mycalicocat

i'm an introvert, so my dream would be to hole up in a mountain cabin somewhere with pleanty of books and snacks and no phone or tv, except maybe a dvd player for a movie or two. i thought of you this weekend in atlanta. i need to take a day off and drive you to the gwinnett international farmers market, the dekalb farmers market, and maybe harry's so you get the yuppie side of food. we'll do that after you come back from vacation so you can do an article and get paid for being away.:)
 

of course you could go spend the night at koinonia. there's a story there too and you could eat some of those yummy pecan concoctions.
 

Excellent ideas -- except I am astonished that you think I'd get paid for being away.
A story about Koinonia. I think Clarence Jordan was a bona fide saint. It would be good to write about, but not for the HHJ.
Speaking of Koinonia, I worked for the Americus paper for a couple of years and we were always doing these Progress Editions and Community Guides and things to sell ads. My editor was sorting out the assignments and he asked me if I could write about Religion in Sumter County in 500 words!! We're talking about all those wild Baptists -- Koinonia and Habitat and Maranatha Church and Jimmy Carter and all of God's Frozen People staring at them in dismay. 500 words indeed. I did something but it struck me that there was a BOOK there. (Of course what they're really proud of down there is the Windsor Hotel) Maybe I should spend my vacation writing stream-of-consciousness.
 

You don't get paid leave? Good grief!

You could also hunt down the Fair Trade coffee people. Beau talked to a coffee vendor up here, who said there's one guy organizing the trades. The guy thought Americus was a strange place, but I assume it's simply a Habitat-linked project.
 

Not to worry - I get paid vacation and normal stuff!
Back to y'all later. I have to go shoot some Kiwanians.
 

if you did it while on vacation, you could play hooky next year and already have a story written. so you don't keep getting a salary while you're away? maybe you should do a story about unfair labor practices in houston county. you deserved to get the free meal at henderson village.
 

Ack! Yes, I get paid when I'm away and working. I just meant that if I go off on a weekend and do something for fun (like driving through all the small towns instead of going on the interstate) and then write something about it, I'm not going to be paid extra because I wrote something. Or let's say, like the Thanksgiving fire. The fact that i wrote about it later didn't mean that I was working on a holiday when it happened. :)
 

Back to something earlier. Sporcupine, What was that about hunting down Fair Trade coffee people? Are they missing? Who are they? What if I find them?
I just came back from hunting down Kiwanians. My young co-worker double-scheduled himself and asked me to go get pictures at the Perry Kiwanis Club dinner (They were announcing Kiwaniac of the Year) He told me 7 p.m. at the Holiday Inn. I got there and there were no Kiwanians.
I didn't know whether he gave me the the wrong night or the wrong place, so first I called the New Perry Hotel - which Barely will know is a logical start. The girl there said, "Huh whuh?" so I called the Swanson and got no answer. Then I called a young woman I know who has little kids and is a Kiwanian - I figured if it was the right night and she was at the dinner, her babysitter would know where she was. Anyway, it turned out her kids were sick so she was home and told me the meeting was at the Perry Country Club (Sounds a lot like Holiday Inn, huh?) so off I went and got there before the awards were given. One thing I'll say about small town newspaper work is that anybody who can't find the Kiwanis Club on a Tuesday night in Perry, GA is not fit to be a reporter.
 

I suspect the Fair Trade people are fun, and also a good story. Also, they're likely to have good refreshments. :)
 

maybe the k's can work into a mystery story line. they do have a good pancake breakfast, but that's not at christmas.:)you could save your "vacation stories" and use them later while actually taking an hour or so off. your co-workers would of course have to cooperate.
 

If I were going to put a club in a murder mystery it would be a Red Hat club.