Spring thaw?

There's a tree in our front yard that is always the first in the neighborhood to blossom in the spring. Not being an arborist, I'm not sure what kind of tree it is. The tree puts out thousands of lovely pink flowers that last for a week or two and are the harbinger of the annual spring riot of color that follows here in the Bayberry Woods.

Our mystery tree has budded (see picture) and it looks like its blossoms will pop out in the next day or two. Someone needs to tell our tree to chill out. Spring is late this year.

Right now, my friends in New York and Pennsylvania are being treated to what some in the media are calling a "snowacane" as additional feet of snow and very high winds batter the already winter-weary Northeast.

Down here, temperatures are beginning to moderate, but it's still cold. The forecasters say it will be below freezing here for the next three nights and a mix of rain and snow is in the forecast for next Tuesday.

Is it just me, or is anyone else out there absolutely sick to death of this winter? Can I get a show of hands please? I thought so.

This has been the longest and harshest winter by far of the four we've spent in Suburbingham. We've escaped the blizzards that have hammered other parts of the country, but the cold temperatures just won't let up.

Our last two bills from the gas company have been a little scary, and the next one won't be much better. My delicate Irish skin has been itching in protest for weeks at the dryness in the air.

This weekend I will open several paper packets and place the squash and tomato seeds inside into plastic trays filled with soil. Over the next few weeks they will germinate and grow to a size where they can be transplanted to my little garden by early April. In other years, I would have done this by now, but this winter has been too cold to even think about planting my veggie crop. Given the ferocity of this endless winter, sticking those seeds into trays this weekend will be a genuine act of faith.

When I thought I couldn't stand winter another day, I booked us on a Caribbean cruise for May so I could have something warm to think about. Then I put together a playlist of tropical-sounding music (think Jimmy Buffett and Bob Marley) which has been playing non-stop in our house for the last couple of weeks. When the music stopped working its magic, my cabin-fevered brain told me to book us on a second cruise.

In the process of researching the cruises we'll be taking, I stumbled across the most entertaining blog in the webiverse. John Heald is a fat 45-year-old British man who is the senior cruise director for Carnival Cruise Lines. He writes a semi-unofficial daily blog that leaves me laughing out loud more days than not.

What makes what Mr. Heald calls "this blog thingie" so good is his honesty and humor in reporting the strange events that take place on board his floating resort and his reaction to them. He even goes so far as to post the actual complaints that come in from his often-irrational passengers. That he's mocking these people while they're still on-board the ship makes it even better.

Most of the crazy complaints come from professional whiners looking to score a free fruit basket or a refund, but some of the items that cross Mr. Heald's in-box are hilarious. From the lady who thought she didn't have to pay for her losses at the ship's casino to the guy caught stealing the DVD player out of his cabin at the end of the cruise to the golfers who were irate when he didn't show Tiger Woods' press conference live on the big screen on the sun deck to a "fecal event" that shut down the main pool for a day to an assault by PETA activists on board for not condemning a swim with the dolphins tour, the list of odd events at sea goes on and on.

The guy is very British, so the blog is filled with terms like "bollocks" and "bugger all". Sometimes Heald borders on shilling for his cruise line (you can tell he's a true believer, though) and he often resorts to potty jokes, but if you've ever laughed at Monty Python or Benny Hill, you'll appreciate his English sense of humor.

If you're interested, here's the link

As Mr. Heald usually says before running on for several more pages, that's all for today.

If you're contemplating a cruise of your own or just want a couple of warm, happy songs to make you forget it's still winter for a few minutes, I've got a couple of tunes to suggest as you build your own playlists.

"Sail Away" by Sister Hazel gets my vote for the best song ever written about a party cruise to Mexico. If you aren't smiling by the time that tune ends, there's something wrong with you. "Where the Boat Leaves From" by the Zac Brown Band runs a close second.

