Wow kids. The Flu is in full effect and in the immortal words of..hmm was Cool Moe D…I’m “illin” and not in a good way. Be that as it may, the show must go on. There’s no stopping the “Birthday Party” in fact, as I type this I am loading up on antibiotics, grapefruit and Popeyes fried chicken. Hey, if a healthy dose of Popeye’s doesn’t kill and flush this damned bug from my system, nuthin will.
Well kids, I’m not sure exactly how this came about. I don’t, as a rule, partake in these sorta things. Be that as it may, my Plurk buddy Rupe has a blog. He interviewed somebody; I think; and then was supposed to “tag” six people or something. You see how well I follow directions? At the end of it all I found myself saying “Okay Rupe, sure. Interview me.”
Kessler suddenly veered into a parking lot of Texaco station and pulled over to the edge of the lot, near the air and water hoses.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Checking my fluid levels,” he replied. “What else?”
I was scrambling to get things done on Monday morning. Namely, I was trying to figure out my lead for the boat cop story. Of course, there was the book project and sociological research of the sand bar left to do. But in the meantime, I still had to justify my ride-along with the boat cops by writing a straight news feature on the boat patrol and boating safety.
“The only thing that separated the Williams family from any of the other families departing from the docks of Marina Del Mar, in Madisonville, Louisiana, on Sunday, was
their willingness to bring aboard a journalist for the day.”
This was a strange note I had scribbled to myself while I sat in my car, waiting for the Sheriff’s Office boat to come pick me up.
I’d been trying for a month to hook up the ride-along through the sheriff office’s
public information guy, Glen. However, primarily due to other obligations on my behalf, I’d been unable to do this.
6-7-06
Douglas Brinkley:
So, today is inauguration day today for our buddy Ray Nagin. I wonder if you’ll be there in the audience at the Convention Center booing, or better yet, throwing Hieneken bottles at him. Somebody certainly should be. Or maybe one of those little kegs they make. I understand those things pack a pretty good wallop.
On second thought, though, a Chocolate Soldier bottle might be even more fitting.
Can you imagine Ray picking glass shards out of that pretty bald head of
his with a pear of tweezers right there in the middle of the press conference?
Well folks, I did it.
I have completed the 2008 National Novel Writing Month 2008 Challenge. I wrote a 50,601-word novel, The Long Hunt, in a month; actually 18 days. But who’s counting?
Most of the time, it didn’t seem like work. And, most importantly, I’m pleased with the end result. I like the damned book. At the risk of sounding vain, it’s a very good book; much better than I ever dreamed or imagined it could be; especially considering time constraints.
The full moon seemed to radiate stronger than a burning sun and, along with a cloudless sky and seemingly endless canopy of stars, lit up the night on all sides, as Jesse and Rakov made their way to Mill Creek.
It was also a quiet night. There seemed to be no night time sounds, no crickets, no wind, nothing save for the solitary sounds of their horses hooves clopping repeatedly onto the tired earth, as they traveled.
They rode at a moderate trot. They had both followed the tracks, wolf tracks, out of town, but as Rakov had pointed out, they knew where Namid was going, so they stopped trying to see the tracks in the dark of night, and just made their way to Mill Creek.
Neither Jesse or Rakov said too much. At this point, there wasn’t too much more that could be said. They didn’t really have a plan, but by the same token, it was difficult to plan for something as unprecedented as the task before them.
