Video of the Civil War re-enactment we saw in February 2008 at Reninger’s Market in Mt. Dora, Florida.

For many of my loyal readers, it’ll seem like I’ve been absent from life for the past few weeks.

Truth be told, LIFE is the very reason I’ve been absent from this blog for so long.

Now, I won’t make excuses for my sporadic posts (I hate blogs where the writer apologizes and gives all kinds of explanations for how the blog has “run its course” or “taken up too much time”) because there is no excuse to make:  I write posts here when I have something to say about the topic.

And while we discuss a variety of important topics on Final Embrace (most notably funeral home management, funeral marketing, funeral industry vendor issues, etc.) there are times when not much is going on in the industry.

But I haven’t been completely silent on the issues of our chosen field.  I’m putting the finishing touches on an article for Funeral Business Advisor that looks at upcoming conventions and trade shows (notably, the ICCFA Convention in San Diego) and how to prepare for them from both an attendee and exhibitor viewpoint.

That article uses a lot of the experiences I’ve had attending and exhibiting at local and national conventions.

I’m also participating in an interview with Robin Heppell of Funeral Gurus next week.  Our discussion will center around Internet technologies, like blogs and social networks and how funeral homes can utilize them to better serve clients.

I’ve also been featured in a recent off-line article about podcasting and the Internet, by a young writer out of the Northeast.  His piece deals with the popularity of blogging and podcasting and how niche markets are being targeted by Internet media like blogs and podcasts.

In addition, I’ve just finished helping out with all the GeorgeFest 2008 activities in our small town of Eustis, Florida.  The second-longest festival in the U.S.A., GeorgeFest celebrates George Washington’s birthday with fireworks, a festival, a parade, a dog jog race, bed races, hotdog eating contest, cherry pie eating contest, the 7th Annual Citrus Squeeze and much more!

The whole event, with the exception of the parade which was rained out, was an awesome success!  But I’m also REALLLLLLY tired!

And in two weeks, I get to lead the 1st Annual Greenwood Cemetery Tours in Eustis.  We’ll be telling the history of our community through the beautiful municipal cemetery, just off a main road in town.  As costumed volunteers in period garb quietly pay their respects at graves of different eras, we’ll learn about 6 or 7 of our fellow Eustis residents and how their lives affected our small town.  The tour will end at a recent burial, where I’ll remind our guests that cemeteries are “living” places, with new history being made everyday and new stories waiting to be discovered.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to provide more substantive posts here, if only because I’ve covered a lot of the simple issues in funeral service.  Now, I’d like to write larger pieces that deal with bigger topics or provide a more-detailed view of a specific issue.  So I won’t be writing as often, but hopefully, my writing will be better and more substantive.

I’ll talk with you again soon.

–TIM

Here’s my trip to the fire station (at least the last part!):

 My little town of Eustis (pop. 17,000+) just kicked off a 125th birthday bash!

I’m on the committee for the celebration, which may explain why one of the big events planned for the first 125 days is guided tours of both of the historic cemeteries in town.

I’ll share more about then as it gets closer.

We spent the first day of 2008 celebrating our founding just 125 years ago by gathering in the park for a 1-hour symphony concert, champagne toast to the city and a beautiful birthday cake.

(Incoming Mayor Evelyn Smith cuts the 125th birthday cake)

We had at least 1200 folks come out to hear the symphony and toast the city’s 125th year.

Later this month we’ll continue the celebration with our monthly street party (several bands, festival food, great games for the kids) on the first Friday of January.

January 19th brings the Antique Boat and Car Show to town. 

January 26th welcomes the Eustis Museum of Art’s Fine Arts Festival.

During the week of February 10th, Eustis celebrates the African-American Heritage Festival, with a parade, pageants and an awards banquet that celebrates the achievements of influential members of the community.

Then we’ve got the biggest event of the year:  GeorgeFest.