My vote for the cruise song most likely to have been written under the influence of a Schedule I narcotic is "If I Had a Boat" by Lyle Lovett. The song is about Roy Rogers and Tonto riding their ponies on their boats as they sail the seas. That a song with a premise that bizarre can be both haunting and beautiful is a testament to Mr. Lovett's skills as both a songwriter and performer.

Okay, that really is all for today.

"Here's to you and here's to me. Here's to getting lost at sea. Sail away."

Lost in Constantinople

This and that:

Scram, our stray alley cat turned prince, is on the mend after emergency surgery on Monday. He was one sick kitty after some sort of puncture wound turned into a nasty infection. He's got a big scar and lots of stitches running down his shaved belly, but he's recovering nicely. I'm happy to report his personality is back, and he is as annoying as ever.

Scram is desperate to go outside to resume his patrols of the Bayberry Woods, and he has been howling at me all morning to let him out. I've tried to explain to him that he can't go out until he can jump into my lap, but he's insistent. I've mandated the jump test because I want him to be at least agile enough to escape the clutches of the dingo that lives next door before tasting freedom once again.

The brown rice and veggie "cleansing" diet is working its magic on both of us. Over the last few days Teri has dropped five pounds and I've lost four. I'm sure it's mostly water weight, but I'll take it.

I've been supplementing the diet with a couple of fish sticks each day, which violates both the letter and spirit of the diet. I can only handle so many celery sticks and apples before reaching for something less healthy. Teri, on the other hand, has been righteous from the start, but when she left this morning she asked me to pray that she can avoid the siren call of the Taco Bell drive through on the way home.

El Salvador joined the BYE League of Nations this week. How vergón is that? Hola to our new Wanaku friend.

I'm strangely fascinated by the figure skating at the Olympics. I still can't get over the corset costume Johnny Weir wore last week in the men's program. I've got a mental picture of my own plus-sized bubba body twirling around and busting the pink laces of that outfit, and it's not something anyone would ever want to see. Now you've got the same mental picture and it's going to be stuck in your head all day. Sorry.

Last night I watched the last bit of the women's figure skating short program. The combination of elegance and athleticism blows me away. The part that really mystifies me is all the spinning. How do they do that without getting dizzy and toppling over?

I missed most of the Olympics and Lost last night because I was off in a world of my own creation. I was writing away, and when I looked down at the lower right hand corner of my computer screen, it was 8:48 p.m.

This happens to me sometimes when I'm into my writing. I really do lose all track of time. When I go into my writing trance, the characters and the story become real. It's a strange thing. It doesn't happen every time I write, but it's cool when it does.

Last night my protagonist Eli, the embattled interim chief of a campus police department, surprised me by going to a graduate history course. It turns out he loves history and has been taking one class every semester for years and is close to earning his master's degree. Turns out that this soft-spoken southern boy is a brilliant student, and his professor spoke with him after class last night about the possibility of pursuing a PhD.

I had no idea about any of that until it happened. It wasn't in my outline or my notes.

It's more work for me when my characters do things without my prior knowledge or consent. Eli's intellectual pursuits meant that I had to research graduate history programs at several major state universities. Today I can tell you a lot about the requirements to earn advanced history degrees and the graduate course offerings at several schools--yesterday I couldn't.

Then there are the things I know about Eli that he doesn't. For instance, I know that he has marriage problems and some of the other residents of Constantinople also have an idea that there's trouble afoot on that front. But Eli won't find out until his wife gets back from her academic meeting in Vegas, and that's still several chapters away.

The feeling of reality is so strange.

Something I meant to be a minor sub-plot, the arrest of the star football player and subsequent fallout, has taken over the last few chapters. I didn't mean for that to happen, but the characters were dancing, so I let them. Lucky for me, the feds just showed up on campus demanding the hard drives for the dead professor's computers, so we're swerving back to the main story.

This morning as we were just waking up, Teri could tell that I was already somewhere else and lost in thought. When she asked me about it, I admitted she was right. She knew somehow that my body was in the bed with her, but my mind was off in Constantinople, Alabama, a city that never existed but is becoming more real to me by the day. I don't know how she knew tell that, but she did.

