Thursday, February 13, 2014

Giveaway Reminder and Tales from the Road

Don't forget to head on over to Goodreads, where you can enter to win one of three paperback copies of my novel Finding Grace.  There are only two more days to go before the contest ends and the lucky trio of winners will be notified.

There's a handy "Enter to win" button right there on the right, at the top of the sidebar.  Click that and it'll take you where you need to go to get your name on the list.  (Come on, hit that button; what have you got to lose?)

In other news, it's our youngest son's Junior Parents Weekend at Notre Dame this weekend, and my husband and I were planning to fly out of Boston early on Friday.  But Old Man Winter was heading to town, due to dump a ton of snow on us throughout the day Thursday (as part of a weather event that they're calling "Snowmaggedon" down South), and it looked like all the flights on Friday were going to be filled up by passengers whose flights on Thursday were sure to be grounded by the storm.  We thought about flying out last night to get ahead of it all--but obviously everyone and his brother had the same great idea, because all the flights were overfull last night, too.

So we packed the car up and got on the road at about 9:00 p.m., spur-of-the-moment-like, and drove about six hours well west of the storm's path.  The only trouble was that after stopping for gas a few hours into the drive, the car started chugging and we started getting a blinking "check engine" light.  So at about 3:00 a.m., we pulled into a hotel in Syracuse, NY, and my husband is planning to head over to the Nissan dealer this morning (after the complimentary breakfast, which I wouldn't miss for the world) to see what's going on.

My uneducated guess is that we got some bad gas (gasoline, that is--what are you thinking, anyway?) or something, because the car started chugging a little and the light came on right after we stopped to fill up.

So...it's a typical Pearl road trip.  Our tales of breakdowns and hours spent sitting on the sides of highways waiting for AAA to come rescue us are somewhat legendary at this point.  But we expected this sort of thing when we had our big old red 15-seater Dodge Ram van money pit; we didn't expect it with the sleek little charcoal-gray Nissan Maxima we got when the old girl died.  (Et tu, Maxima?  Et tu?)

At least we have a couple of days to get things squared away, because back when we thought this was going to be a trip by plane that was going to go off without a hitch, we weren't planning to arrive in South Bend until Friday afternoon.

Okay, then, enough about our woes from the road.  By hook or by crook, we will make it to that JPW at Notre Dame!  How, I'm not sure.  But I'll keep you updated.

7 comments:

  1. Good luck ... hope the rest of the trip goes off without a hitch!

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    1. And wow, 101 people have signed up for your giveaway!! That is so awesome!

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  2. Ah yes, I am accustomed to the AAA involved road trips myself. I did not enter your contest as I already own the book and want someone new to win it! Just in case it's someone who would LOVE it, but is tight on money for fun things. :) Hope your car isn't too mad at you and your free breakfast is good!

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  3. You're in my old stomping grounds! Say hi to Cazenovia for me if you see signs (although hopefully you got on the road long ago). Enjoy the weekend at ND and safe travels.

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  4. Ugh. Our check engine light just went on too. Good news: we don't have to do anything right away. Bad news: $1500 in repairs will need to be done before our next emissions test, which I swear is bi-annually here in the People's Republic of Illinois. Hope your repair was less costly. Muchas Gracias for the book! I'm starting it ASAP!

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    1. I'm glad you got it--and I hope you enjoy it. :)

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    2. Oh, and our repairs were under warranty--woo hoo!

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