Back From Vacation
Well I've been away on vacation for a bit and haven't been able to write to the blog in a while. Just before I left we played two great weddings on Friday and Saturday and then I was off with my family to Vermont for some R&R before the busy fall season. If anybodys interested in checking out my vacation photos,we have a photo gallery here:

http://www.amenco.com/smuggs

After I got back I was swamped with catch up work, emails and calls to return. Luckally for me, Ron, the Gforce II Band leader has been helping me out with the office work while I was away. We recently opened an office that he runs in Rockaway, NJ and it's a real assett having him give me a hand with all the sales & marketing. Even though this week has been extremely busy, I can't seem to get my mind off the poor folks who have suffered through the Hurricane. Last vacation, I was in Orlando and we had a real ordeal getting home. A hurricane had closed the airport on the day we were to leave. I needed to get to a wedding so we opted to drive out. It took us 14 hours to drive from Orlando to Savannah GA. There was so much traffic! We ended up hoping a flight out of Savannah and I was able to make the wedding. The reason why we chose Vermont this time was that we were afraid of getting caught in another big storm in Fla. It turned out to be a great call.

I seem to be obsessed with watching CNN coverage of the flooding... almost like the way it was during 9/11. It seems that the government should be doing more to help these people in distress. We can drop supplies to people in countries across the Atlantic. Why cant we get food and water air dropped to our own citizens in Louisiana? My wife works for a software company that has a policy of matching any donations that their employees make for charity. We are going to take advantage of this and make a pledge. I would urge anyone who reads this to try to do the same. Now's the time for all US citizens to pull together to help those desperate people in the south.

Once again I seem to ponder how truly lucky I am having a roof over my head and food to eat. So often we take these thing for granted. I pray for the folks in the south.