You know - it's always something. I mean, I was supposed to do three - count them, THREE public speaking engagements today and I managed to have laryngitis.

Luckily, I'm surrounded by some pretty awesome people who are able to pick up the ball and run with it without missing a beat - and all with really good humor about the whole thing.

Of course - they all made fun of me since I couldn't talk. That seems to be mandatory when one has laryngitis. Even our Board members were picking on me today - which actually made the day seem a little better. One of them in particular is my hero for the day since he made the acceptance speech that I was supposed to give today when we received an award from the Hampton Citizens' Unity Commission. All I had to do was stand there and smile. I need to send him a little thank you card.

Oh - I also met the man responsible for my trip to France in 1989. He received an award today too! We were talking about Hampton's Sister City program and I said "Oh - Vendome! I was there representing the City in 1989, even though I lived in North Carolina at the time." Turns out, he organized the whole event! Funny - I was thinking about it this morning - kind of randomly - just how nice the whole event was.

See it was the French Bicentennial and they wanted a bunch of American Revolutionary War living history folk to come over and be in one of their big summertime sound and light shows. So for two weeks I stayed in Vendome with a French family (along with Adrienne and Rusty) and in the evenings we would storm the Bastille.

They actually gave us pitchforks.

Anyway - it was one of those watershed moments in my life where I pretty much threw out the notion of managing a record store for the rest of my life and throwing my lot in with the history world.

And I met the man responsible for it today. I thanked him profusely. I'll probably send him a thank you note, too.

So I thought I'd put that picture of me and Adrienne up here for public comsumption. We were getting dressed for the play at the Vallons house and the sunset and such caught our attention.