Brown rice and thin mint diet

The first time I was called a "food snob" the title stung a little, but I guess it's true.

Many years of constant travel for both business and pleasure and living fifteen years in one of the world's great food cities (New Orleans) have turned me into someone who can tell good cooking from bad, and I'm never shy about voicing my opinions when faced with mediocre food.

My abundant size is proof that I haven't skipped many meals over the years.

Some of the best meals of my life have been expensive and served in fancy restaurants or in exotic locales. A dinner in an ultra-chic restaurant in Paris last summer cost hundreds of dollars per person and the experience was worth every penny. A special Peking duck dinner in Beijing a few years back was the real deal and so delicious it rendered me stupid for a day or so.

I might be a food snob, but that doesn't mean food has to be expensive to be wonderful. Under the right circumstances a Big Mac and fries meets my criteria for gourmet cuisine. Street food in the Third World can put my American tummy out of commission for a couple of days, but for me the risk is usually worth it. I remember fish tacos in Mexico, a concoction called doubles in Trinidad, fried minnows in Finland and loads of other UFOs sold off of carts on the streets in almost any city I can think of. Almost all of them were yummy. You can eat very well for a buck or two almost anywhere in the world, if you follow the locals and you know where to look.

For me, the worst restaurants on the planet are the mid-priced chain joints here in the good ole USA. Olive Garden, Applebees, Outback, and their cousins are anti-cuisine. I find the food at these places to be bland, boring and way overpriced for what you get, even if the portions skew to the huge side. I'd much rather pay double or more for a few bites of really good food at a serious restaurant, spend about the same for a lovely meal at a family-run ethnic restaurant or just stay at home and cook for myself.

Good food is on my mind today for a couple of reasons, since I won't be getting any of it for the next little while.

One day last week I decided to go an entire day without eating. I did this out of curiosity and not for religious or health reasons. I made it about 36-hours with just water and other zero calorie beverages.

I've never fasted before. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but it wasn't the torture I expected, either. I was hungry the entire time, but after the first eight hours or so the hunger was manageable. I never felt weak and wasn't any grumpier than usual. At the end of 36 hours, I felt like I could continue the fast indefinitely, but decided not to without knowing more about what I was doing to myself.

The most surprising thing about the fast was that the bathroom scale told me I weighed two pounds more at the end of my 36-hour fast than when I began. That just ain't right people. What's up with that?

I've heard of people going on 40-day religious fasts where they only drank fruit juices and water, but I don't think I'm up for anything that drastic.

Teri and I chose today as the day to re-boot our diets and shed some of that poundage that attached itself to us over the winter. I'm a little less fat than I was at this point last year, but most people wouldn't be able to notice the difference.

This will be my thousandth diet, and I don't hold much hope for it working any better than the previous 999 over the long term.

Teri chose the method of kick starting our diets--it's one of those wacky regimens that involve the unfortunate word cleansing. It consists of eating organic brown rice and veggies. That's it. I'm going to play along with her, but I'll add a little fish to the mix too.

I'm also spending a lot of time on the treadmill these days. To tell you the truth, I don't think the exercise does much for me other than work up a serious appetite.

We'll see how this latest weight loss effort goes, but I doubt I can last long enough on brown rice to get get skinny from it. I'm sure I'll be bored with this wonder diet in no time and dive back to the ice cream and cookies.

That reminds me, our niece delivered our four boxes of Girl Scout cookies over the weekend. I begged Teri to take them to school today to give away to her always-hungry college students so they wouldn't tempt us. I wonder if she remembered to take the three boxes that are left after we went into our Samoa-eating frenzy on Saturday.

Excuse me while I check.

Nope, they're still out there, and they're calling my name right now. Thin mints and cold milk--ummmm, so goood.

Must resist. Must resist. Must resist.

Bon voyage

As I write this, my mother and a friend are on a jet somewhere between Austin and JFK. A few hours from now she will board an EgyptAir 777 bound for Cairo.

