…and the winner, by a large margin, is Shannon from Minnesota! Congratulations! I’ll get to work on the design, then contact you about specifics (style, size, color, etc). Once all of that is taken care of, I’ll post a link to where the t-shirt (and other ‘Waiting For Spring’ items) will be available to purchase. Thanks to everyone who participated in and who voted in the contest!!
A little background about the winning quote.
Front: I’m a lumberjack
Back: Any person who cares about what I do to earn enough money to afford rent & music & beer & food & jeans deserves to think I spend my days in the wood cutting down trees.
It comes from chapter 3 of Waiting For Spring in which Tess muses on the importance people place on career and money:
The first question people insist on asking a new acquaintance is: What do you do for a living? I hate that. Insecurity, probably, because I’m not a lawyer or a doctor or any of those other professions that make people say, ‘Oh…’ in that reverent, awestruck way. And anyone unlucky enough to ask me that fatal question without preceding it with at least two others–for example, what books have you read lately or who’s your favorite ballplayer–was answered with:
‘I’m a lumberjack.’
Because any person with a greater interest in what it is I do to earn enough money to afford rent and music and beer and food and jeans–rather than in the fact that I think Bill Lee is the coolest guy ever to climb onto the pitchers mound–deserves to think I spend my days in the woods cutting down trees.
I chose ‘lumberjack’ for a few reasons. One, as mentioned in the comments section of the voting post, as a semi-homage to Monty Python’s ‘Lumberjack Song.’ Two, because a friend of mine named Stan (who is mentioned in the acknowledgments) used to joke with me about being a lumberjack (since I live in the boonies of Maine) to cheer me up when I was sick. The joke turned into what you might call a mini writing collaboration that broke me out of a funk and got me writing on my own again. (Thanks Stan! You rock.) Three, because I thought ‘cutting down trees’ was a fitting symbol of what Tess does to herself throughout the book. 
Just thought ya might be interested. 🙂
Stay tuned for other contests in the near future. And, if you haven’t had a chance to read Waiting For Spring, be sure to pick up a copy at Amazon.
R.J. Keller 
That Stan. Is there anything that man can’t do?
Love it and love the background info, too! I’ll be wearing mine to the gym. I think it will make me look cool. Way cooler than my shirts with shoes on them. (Everyone gives me shirts with shoes on them.)
I like it. Especially with your background explanation, it makes all the sense in the world. Perfect choice.
ChimpWhoPoops would’ve been flattered.
(He was killed in a port-a-potty accident two winters ago down near Pensacola while peddling plantains.)
I’m terribly sorry to hear about the Chimp. Had I known he was heading that way, I would have advised him against it. Pensacola is, as everyone knows, the Port-a-Potty accident capital of the world.
Query: to whom did he leave his stash of plantains?
Dearest kel,
I warned the Chimp of the perils off pooping in Pensacola’s notorious portable potties but he took no heed, instead telling me that I “was full of shit”.
As for your plantain query: I was never made “privy” to his plantain strategy.
See, that’s what I thought. And that’s why I say the port-a-potty ‘accident’ was no accident at all! I say Chimp was foully murdered for his bucket o’ plantains!