Hurrying, before Warren checks!

Dateline: above the garage in Portsmouth RI, 30 April 2005

Warren's always checking my blog to see what I'm up to. He's like my mother or something!

So last night while I'm talking to him on the phone at his office and he's still bitching (good naturedly) about my piece being late and all, he opens his browser to my blog and starts whining about, "Imagine that, here I am waiting on this piece in my office on a Friday night and where's my author? He's off blogging about how he can't finish it cause he's brain dead!!!!!!!"

He scared me for a bit there.

Anyway, I got off easy last night with Jerry. Only had to act out entire Sponge Bob movie (Jerry as Bob, I'm Patrick, who, quite frankly, isn't a good role for me).

Get up this a.m. and plug in some stuff I talk to Mark about last night and he's all "You should write that in the piece!"

He was right, of course, and they fit well.

Then I tried a para-too-far on this one thing, called my mentor Hank Gaffney on it, and decided to ditch the concept cause it was too hard to explain and didn't provide much power to the piece.

Then I got back to the beast and closed it out at just over 11k, adding the last 1k fairly tightly and getting in the last bits I really wanted to use.

Mark's got it now, and since I'm typing here instead of talking to him about it, I expect my cell to ring about 20 seconds after I hit the "save" button on Moveable Type.

I will spend afternoon bowling with boys, then probably swimming at Y tonight. Expect some assignments from between now and Monday morning on the piece, and will take them as they come.

Piece was fun but hard to write. Had to write like someone I'm not to a certain extent, because even though I know the material in my own way, I had to use what reporting I had, not insert my own thinking into the piece to the point where it stopped being a profile and started becoming my think piece.

Hard to explain, but I liked learning the lesson. I know I want to do more of this sort of writing, because the upside on learning is huge--as in, I am already plotting the content of Vol. III from this article and others I hope to write for Esquire this year.

Critt just tells me he has feature article for this week's digest and God love him for it. I just want to catch up on my Quicken and my travel vouchers and all those Ask Tom letters and . . . somehow fly my ass down to DC tomorrow night!

Still think I want to write on Pope selection, if only to make my Aunt Mary in AZ happy, and perhaps to trigger a call from my Mom, whom I can't seem to get ahold of lately. So I will target next week, maybe.

God I have to slow down. Just canceled gig in San Diego at end of month (Future in Review conference). No pay and they wanted me to fly myself and pay own hotel for the privilege. That just doesn't work when your kids beg you to spend time with them, so I have to say no. I get the feeling I'm going to have to get better at saying no a lot more in the future.

Off to the duck pins!