December, 2016

To those whom I love,

I wish you all a blessed Christmas and a wonderful 2017.

My year seems to have been uneventful on the whole, but some events have left their mark.

In March, Mother (Lois) had a stroke that put her in the hospital for a few days and in rehabilitation for about four more weeks. Lori and I wanted to go up there right away, but John said that the roads were bad with all the snow they had and not to come yet. As it was, Mother doesn’t have any memory of that time and our trip would have accomplished very little.

In May, Lori determined to go north to see Mother and she swung by to pick me up. We had a whirlwind weekend before we had to return to work, but it was well worth it to see the northern half of the family.

I tried a couple of new gardening techniques. One worked extremely well, the other not so much. I plan to reduce the size of my garden this coming year as it proved take more time than I had to keep up with everything.

Instead of doing my own writing, I found that there were a few people who had a story to tell, but didn’t know how to accomplish the task. I’m not sure if I was ghost-writing or ghost-editing, but I enjoyed myself and see ripples spreading out from the work I did.

I managed to completely shock my Mother when I informed her that I was going on Medicare this June. She knows her own age, but has failed to drag my age along with her. She couldn’t believe that I was “that old already”.

At the library, I have been working with the same boss (Becky) for the last 11 years. This Friday, she will retire and I will have a new lady (Julie) to report to on Monday. Julie has been here training with Becky for a week now and I think we will have a smooth transition. She seems like the kind of person we will be able to peacefully and happily work for.

Les has various ministries and a job that he treats as a ministry, which is exactly what he loves to do. He has also done some writing. This year’s opus was entitled Confessions of a Job Gypsy. If you want a glimpse of the man I married, check out this book.

John almost always visits me around Oktoberfest which I look forward to every year and Angela always visits at Thanksgiving. This year Angela changed employers and took off the month of July between jobs. She came for an extra visit and I really enjoyed her time with us.

As final note, if you have my address in in your address book, please add PO Box 39 to send anything to us.

God bless you and may a good year be inscribed for you in the Book of Life.

Love,

Kathi (Eickstadt) Linz

Starting Early

We've had a warmish spring so far and I planted a few seeds early. In keeping with my recent determination not to do any more digging in order to garden, I am once again using my two keyhole gardens, some straw bales and also some bags of garden soil.

The straw is in preparation for  planting. I'm thinking that I will put in  root crops this year - say some carrots and beets. 

I opened three bags of soil and put in peas and spinach. Those seeds will stand up to some cooler weather. They've made a good start in spite of the little dog next door who thinks she should get to play in the dirt.

I covered the seedlings for a few nights when frost threatened. This is my first year with the "grow bags". I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Celtic Woman, New Journey Live at Slane Castle, Ireland 2006

Once upon a time in a place far away, I knew a drummer. When I watch this video, I am reminded of him by the drummer with the pony tail. One of you who reads this may find himself in this memory.
See especially the sections at 20:00 and 1:09:00 and 1:23:50.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi

Chance Encounter

Yesterday at the library, I met a personable man from North Carolina. He didn't sound "Southern" so after talking with him a bit more, I found out he grew up in Ohio. His mission at the libray was to scan some documents and email them to his boss.

Once I showed him how our scanner worked and how to drag and drop his documents into his email, he was more than delighted.

"I will come back here when I need to send something! I will cross state lines to come back here!"

I felt good having helped someone who was so grateful.

As the morning progressed, I discovered that this gentleman was still in the building. He was working on a historical fiction novel. I believe it was something to do with the Civil War because he was concerned that the details had to be correct. When we compared notes, and he found out that I also write, we discussed to pros and cons of traditional vs. online publishing. I gave him handouts that I've made up for writing and publishing classes, and he was even more delighted that he'd stopped in our particular library. I told him a couple of ebooks that I have on Amazon and let him read the first few chapters of another story currently in the works. He said he would read Marc's Rebellion.

Then he asked where would be a good place to have lunch. "Just a 'mom and pop' kind of place," he said.

I mentioned a local well-established (with excellent food) restaurant only a couple of blocks away.

After his lunch he was beyond delighted! "I had the bison burger and the cole slaw is great!"

A couple more short conversations turned up the information that he is the same age as my younger brother. Well, how much better can it get?

His interest in my stories has encouraged me to get back to a few that I've started but never finished. And I will check every so often to see if his work is posted.

It was refreshing to have so grateful a patron and to find one with whom I share some common ground. I had a good day yesterday.

Time to get back to my stories.

Thanks for visiting with me,

Kathi Linz

Exasperating snow

Yesterday, it snowed. Then the sun came out.

Next I went out to clear the sidewalk and clean off my car. Sun shone the whole time.

I turned around to take the shovel back to its place and it started snowing again.  Not a few flakes or a small afterthought. This was a cloudburst of snow that undid all I had done.

And tomorrow is supposed to be 49 degrees.

Now I know why the local people wait for nature to melt everything off. It's just a bunch of extra work around here when it won't last more than a day or two.

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi

Locally on the Map

One of my duties at the library is to connect with other writers. I host the local authors' group and hunt for guest speakers and topics of interest to any and all genre writers. It's tricky to keep everyone interested when they are all writing different things.

Anyway, in connection with Indiana's bicentennial, I was asked to put together a list of local authors and our graphics person laid them all out on a map of our county. Les and I both made it onto the map. Woohoo!!

Thanks for visiting with me.

Kathi