Warning: this blog isn’t for reading…it’s not a flotation device either

This weekend my brother got married (I’ll post about that later with a photo or two) in Salt Lake City. Annie and I flew out on Thursday and back on Sunday. The trip to and from Salt Lake marks several travel firsts for me:

1) I had never been to SLC before. Ooh, pretty mountains.
2) I had never pulled wheeled luggage through an airport before.
3) I had never used one of those neck pillows on a flight before.

Two and three are signs of becoming a rapidly aging traveler. Soon I’ll probably be zipping through the airport on a beeping golf cart making remarks about young whippersnappers with long hair and overweight people.

On closer examination of the neck pillow, I discovered the following phrase: “Not for sleeping.”

I…

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Fantasy Kingdom on the World Vision Report

World Vision Report

You might remember my piece in the Christian Science Monitor titled “Frivolous gift or lifelong memory?” in which I take 20 kids and an old man into a Bangladeshi amusement park. If you were too lazy to read it, now all you have to do is sit back and listen to my hick %$#@ redneck accented voice (as a recent YouTube commenter called it) read it to you.

Listen to Fantasy Kingdom on the WVR

Enjoy. Ya’ll come back now…ya hear?…

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Pepto Bismol is calling

Literally.

I got a call from Pepto Bismol yesterday.

Apparently, I’m on some travel writing marketing list. I get a couple of press releases a day and a couple of phone calls a month about new products, books, and events.

Anyhow, Pepto is synergyzing with the Travel Channel, specifically the show Bizarre Foods with host Andrew Zimmern. The nice Pepto lady asked me if I read the press release, which I hadn’t. So she resent it. The release includes travel tips from Andrew, half of which involve Pepto. I’ve pasted it below the cut.

I’ve never used Pepto once at home or while traveling. This is for two reasons:

1. Their commercials freak me out. I don’t want my stomach slowly coated with pink paste.

2. I don’t eat like an oinker and therefore don’t require stomach meds. I’m either a-okay or experiencing the subject of the previous post.

If you could be sponsored by a drug what would it be? Me, I would be sponsored by Coppertone Sport SPF 30. I have albino tendencies and can hardly leave the house without it.

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Diarrhea…

Can you spell it?

It is a word that I’m pretty sure I have never correctly spelled in my entire life. And, as a 3-time Spelling Bee Champion of Mississinawa Valley Middle School, I like to think that’s saying something. Lucky for me, I don’t think they ever include diarrhea in spelling bees due to its unseemly nature. Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be so jealous of my 3 shiny spelling bee trophies because I wouldn’t have them….

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Contractual benchmark obliterated and still obliterating

After yesterday’s day of writing I thought I had surpassed my contractually obligated 65,000 words and was feeling kind of proud. It turns out I had excluded a few chapters and my count is actually 71,163 and growing.

This is exciting in a sense, but it is also scary because I’m not done. I’m wrapping things up, but I bet I could be flirting with that 80,000 word mark by the end. Early on, I asked Caren, my agent, what was typical to be over or under. She told me 1,000 words. Yikes, that’s precise.

Although, it would have been even scarier if I finished the last chapter spot on the 65K mark because I need editing room. Normally, I write 1,000 words to…

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Have you called your granny lately?

I’ve been writing about grandmas today, so I thought I would post a little of what I wrote and remind you to give yours a call.

My Grandma Wilt was a garment worker. That’s her in the front row next to my mom and dad.

In the summers growing up in Versailles, Ohio, she sewed the pockets on Lee bibs. “The more pieces you completed, the more you got paid,” she told me. She didn’t like the job and – to no real surprise – the money wasn’t very good. What is a surprise is that I never knew this. I traveled around the world to meet garment workers and here my very own grandma was one.

She’s not your typical grandma. For instance, she has…

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I'm guest blogging today

Today, I’m guest blogging on my agent’s website. Since I have both a website and a blog Caren wanted me to give the pro’s and con’s of each from an author’s perspective (not that I feel like an author yet, because I don’t).

So, I guess I feel like I’ve kinda met my blogging quota for the day.

If you’re bored – which you are because what else would you be doing here – check out my new site www.kelseytimmerman.com. I just started working on it last week. I welcome any suggestions you may have about how to improve it….

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