Welcome to BenWoods.com

Thanks to everyone who sent along condolences for my grandma. I wanted to post the eulogy I gave at the funeral to show our gratitude for her life.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Ben, and I am Tiny’s oldest grandson. Despite being her oldest grandson, I sort of felt sometimes that she thought of me as her son. But maybe that’s just because she frequently called me Doug or Rusty.

I've finally launched the new BenWoods.com. Yes, it looks a lot like the old one. I upgraded to Drupal 8 (from Drupal 7). I managed to go all of 2019 without writing anything on this site. I hope to write a little more, especially as I launch a new book in the upcoming months. Thanks for reading!

When we booked our Disney trip, we didn’t consider too many hotel options. Once we made the decision to stay onsite, we looked at the cheapest Value resorts - All-Star Music, All-Star Movies and All-Star Sports. We had all but settled on All-Star Music when I found the Summer Quick Service Meal Offer. At the time we were booking, this deal was available only at Pop Century, a Value resort that is priced slightly higher than others.

Before reading too far into this post, I should first let you know that if you need details about many Disney World food establishments, you will not find that here. When doing research for the trip, one of the more universal tips from bloggers regarding saving money was to bring in your own food, snacks and drinks. Outside of glass containers and alcohol, everything else is fair game to bring.

Spumoni Press is pleased to announce another new book! Brad Samuelson, author of Gnonsense and illustrator of Corporate Ties, will be debuting his latest book, Change Log: Version 1.0, at this year's Baltimore Comic-Con, Sept 28-30 at the Baltimore Convention Center. Stop by his table (A224) to check out the book, as well as original art, free sketches, stickers and copies of Corporate Ties.

For those of you who have been following my literary agent list, you know that I've contacted a boatload of agents. Although some of given "Corporate Ties" favorable responses, I have not obtained an agent.

Well, it's now time to move ahead without one.

If you use Yahoo email and you are one of those people who save every email, it looks like you won't need to empty the trash anytime soon.

Yahoo announced that in May, the company will over unlimited storage capacity.

George W. Bush is trying - yet again - to slash funding for NPR and PBS. This week, Bush proposed a new budget with devastating cuts to public broadcasting. "Sesame Street" and other ad-free kids' shows are under the knife. So is the independent journalism our country needs.

Enough is enough. We've fought this fight before and won - but we can't afford the risk anymore. With the new Congress, we can make sure this never happens again. We need Congress to insulate NPR and PBS from the political winds.

A few weeks ago, while doing research (if you can call it that) for a column, I came across a site devoted to myths and legends. I thought I had visited just about every genre of Web sites, but boy did I miss a big one.

Paranormal Web sites seem to be fairly normal these days. Not that I'm completely surprised by this, but I was shocked to see the latest reports of phenomena. I really must be out of the loop because now there are theories on Mothman, Owlman and Goatman out there. I swear I did not pull these names from an episode of "Power Rangers."

August 21 is National Spumoni Day. Did you know that? I seriously doubt it. But who cares? It's an entire day to celebrate Spumoni! If you don't know what Spumoni is, check out the Wikipedia page. Better yet, let me explain why you should care about Spumoni in the first place.