For the next few weeks the two of them will be traipsing around Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Dubai. I don't know how she will be getting around all of these places, but I'm pretty sure camels will be involved at some point.

Whenever she's been home for a few weeks, my mother's feet start to itch. The next thing you know she's on something with an engine heading into the unknown. If you're a lady of a certain age with a thirst for adventure and you need a travel buddy, give my mom a call--she's ready to go today. Well, not today. Today she's on her way to Egypt.

Our planet has seven continents--she's touched 'em all. There are somewhere around 195 nations on Earth--I'm sure she's been to well over half of them, but even she doesn't know the exact number. From bastions of civilization to Third World hellholes, there's no place she won't go given half a chance.

She announces her upcoming trips casually. "What's new, Mom?" I'll ask."

"Not much, Gui (don't ask). I'm going to Greece next week," she'll reply. "I got a last minute deal that was too good to pass up."

This happens a lot.

Mom often complains about her difficulty in finding travel companions from her pool of lady friends, and I cluck along sympathetically. I don't have the heart to tell her that there aren't that many septuagenarians out there anxious to climb the Himalayas or hike through the Laotian jungle.

I'd love to tell you what these experiences are like for her, but she's not very good at documenting her travels or talking about them.

"So, how was your trip to (insert name of exotic locale)?" I'll ask her when she gets home from one of her adventures.

"Oh, it was nice."

I'll press for details, but she usually won't have much more to say than that.

I'd post pictures of some of her adventures, but I don't have any. She doesn't either. Mom and cameras don't get along well, and I don't think she even bothers to bring one with her on her trips these days. I'm sure her traveling companions take pictures, but I haven't seen any of them in many years.

Unlike my mother, Dad always had good travel tales when they got back home. I miss my father. I'm sure he'd have a great story about the camels.

Mom hints that she might begin to cut back on her travels soon, but I hope she keeps it up as long as she can. I inherited my own sense of wanderlust from my parents, so I know exactly how it feels to find yourself in a new land and open to all kinds of possibilities.

Bon voyage, Mom!

Lent

I had to do a little research for today's post, and that can only mean convoluted writing is sure to follow. So, before we get to the "meat" (first pun of the day) of today's post, how about a couple of bon-bons to start?

Settle in and grab a cup of coffee before you read on. I think this post will turn out to be a good one, but I'm feeling long-winded today.

New Zealand, Switzerland and Denmark joined the BYE League of Nations this week, bringing our total flag count up to 31. I don't have much to say about New Zealand or Switzerland or other than I love lamb chops and chocolates. Oh, my Rolex keeps perfect time thanks to its Swiss precision, even if I am sporting a cheap Timex these days.

But I do have a cute anecdote about Denmark.

One of my enduring memories of childhood was riding the roller coaster at Tivoli Gardens, an amusement park in Copenhagen. I was maybe seven years old at the time, and it was my first roller coaster. What a rush! I've been hooked on roller coasters ever since.

A few years ago Teri and I found ourselves in Copenhagen. I wanted to relive my childhood for a couple of hours, so off we went to Tivoli Gardens. It's a beautiful little park, especially when it's lit up at night. We watched the kiddie puppet show and ate Danish junk food before making our way to the roller coaster.

The coaster was much smaller and less menacing than I remembered. Teri detests roller coasters, but even she agreed to climb on this tame little ride with me. Each car had two rows of two. Teri and I had the front two slots and a pair of adorable blond Danish children were in the row behind us.

Like many roller coasters these days, this one had a camera taking pictures of the riders as they made the first big drop. When we got to the photo booth at the end of our ride to see our picture, we noticed that the two precious children behind us were wise to the game and they were both flipping the bird to the camera. Of course we had to buy that picture. I'd post it here, but it's somewhere in the basement archives and I'm too lazy to go hunt for it.

