You can see me posing with my Book Guys watch here. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page on the right. There aren’t too many people with watches on there, so I don’t think I’m too hard to find.

Unfortunately, the watch has stopped, but I’m hoping it just needs a new battery because I really love that watch. I was hoping it would last forever.

In other news, my friend and colleague, Anna Leahy has started a group on Facebook called Creative Writing Pedagogy and she’s asked me to join her as co-leader/coordinator. Fun, fun! We’ve reeled in 60 members in just two days and already people are posting questions and books. So go join already–you don’t want to miss out.

I took a seminar this morning in van driving in anticipation of driving a honking big vehicle for the writing project in November (to the annual conference in San Antonio). It was actually kind of fun; they fed us well, we watched videos, discussed hypothetical hazardous driving scenarios and then took a written test. I think I might even have gotten a perfect score–if not, I did pretty well. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go, especially after my youngest asked me as I went out the door this morning, “Well, what are you going to do if you fail?”

How’s that for a vote of confidence? He may be remembering the family legend of how I–ahem–had to take my driver’s test three times. But that’s because New York State is really tough and you can’t pass if you ride the clutch–which was a teeny, tiny issue with me back then. As in, I eventually had to rent an automatic car to pass the test.

In case you’re interested, the two most important things you need to know when driving a big honking (like 16 passenger) van are:

Avoid Backing Up At All Costs!!!!
Stopping time, acceleration time, stopping distance, you name it: YOU NEED MORE.

That about sums it up.

I think I might frame my certificate of completion.

Bye for now y’all,
Steph