Now here's 'the rest of the story' . . .
Char, Juli and I had a great time behind the scenes, Tmails were flying and at one point acorns were flying back and forth as well, when we were trying to decide the best way of getting them to the winners. So finally yesterday sometime, it was decided that I'd post the winners at midnight - any midnight, didn't matter. That was my job, to post the winners at midnight. MY BIG JOB. I was so excited, I worked for an hour just making up a really witty paragraph to go along with the post.
Midnight comes here - Central Standard Time - so I write up this glorious post to announce the winners, Click Send - and poof, my computer just sits here doing nothing. I check all my tabs, DEAD. What!!! My computer is Poof and I can't post the winners. I check everything I know to check and finally look at the modem. No server. OMG! What to do, I promised to post at midnight. And my carefully worded witty paragraph of winners was lost out in cyberspace.
So I have an iPhone and for it to work when the server is down inside, I need to be away from the house. I go outside, in my jammies, to the end of the driveway, cold dark night -- no service. Everything is dead. So I shiver in the driveway for a while, thinking thoughts of hot chocolate or maybe hot buttered rum, but even so, no cell phone service, no internet service and it's long past midnight.
Finally I came in and by then it's after 1 a.m. here and I'm thinking Juli will be frantic because she was going to add the names to the Story Thread. I look frantically for her number, but no phone service for me. Now I live alone but I have two cats and a dog and by this time, sometime close to 1:30 a.m. we are all pacing. Me, the dog, and the two cats. I paced myself to the couch and finally gave up for the night at about 2:30.
At 6 a.m. a cold dog nose woke me and I jumped up to check the computer - and just as I did, there was Juli, 'Sharon, where are you??'
So finally the stars were all aligned and I threw a few words on the computer just in time for Juli to not have heart failure. Whew!
Sometimes we all have nights like that, and I sure am glad nobody was up waiting for me to post at midnight. But in spite of the shenanigans here at my house last night, the winners got their acorns and I posted the names and the animals are now all sound asleep at my feet. It was a really long night.
But well worth it, y'all made the contest great, just by writing, by commenting and by voting. Thank you for that. The stories will continue to be fun to read, and I'll continue to look up more of the daylily names just to put a face to the name. But for now, I really need a nap!