Recently I heard from a former colleague for the first time in decades. Pat and I once labored for a publisher that has long-since been merged out existence. Anyway, Pat's friend Claire (whom I have never met) somehow stumbled across this little corner of the webiverse and lurks here from time to time. For reasons I can't fathom, Claire mentioned the BYE blog to Pat. Pat surprised Claire by saying she actually knew me.

Here's the part of the story that warms the cockles of my heart. Claire told Pat that she feels she "knows me" from reading this blog. Wow. What a tremendous compliment. I'm moved by hearing that and honored to know you're out there somewhere, Claire.

Teri is back from Mardi Gras, safe and sound. She was gone five nights. I'm happy to have her home and have resumed my regular schedule of personal hygiene.

She got home last night after teaching her class, and we indulged in a ritual we have enjoyed on Mardi Gras night for many years. We ate Popeye's chicken. The spicy kind. I think I ate four pieces of that most toothsome delicacy. It's so good that I allow myself to have it just once or twice a year, but always on Mardi Gras night.

Teri brought back several treats from New Orleans including some of our friend Colleen's crawfish etouffe, quite a few pounds of fresh gulf shrimp, and a baggie filled with our friend Nina's homemade toffee.

All of these things are better than you can imagine. Our krewe refers to Nina's toffee as crack--it's that addicting. The etouffe and shrimp are in the freezer awaiting special nights, but after I polished off the chicken I gorged myself on most of the crack.

I even had a bourbon and ginger ale to wash it all down.

Happy Mardi Gras.

That was last night. Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, and it's a whole different deal.

For those of you not up on Christian calendars, Lent is the 40 day period of prayer, fasting and reflection between Mardi Gras and Easter Sunday. It's mostly a Catholic thing, and even though Teri and I are Protestants, a lot of Catholic culture rubbed off on us in our fifteen years in New Orleans.

During Lent you're supposed to deny yourself certain pleasures. Some people don't drink alcohol or give up tobacco for Lent. Vice-free people often refrain from cookies, cakes and candy for Lent.

Traditionally, you shouldn't eat any meat during this time, although today people mostly observe that practice only on Fridays during the Lenten season. Giving up meat isn't much of a sacrifice for New Orleanians. Seafood doesn't count as meat and there's an abundance of fresh fish, shrimp and shellfish available there along with a legion of inventive chefs in New Orleans to cook it. For example, Colleen's crawfish etouffe is a sensual indulgence and violates the spirit of this period of self-denial in every way, but it's still fair game during Lent.

The whole idea of Mardi Gras (which literally translates as fat Tuesday) is to have one last blowout before Lent begins. The period leading up to Mardi Gras is called Carnival and that word comes from two Latin words--carne (meat) and vale (goodbye). So carnival literally translates to "farewell to the flesh." There are several ways you can interpret the expression, and they're all appropriate.

Lent is a great excuse to jump-start a diet, and that's exactly what Teri and I are doing today.

I'm giving up alcohol for Lent. It's not that big a deal for me since I'm not much of a drinker anyway, and Easter will come long before I go to New Orleans for Jazz Fest or Teri and I escape on our Carribean cruise.

I'm also going to give up meat for Lent, and that will be a little more challenging. I love me some lamb, pork, steak and chicken.

Finally, I'm fasting today. Maybe. If I get desperate I'm going to allow myself one apple. If I get really desperate, I'll abandon the experiment altogether. We'll see how it goes. If this were a religious fast, I shouldn't be telling you about it, but that's not my motivation. I'm fasting out of curiousity and to start getting my body Speedo-ready for summer.

I'm just kidding about the Speedo. I can think of about a hundred reasons that wouldn't be a good idea.

Shattered ivory tower

You've probably heard about the horrible incident that took place Friday afternoon at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. A biology professor there shot six of her colleagues at a departmental meeting after being denied tenure. Three of the six are dead.

Here's the thing. I knew her. Sort of.

I also knew three of her victims. Sort of.

I've never known a mass murderer before. At this point the professor in question is only an alleged mass murderer, even if there's not much doubt about what happened in that conference room.

