And the winner is.......

Me! Well, it was really Fiona Graham, but I feel like it was me. *g*

Friday and Saturday I was in Jackson, Michigan meeting up with net friends for a Diana Gabaldon event. Friday night it was a reading and signing at the library.

Saturday, Diana has some writing seminars, I don't go to those, since you can prolly tell by this blog.... there is no help for me! After the seminars was a luncheon, that I did attend. I bought a Brianna's Braclet to raffle off at luncheon. BetsyG and Colly helped me sell tickets, I wouldn't of been able to handle the crowd if it wasn't for them. When finished over 550 tickets were sold, and $528.00 was donated to the library's Word Wise program.


Instead of numbers on the tickets, well at least the first 450 tickets, I used character names out of the books. This sounded like a good idea when I started, at 200 I marveled at Diana's ability to think up names, but at around 300, I was beginning to think I was nuts for thinking of this, and wondered how in the heck does one person come up with that many names?

I did notice a bit of a pattern though, there were a lot of "J" names, a bunch of "Geordie"s, other initials I don't remember (I know this memory thing is sad), and thankfully only one "Loaghaire". I did include names of animals, and appendages such as Bonnet's "Leroi". I really wanted "Leroi" to win, but to no avail.

I lost my voice due to allergies about two weeks ago and was just getting it back on Thursday. But lost it again on Friday, Michigan is about two weeks behind so they were in full bloom, so I lost it again. Which was a bit embarrassing getting up in front of about 225 people sounding like Peter Brady when he became a man!
(I just had to post this picture I thought it was so funny, it looks like Im trying to catch flies with that huge mouth open.)

Diana picked the winning ticket which was... "Fiona Graham"! To which I looked at Diana, and said, "Fiona Graham?" To which she replied, "You know her, Roger's Fiona." Me, "Oh yeah!" Phew, nothing like forgetting a character in front of the author. :-)
This is what the little tickets looked like.

After the luncheon was over, Lynn, the gal that won the bracelet came up to me and asked if I was the same "Michelle" that started the Katherine Swynford Yahoo Group? I said, "Yes." And she preceeded to tell me years ago I posted a recommedation of "Outlander" on the group and that's why she read the book. I just thought that was the neatest thing!

(Lynn the winner, Diana and moi)

While cleaning up these two older women came up to me and asked if I was the "jewelry lady" and I said, "I am." and they wanted to show me what they got for Mother's Day... it was jewelry from my website. They said they also got Dove chocolate, and I couldn't imagine anything better to go with my stuff, since my favorite milk chocolate is Dove! :-)

Then dinner with buds and Diana, and then I came home. Ian was home from school, and had a nice quiet Mother's Day with the boys!