Dateline: a neverending SWA flight from PVD to BWI, 6 June 2005

Vonne and I start the day by getting youngest daughter from China her first American passport. Actually, just the official application process submitted, but pretty cool anyway. We have to travel off-island to MA to get it done, but it is nostalgic, because Vonne ran many of the official State Dept. docs through the town hall of little old Dartmouth MA.

After picking up the young man at preschool, I head to a local photographer and have a bunch of head shots done on digital. First set were butt ugly and really had me scared. I mean, in a couple I almost looked life-like! So I made him shoot a whole lot more (not exactly costly on digital). Despite being the old film guy using a digital, the man had an eye that had seen them all, so his guidance was invaluable on realizing which shots did the best job of really presenting me in the manner I wanted. These shots are to be used in BFA-the jacket cover (which I edited today for Neil Nyren at Putnam-they did a beautiful job), but logically will be used all over the dial in reviews, on the web, on Esquire's contributors page.

So I chose six we agreed were best, and I'm having a disk made up with four versions of each: low-res color, low-res B&W, and high-res versions of color and B&W. The former for Internet, the latter for print. Total cost? $103. I will miss this photo shop. Spouse has had loads of stuff done there over the years. Last time I went to a fancy portrait shop and it ended up too formal. This time, feeling more comfortable with these old friends, I got what I wanted.

Afternoon slips by in a stream of phonecons. Set up tomorrow's interviews with my next profile subject for Esquire. I spent a day with this guy way back when I was just starting my string of interviews for the big profile of a Bush cabinet official coming out in just a few days in the July issue. Left him high and dry for a while but now I'm back to finish what Mark Warren and I are convinced will be one very interesting personal story. When this piece goes in, it will be my fourth for the mag this year, assuming what I wrote on Sunday finds a home in a future issue, as the August issue's too far gone for this particular brainstorm. Two more in the works, one moving to negotiations and the other just in brainstorming range, but that would give me six for the first year, which would be pretty damn cool on top of the book.

Rather than get everything done I needed to get done, much less deal with the piling-up emails (and yeah, it's getting much harder to pretend that everyone's missive outranks bath time for the two little ones-as inevitably "rude and arrogant" as that makes me seem to some correspondents), I spend the time making sure I hear everyone's stories and play everyone's favorite little games (both real and mind) before dashing off to the airport for my many-hours odyssey that was flying down the Eastern seaboard tonight.

Hoping to hit the sack around 2am before having to get up NLT 0630 if I'm to keep my appointment. Tomorrow is likely to end well after midnight in yet another late-night drive. I am happy not to be feeling any older than 43 tonight, and am glad I got the workout in last night despite the late hours involved.

Here's the daily catch:

■ East Asia won't choose sides in any Sino-American rift

■ Energy requirements ARE the new Indian foreign policy

■ The military/market division of labor in shrinking the Gap: a bad thing or a good thing?

■ Russia welcomes FDI and oil output rises; Russia scares off FDI and oil output stagnates

■ Will someone tell my wife our kids don't need to be good at math?