In my previous life as a sales representative for a college textbook publisher, it was my job to travel the state of Alabama in an effort to convince college professors to adopt (that's the term we used) the company's materials for their courses.

Amy Bishop, the 45-year-old professor and mother of four who came unhinged on Friday, was the main decision maker for human anatomy and physiology course at UAH. This course is taken by everyone who wants to go into a health related major like nursing, so it is always a large class. The textbooks used in A&P are very expensive, and this is an adoption every publisher's rep wants to have.

In the course of my job, I met with Dr. Bishop several times. She was always pleasant when I talked to her, but I never had any luck getting her to consider my offerings, even though my company published the leading title for her class. Usually, when a professor is completely closed to looking at other course materials, it's a sign that they are either lazy or bad teachers, and there are plenty of both types in the halls of academe, Discerning Reader.

A friend in the textbook business called me over the weekend and said Amy Bishop looked like "a beast" based on a picture he had seen. Not true. On campus she looked like a normal 45-year-old woman, although I see what he meant based on the mugshot of her that has been published everywhere. I guess when you've been denied tenure and shot six people, you're not going to look your best for pictures.

The head of the Biology department at UAH, Dr. Podila, was among those killed in the attack. I always found him to be a kind man and easy to talk to. He didn't teach any classes that my company published books for, but we'd have friendly chats occasionally.

I never would have dreamed that the woman I had met would be capable of such a horrible act, and that's the sum of my insight. Not much, is it?

I'm not a psychic and not given to premonitions, but I always thought that, if anything like the mass killing at Virginia Tech happened at one of my schools, it would happen at UAH. I'm not sure why I felt that way, but that thought was in the back of my mind whenever I visited this school. I never had that feeling at any of the hundreds of other colleges and universities I've visited over the years (including Virginia Tech), but I did at UAH and I can't explain why. Weird, huh? I was always a little uncomfortable there, especially when I visited the math and science departments. Something about the place reminded me of the Island of Misfit Toys.

Perhaps it's that a number of the professors at UAH struck me as more stressed than at my other schools. There are unhappy, stressed-out profs on every campus, but it seemed the ratio of unstable people at UAH was a little higher than usual.

Maybe I had subconscious thoughts of the other UAH murder, and they led to my weird premonition. The former department head of the physics department at UAH was convicted last year of murdering his wife and dumping her body in the river.

I knew him too.

I'm sure the academic pressure cooker environment had something to do with what happened on Friday. UAH isn't a top-tier university, but Huntsville is awash in aerospace money and some high powered research goes on there. A number of the faculty, especially in the sciences and engineering, are under pressure to bring in big research dollars and consider their teaching duties to be a necessary evil.

This will sound strange, but I also think the way academic buildings are designed today may somehow contribute to incidents like this one.

Modern academic buildings like the shining new Shelby Science Center (pictured above) that houses the biology and math departments at UAH, have wonderful open spaces and high tech classrooms. But the faculty tend to work in pods of cramped, anonymous offices. They're not quite cubicles, but they're not far from it.

You'll find this kind of faculty office in virtually every new building on any campus you visit. Everything about these modern faculty offices tells the people who inhabit them that they are tiny replaceable cogs in a huge machine.

Old academic buildings, those built prior to 1950, tend to have spacious faculty offices, lined with bookshelves--the kind of space where a person would want to spend time thinking great thoughts. They don't build 'em like that any more.

Or maybe she was just crazy.

I'm in the middle of writing a mystery. In it, two murders take place in a modern academic building in a pressure-cooker department of a state university in Alabama. I don't know what to think about that today.

Snow day!

Snow is beautiful, especially when it happens only once every few years and then politely melts away the next day.

Today was a snow day here in Suburbingham and perhaps an inch of the white stuff has dusted the Bayberry woods.

Even though the snow didn't stick to the roads, schools and offices closed while people made panic runs to the stores for bread and milk. Events I was supposed to attend tonight and tomorrow morning have been cancelled.

