants wearing Pink Pants and more. Each year more and more companies are jumping on the BC bandwagon and getting rich with no accountability.

I especially have a hard time with Pinkwashers. They support the fight against cancer and they get rich making products that are linked to the very disease.

Ok, I'll get off my soapbox...for now. I think I have a lot more to say on this subject and will be posting again before the pinking of Fall begins.

So what are you looking forward to this fall?

Way to go, Rishi

My friend Rishi defended her thesis last week. She is one more step closer to her Masters degree in the storytelling program at ETSU.She writes about the day on her blog.

I met Rishi in Feb. 2004 when I interviewed at NSN. She told me about the program and how she hoped to finish by Dec. 2004. Now three plus years later, you might say that Rishi is a procrastinator. I don't.

The whole time Rishi and I were together at NSN, she worked on her story and her thesis.

She had just married in 2003.

In 2004, there were the newlywed adjustments, buying a house, moving, plus work, flying to Bellingham for the conference, being a friend, etc.

The next year, she worked on her story and thesis, was a wife, was pregnant, was a mother, worked at NSN, was a friend, etc.

Then in 2006, she worked on her story and thesis, worked at NSN, was a wife, mother, friend, etc. Oh, yeah, pregnant and mother again.

She left NSN in Dec. 2006, which was a great loss. She had been the corporate memory as well as a wonderful face of NSN. Now I was the corporate memory (almost 3 years) LOL

Since then she has moved to NC then to WV. And last week she made another step forward to that Masters degree.

Procrastinator? No way. Persistent, preserver, prevailer, pursuer.

That's Rishi.

Way to go!

And yes, I took the picture from your blog.