Hi...surreal
Jenny is totally back in Columbia, and today she swung by Panera to say hey. It rocks my socks off that she's back. I envision some many good times and I can't wait to hang with her.

But, it is a bit strange to think that she was just in London, ordering from the Easter Star and riding the tube.

Welcome back, yo.

"I get by with a little help from my friends," The Beatles

My Saturday should have been terrible. It was rainy, I had to work an eight hour shift at the Mo-ian, during which I had to write three (count them, three) obituaries - that's three phone calls to three different grieving families, and then I got off at 8 p.m. and ate dinner by myself.

But, due to a variety of beautiful people in my life, this was probably the best Saturday I've had in a long time.

Thanks to:
My Dad for a lovely Saturday morning conversation.
Sammy D. for wanting to play Scrabble.
Mel and Jon for coming over.
Scrabble followed by Euchre followed by a trip to the diner with three of the best people in my life.

I wish you all such wonderful folks as these. Today picked me up in so many ways, and for the first time in awhile I don't feel a knot of tension between my shoulder blades.

"Why he left his home in the south to roam round the pole, God only knows," The Cremation of Sam McGee ~ Robert W. Service

It is my firm belief that all truly great writers are stronly connected to the place where they consider home. What is Faulkner without the South, Steinbeck with out California? Who would read Garcia-Marquez if his words did not carry a Colombian heat? And would Tom Robbins' characters be convincing out of their pacific-northwest home? Incidentally, Robert W. Service was the poet laureate of the Yukon.

People tease me about the south and Texas, and that's fine - I make most of the jokes myself. But I'm counting the days till I can get back to that place, because I need it. And my home is a much bigger part of me, than I will ever be of it.

I need the housewine of the South, amber in glass that flows from morning to night.

And the wisteria that hangs so heavy on it's branch that it drags the ground.

I need magnolias as big as dinner plates and Southern lilacs in every color you can think.

I need my Texas sky, and Texas bluebonnets, and Texas longhorns.

To sing "Just as I am," in the cool of a Southern Baptist Church.

Banana pudding, and fried green tomatos, and creamette salad.

The skyline of Dallas and the Red River.

More than anything I need my family who loves me and the familiar faces I grew up with in a place called Texas.

Hello Weekend - I will pet you, and hold you, and love you, and....study like a mad scientist for my comm law test.

Exhausted and going through the motions.

Win some, you lose some

MU Jazz Concert, 8:00 p.m., Stotler Lounge - Memorial Union.
(Good music, good people, good times)

If things work out...
If my life will go, just for the next few hours, exactly as I have it planned (I know - I'm jinxing it) then I will be able to both spend an hour with four nurses from Mexico, and have dinner with a jazz musician and writer who is in town to perform with our band.

I've got one hour to interview los enfermera's and then book it to Loeb to make dinner.

Hoping and wishing, ya'll

On the edge of what promises to be a long day...

8:42 p.m. Adelante Newsroom...
Wrote a new lead - hacked about 5 'graphs out of my story.
Am now waiting for editor to return with coffee so that we can put out a magazine.

8:44 p.m. Wondering...
Why do the international people that use McReynolds always play in the FARC yard? All winter it was snowball fights and now it's frisbee. Why do they want to play outside so much - the snow I get, 'cause maybe they don't get snow. But still - is it that restless drive to be Joe College?

8:46 p.m. Must be spring...
The landlocked Mizzou campus smells of dead, festering fish - is it a plague? No. Those trees that smell of fish are in bloom.
Almost brings a smile to my face.

8:48 p.m. Decided (mostly)
I told Mel that I've decided what I really want in life.
I want a dog. I want a kitchen.
These are my top picks. Anything that comes with them is gravy.
I possibly want: someone to share dog/kitchen with and/or children to play in kitchen with dog.
The someone and the children are tentatively penciled in -- we'll see.
But I'm sure on the dog and the kitchen.

9:00 p.m. Trabajo
Editor back - bearing gifts - back to work.

P.S. If anyone has leads on a dog or a kitchen, let me know.