Excerpts On Homepage

[mousie]

When I write a new blog post, I notice in the Admin section an area for Excerpts. If I leave this area blank, the content I wrote in my post will appear on the homepage (HPBOTTOM area). If I add text to the Excerpt box, the content I wrote in my post will still appear on the homepage (not what I wrote in the Excerpt box).

Is there a way to have the text in the Excerpt box show on the homepage, only when I type something there? I would like HPBOTTOM to still pull in the text from the blog post if the Excerpt box in Admin is left blank.

Thanks.