The book is available!

The Graceful Art of Falling is available for purchase!  Buy it here.

Woohoo Healthcare Reform!

The Top 5 reasons I'm stoked about Healthcare Reform:

5. Individuals who have NEVER had health insurance in their lives, will be able to access health care.

4. Insurers can't spend more than 20% of premiums on their administrative costs; 80% needs to be spent on my healthcare.

3. Healthcare plans have to cover preventative services like cancer screenings and annual flu shots at no cost to me.

2. Insurers can't charge me more for an individual insurance policy simply because I'm a woman.

AND the number 1 Reason:: Starting January 1, 2014 insurers can no longer deny coverage or raise premiums because an individual has a pre-existing condition. It's about time!

The book has been sent to the publisher!  

It should be available for purchase in a few weeks!!

Walking to Class

Below is another preview of The Graceful Art of Falling- due out Fall 2013!

    Lynchburg didn’t get much snow, which was good for me.  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize how much freezing rain and of course, ice, Virginia gets.  We didn’t have many winter weather days either, classes were only canceled a few times throughout my four year stay.  What was frustrating was that classes would be canceled for an inch of snow, but not when the entire campus was a sheet of ice.

    Ice and I are not friends.  When it was bad enough, I would skip class, sometimes just my morning classes until they could get the sidewalks cleared up.  I don’t know why I went to class at all on one particular day, maybe I had a test, but I can’t remember my reason for trekking out.  I only remember this day because something mortifying happened to me, and at the age of twenty, it may as well have been the end of the world.  

    Our campus had a main section called “the dell.”  This was in the center of many of the main buildings and dorms.  In the center of the dell was a circle of benches and flowers where all the sidewalks which extended from the buildings met.  This convergence of sidewalk was about half way from my dorm to the building I had class in.  Not a long walk by any means.  It was a small campus.  

     I bundled myself up and put on my winter boots which I didn’t often have to use at school. They were heavy duty boots, my parents wouldn’t have it any other way, they had a thick rubber sole with strong grips meant for walking on ice and snow.  I stepped out the front door of the third floor in Tate Hall and noticed that everything was covered in ice.  Wonderful!, I thought.  It was obvious that someone had made a pretty feeble attempt to throw sand down.  I can’t explain my annoyance with places that use sand as a means of melting ice.  Sand gives a little bit of traction, but it quickly is washed (or wiped) away after a few people walk through it.  Being from New England, I know that the only thing that works on ice is SALT. 

    I started to walk to class.  So slowly you would think I was 110 years old.  I realized about ten feet from my dorm steps that walking in the grass would be a better idea.  Grass doesn’t usually form a solid sheet of ice like sidewalks, so I moved into the grass and continued my slow and steady pace.  When I got to the center of the dell I had to cross to the opposite length of sidewalk- there was no way to stay on the grass.  I needed to go straight across and the benches were in a wide circle around the outside.  There was nothing for me to hold on to.  I paused for a second weighing my options.  I decided to go for it.

The book is now in the design and layout phase.  Within 3 weeks the proofs will be done, and the design can be finalized.  So exciting!