We're such wimps here in the deep south. We're incapable of dealing with even the rumor of frozen precipitation. Earlier this winter every school and university in the area closed as we braced for a snowfall that never came. We repeated the drill today, and the closings were every bit as unnecessary. At least we got a little snow this time, but it hasn't been a barrier to movement.

I love how falling snow makes the world quieter, more peaceful--how the white brightens up the world. I'm in my office with a cup of hot tea looking out at a pristine world. It's nice.

The snow this winter has long since lost its charm for people in other places, but it's a novelty here and something to be welcomed. My friends and family in places like Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are sick to death of the snow this year. I'm only sorry we didn't get more of it here.

As much as I'm enjoying my snow day, I am over this particular winter. I'll bet you are too. This one has seemed especially harsh and unusually long. Teri is in New Orleans tonight and will be wearing my thermal undies at the parades tonight. That's not all she'll be wearing, don't get the wrong idea--she's not that kind of Mardi Gras reveler. I remember some Mardi Gras parades when I've had to bundle up, but for every one of those, there were five I went to in short-sleeves.

Scram, the feline Prince of Bayberry, is also weary of winter, and today's snow hasn't served to improve his mood. He has been yelling at me all afternoon, demanding that I change the conditions outside. The picture on the right shows my offended cat telling me to fix the problem now. After I took the shot, Scram took a couple of tentative steps into the snow and then ran back inside to sulk.

There's something ironic about how the Olympic organizers are having to truck snow to Vancouver this week while we have it on the ground in Alabama.

Strange world.

And beautiful.

You can't judge a book by its cover

There's this really amazing guy on a social networking site for writers who does virtual book covers for the virtual books posted there by virtual authors like me. He offered to do a cover for me, and this is what he came up with.

Pretty cool, huh?

He does these for free for all of us "prepublished" authors. I don't know how much good karma you can accumulate in a lifetime, but this man's karma cup must be overflowing.

The list of agent rejections keeps growing. I haven't had any rejections from publishing houses yet, but I'm not counting that as good news--they just move slower. I'm still in love with my first story, but I've had enough rejection for now and am putting aside my marketing efforts to focus on my strange (and potentially more commercial) southern murder mystery while I still have time.

Speaking of the next project, I'm slogging away on Book 2 and spent some time on the phone today with a singles minister (and good friend) at a large Southern Baptist church. I needed to get my facts straight on how Baptist congregations deal with disagreements within the church and some other church protocol and organizational issues. When I left a message for her to call me, she was afraid I'd be asking deep theological questions, and was relieved when instead I asked about who sits in on different kinds of meetings.

Finally, a shout-out to Ireland, Israel, South Africa and Malaysia, all of which joined the BYE League of Nations this week. Welcome!

Who Dat!

Well, that was fun.

In case you haven't heard, my beloved New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl last night in dramatic fashion.

There's a lot to say about the game and its meaning to the entire Gulf South, but I think I'll leave that for others to dissect.

I'll just say this: it was one of the best nights of my life.

Everything about last night's game was perfect. Even the commercials were funnier than ever. Well there was one imperfection--the lame halftime performance by what remains of one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Can you say, "pass the Metamucil?"

I think I may have just watched my last televised sporting event. I mean it. What's the point of watching another game? Last night was as good as it gets, and I can't imagine a game in any sport at any level with more subtext, underlying meaning or a more satisfying result. I'll never feel this good or derive this much joy from a game again. It's not possible.

Everyone who has ever lived in New Orleans knows what I mean. No game could ever mean as much to them as the one they saw last night.

Today I'm in Who Dat heaven. In four days Teri will be on the streets of New Orleans celebrating Mardi Gras. I'll be there in April for Jazz Fest, and they'll still be dancing in the streets.

Just when I think the Best Year Ever couldn't get any better, it does. Discerning Reader, if you haven't had your own "Best Year Ever", I highly recommend the experience. When I began this experiment in June, I made the conscious decision that the next twelve months would be the best of my life. There have been plenty of surprises for me along the way, but so far the year is living up to the name I gave it.

The key was the decision.