The longest continuously-celebrated festival in Florida, GeorgeFest commemorates George Washington’s birthday.  Three days of activities, the festival includes a big parade, dog jog, carnival rides, Citrus Squeeze and other fun contests.  Downtown merchants decorate their storefront windows, there’s a President’s Ball and we crown the Orange King and Queen.  You can see the full slate of activities at our website, www.EustisGeorgeFest.com.

Why don’t you join us?

My sister and her wife, Jennifer, love maroon, or so they say.  So I decided to give them a variation on the traditional double wedding ring quilt by weaving some “ribbons” for them.

So I cut wide strips of my three maroon-ish colors and tiny 1″ strips of my black fabric, as seen here:

Then, I pressed them open, like this:

Then I cut 7.5″ squares and stacked them opposite ways and sewed them, like this:

Then they looked like this:

THENNNNN, I sewed them all together in a really boring process, until they looked like:

In the end, I added a black border (over parts of which I continued the “ribbons”) and backed it with the same black fabric, so it looked like this:

The colors “weave” in and out of each other (especially visible up-close) and suggest an intertwining.  I kinda think the very light color is Jen (she’s a sweet, quiet woman) and the paisley is my sister, Crystal (not so quiet).  Without the darker color (love) they wouldn’t be so strong.

Of course, if you don’t like syrupy sentiment, then it’s just a really cool geometric design.

I told ya’ll I was making quilts for Christmas.  Here’s the first one I made for my niece:

You may recognize it as the purple quilt I talked about in the post titled Purple Lattice Quilt.

She loved it.  More soon!

I’ve got a confession to make:  I sometimes leave dishes in the sink or laundry in the dryer because I want to spend some quality time doing the things I really love.

Of course, if you know my schedule, you probably can’t imagine when I find personal time (to write, draw or quilt) let alone time to do laundry and dishes.

But I know that I have time to do all the important things  PRECISELY BECAUSE  I reward myself with personal time.

Currently, I work a full-time job, run a booming quilted cot cover business, write this blog, clean my house, make dinner and serve as the president of my community’s homeowner association.

But I also find time to indulge two of my favorite passions:  writing and quilting.

I’m working on a book for funeral directors (with many of the issues from this blog taking center stage) and a novel about an arson investigator named Nicole Sparks.

So how do I make all this happen and still sleep 8 hours a night?

First, I spent some time figuring out the time of day that I do my best writing and set that aside.  For me, it’s early mornings and just before bed.  Then, I plugged in my workday (8-5 with a 1 hour lunch) and other obligations (my partner likes to eat before 6:00 pm, so after work is dedicated to making dinner).

Here’s my typical schedule:

6:30 am - Read email, write something for the blog, write other stuff.
7:15 am - Shower, brush teeth, get dressed
8:00 am - Work at the Fire Department
Noon - Home for lunch.  I eat and watch a recorded TV show, like “Simply Quilts” or “Pushin’ Daisies.”
1:00 pm - Back to work
5:15 pm - Make dinner
5:45 pm - Eat dinner
7:00 pm - Meet with Kim, my assistant.  Fill cot cover orders
9:00 pm - Check email, write a little more
10:00 pm - In bed, watch some TV
10:30 pm - Begin snoring softly (or loudly, depending up on the severity of the day)

Repeat!

Notice that there’s not a whole lot of television in there, except for what I intentionally record or when it’s time to nod off.  TV’s a time wasting pacifier that stops your brain.

Is it hard to wean yourself off the ’boob’tube?  Um, yeah!  But now that I’ve spent more time away from television, I find that reality programs are just too annoying to watch for any more than about ten seconds.  I don’t care who is America’s Next Top Model or who the Bachelor will choose or who can Outlast, Outwit or Outstupid who on some deserted beach.

In a post titled 21 Ways to Be More Creative on her self-named blog, Christine Kane lists this important first step:

1 - Stop watching television

Or better yet, get rid of the damn thing. Any time I teach writing or creativity, this is one of the biggies. TV is a mind-killer. It numbs you. It fills you with emotionally-charged images and over-simplified solutions. It dulls you. Turn it off. Even if this idea scares you, turn it off.

