And the Winner IS.....

There is a winner in the drawing for the signed copy of KNOT GUILTY. I gave all the commenters a number and then used a random number originator online to come up with the lucky number. The winner will be announced at the end of this blog.

Last week and the Crochetville.com tour seems like a millions miles ago. Actually, it’s more like almost two thousand miles which is roughly the distance between L.A. and Chicago. I left the scent of orange blossoms in the air and summer-like temperatures for struggling to shed winter Chicago.

Brown and drab seems to be the color of the day. The tree outside my window is totally nude making it easy to see the sparrow encased in its winter coat of feather easy to see. When I went to the store, other than a few hints of purple crocuses, everything was brown and dead. Their was even a little patch of dirty snow in a corner. The lilac bushes I passed didn’t have even a hint of their fragrant purple flowers. It kind of felt like going from a technicolor movie to a black and white one.

On the good side, there isn’t a chance I’ll get spring fever even though it’s the first day of spring. It’s good because I came here to work on a synopsis for the fourth Yarn Retreat Mystery and the manuscript for the tenth Crochet Mystery.

With no interruptions or distractions, I have been spending lots of time on my laptop and it always feels a little weird when I go from watching the action in my mind’s eye while I write to looking around and seeing where I really am.

I did have one major distraction. It started out simply enough. I wanted to see if I could lower the phone bill here. I called AT & T and sure enough there was a way, but it involved me getting a new modem, which they would install. Sounds simple, doesn’t it. That’s what I thought. I thought the tech would just switch out the old one for the new one. Not exactly.

There is some new system they’re bringing in and they needed to update the phone wires. This building is over 100 years old - you get the picture. I spent most of the day touring the basement of my building and the backyard with the tech as he tried to figure out how to do it. He wasn’t alone, though. He kept using his cell phone camera to show stuff to some supervisor.

At one point, the young man (he said he was just turning 21) stopped in his tracks in the basement and shuddered as he said “What is that big thing?” The “big thing” was the old boiler that used to burn coal and provide the heat for the building. An old coal gondola was still in front of it. I probably should have shown him the old gas pipes in my place for gas lights. I was told that they were for backup in case the electric lights didn’t work. When I told him we’d moved in here in 1961, he was amazed like it was ancient history. But then to him, it probably was.

This place probably seemed like a museum exhibit. The kitchen is definitely old style and the bathtubs are all claw footed. I wonder if I’d shown him one of the old vinyl lps if he would have even known what it was.

In the end, he worked it out. Then there was all kinds of new email addresses for the modem and codes to be put in everything. He has his tablet and I had mine and we were both typing stuff in.

It turns out that even if I hadn’t wanted to lower my bill, I would have had to go through this eventually. It seems that AT & T is changing all POT (plain old telephone) lines to U-verse.

Finally, I was back in business and got back to work.

And now for the winner. Drum roll please. Congratulations Dana Bincer! Please send your mailing address to Hechtmanbooks@aol.com.