If you decide to live as if you're conducting a grand experiment and you decide that a chunk of time is going to be rich and filled with joy and satisfaction, it really can turn out that way. It has for me, so far.

I'm finding out that, even in the best of times, not everything happens exactly the way I want or in the ways I envisioned. But it's all turning out for the best. As I write this, I have 112 days remaining in the Best Year Ever.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

Boat Drinks

I gotta fly to Saint Somewhere ...
... I gotta go where it's warm.
--Jimmy Buffett, "Boat Drinks"

I never intended this to be a personal diary, and I already know today's post will read like a journal entry. This morning I have lots of little thoughts and no big ones at all. My apologies, Discerning Reader.

Spring is coming, but I can't stand winter another minute, so yesterday I broke down and booked a Caribbean cruise. We'll be sailing in May. This won't be a typical kind of trip for us--our vacations tend towards more exotic fare like biking through Burgundy or slogging through rice paddies in the backwaters of Vietnam.

But our budget is tight, and yesterday I wasn't in the mood for all the research and planning I always put into one of our "real" vacations. I wanted something easy. Right now a week of idle mindlessnessness aboard a floating tropical resort sounds pretty darn good.

Sounds good to Teri too. She's been working her tail off getting ready for the Big Read, a year-long campaign to promote literacy and library patronage in our state. The idea is to get everyone in the State of Alabama to read "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" this year. Teri and her students have been heavily involved in the PR campaign and the formal kickoff is this morning on the steps of the state capitol. Teri is there as I write this, surrounded by librarians and politicians. You can read more about the effort by clicking here.

Between Alabama Reads, the coming ad team competition, the faculty fellows seminar series she directs, a major grant to combat student binge drinking she's overseeing and her full class load, Teri is one busy, busy woman. When May gets here and her calendar clears, she'll be ready for a little pampering.

I'm really proud of her, and I don't know how Teri gets everything done. Somehow, she does.

Our vacation is coming to us compliments of Uncle Sam. Our tax refund is more than covering the cost of the trip. I know, I know--it was our money and we shouldn't have loaned all that cash to the government interest-free for an entire year. But windfalls rock.

A recent series of visits to various medical professionals should eat up the balance of the refund. Between new glasses (I won't look like John Lennon, but at least I'll have his spectacles), a cavity that needs replacing and tomorrow's physical, the cost of good health in middle age adds up quickly.

I like the team of caregivers I have in place. Yesterday I added a new dentist to the roster. My last dentist was more concerned with getting additional revenue than the people in her chair, so I've decided to part ways with her tooth factory.

One of the blessings of living in Suburbingham is that we seem to be blessed with an abundance of competent medical practitioners. I never have to wait to get an appointment with any of my doctors, and they are all terrific.

My new dentist is Doctor Jayme. That's what the staff calls her and how she refers to herself. She's young, pleasant and I can tell she knows what she's doing. I feel a little oogy about combining her first name with her formal title. I'd prefer either using the surname with the title (Dr. Smith) or being on a first name basis. I've gone both ways with my docs in the past, depending. This is neither formal nor familiar--it's some kind of strange middle ground. I like her so I guess I'll have to adjust to this whole Doctor Jayme business.

I spent one day last week going through my manuscript to make a particular kind of edit. A reviewer correctly pointed out that I was using the word "had" too heavily (565 times, to be exact). It's a kind of verbal tic, and I looked at each instance of "had" in the book to see if I could make those sentences more active. After completing the task (it took the better part of a day), I somehow saved the master document so that I not only undid all my work, I simultaneously eliminated every "had" in the book, even the ones that needed to be there. Not good. Yesterday I spent another full day with a slightly older backup version beside the master to fix the mess I made. That was painful, but at least 400 or so unnecessary "hads" are history.

The form rejections from literary agents keep coming even as my popularity on the Authonomy writer website continues to rise and favorable comments continue to come in. Yesterday's form rejection letter had the following tacked on: "Don't give up!" That's something, anyway.