Want more time?  Take back control of your life and turn off the TV.  Unless, of course, there’s some good football on at that moment.  In which case, feel free to watch a few more plays!

Luckily, I spent last week prepping some posts for the blog, in hopes of taking some time to research a few topics this week.

And then this happened:

No, that’s not me (photo credit goes to Barterville, over at Morguefile.com), but that’s how I’ve felt the last few days.

So I haven’t written as much here, although you may not have noticed, since several of the posts I’d already written were timed to self-publish. 

But soon, I’ll be bringing you photos of the latest quilt I made (just for fun) and of two NEW quilted cot covers that you can buy from my site, COTCOVERS.com!

Look for all that and much more - very soon!

I just received an email asking me to submit presentations to the NFDA by November 16 for consideration to present at the 2008 convention in Orlando.

I’ll be submitting the following:

Mom’s Advice:  Five Little Things Funeral Homes Forget.  This presentation touches on all the little things your mom constantly nagged you about.  Things like “wash behind your ears” and “say please and thank you.”  I’ll explain how these things relate to the industry and how you can improve customer service by following mom’s advice.

They’re Not Your Customer and they Never Will Be.  In this presentation, I’ll teach you how to identify your ideal customers and discover the best ways to reach them.  We’ll discuss the four basic types of funeral consumers (price, experience, convenience and reputation shoppers) and how to best reach the ideal mix of customers.  I’ll also reveal how ignoring the wrong customers (who don’t want to use your firm anyway!) can free up time and money to go after the right people.

Build a Website (with Obituaries) for Nine Bucks a Year.  This presentation will teach the revolutionary new uses of blogs and how free blogging platforms allow you to create professional-looking websites (with updateable obits) for no money.  The nine bucks in the title refers to the annual fee to purchase your own domain (i.e., www.smithfuneralhome.com).

Hopefully, the NFDA will pick one (or more!) for me to present at the convention.

Regardless, Final Embrace will also host two events for our readers.  The first, a pre-convention seminar, will help exhibitors prepare for the convention by learning how to set up a booth for maximum interaction with attendees.  I’ll also teach various methods for attracting booth visitors and we’ll work on our “elevator pitches.”  An elevator pitch is a 30-second version of a sales pitch.  In other words, a way to explain your product/service in the amount of time you might stand with someone on an elevator.

The other event will be some type of gathering/reception/boozefest for all of our readers.  We’d like to give our friends a chance to meet and greet at the convention.  I’m also anxious to meet all the great folks who visit the site and leave great comments. 

By definition, this will be a smaller event.  Held at a local funeral home or private residence, we’ll have a nice dinner and chat about the industry, our families, the convention and anything else that comes up.  And, of course, we’ll provide a relaxing atmosphere for those who’d like to have a drink to relax after a long convention day.

Since Orlando used to be my hometown (I moved to a smaller city just a few years ago), I’d like to host all of “ya’ll” that come to visit.  So keep an eye out for more details.  The Orlando convention is not until next October!

(If you’d like a copy of the “call for presentations” email, drop me a line at finalembraceonline@gmail.com or comment here.  I’ll forward it to ya.)

Just as I was getting all nestled into bed last night, a tornado hit my quiet little town.

So I hopped back up and headed to the fire department, where my job was to answer the phones, direct folks to a Red Cross shelter and make sure the guys had coffee and a place to crash.

Rated an F2 on the Fujita scale, the tornado ripped through a six-block area, damaging fifty homes, twenty of which have been deemed uninhabitable.

Our firefighters immediately sized up the situation, called in the off-duty crews and started fighting fires sparked by downed power lines, rescuing folks stuck inside their homes and making the roads passable for medical and emergency crews.

By 10:00 this morning, the worst was behind us and cleanup was well underway.  Luckily, we only had two minor injuries reported during the emergency.  Of course, several hours after order was restored, we started getting those calls that come when people who are used to A/C and tons of water try to chainsaw whole trees out of their front yard in the midday sun.

You can see a Flickr sideshow of damage here.