What a Week I Had!

I'm home again and what a week I had! Almost called a Realtor and said, "Sell the house, send me my stuff, I'm never returning to the Midwest!" (Particularly after it started to SNOW back home and it dropped down to the twenties here).

Nothing beats waking up to sun, sand and the sound of the surf in the morning (that's the sunset view from our condo). I loved it. The last day, the wind kicked up to 35-40 mph and the temperature dropped to the 60s, which was cool, but kind of made for a boring day because it was too cold to go in the water or the pool, but we went down to St. Petersburg to the Pier and the shops. That picture above is someone else feeding the pelicans on the pier. The pelicans were really cool to watch, just the way they fish and move so graceful for such big birds.

Here at home, I saw two chicken hawks tearing apart a dead raccoon. Not quite the tourist sight the pelicans made and I don't think I could get five bucks a person out of that one.

But I'm home and back at work, more pictures to come once I get some time to crop and rotate them. And, I had a bit of good news, too -- two of last year's books, RESCUED BY MR. RIGHT and THE BACHELOR PREFERRED PASTRY, finaled in the Virginia Romance Writers' Holt Medallion Contest in the Traditional and Romantic Comedy categories. Not a bad way to end my Spring Break!

Hope you all had a great holiday week!

Shirley

On Spring Break, I read: The Blade Itself by Marcus Sakey (a debut novel, excellent crime book with tension on every page, highly recommend); Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane (very good, not as good as Mystic River but good and a great twist at the end); and Summer Island by Kristin Hannah (which had me crying like every Hannah book always does)