Still warm and fuzzy from the surprise fan phone call. Writing is such a solitary profession, no one is around at the highest part of the process, when you know you finally have something right ... and I write so far adrift from popular tastes, and therefore from the marketplace, that I only rarely get positive feedback on my best and most serious work. Like the novel praised today ... and you can't give a better review than "I'm in love with CJ!" (she added that her reader was in love with ME ha ha). They even want to take me out for a drink. Now that is really rare. I told her to finish the book first.

Dancing on the Titanic could be even more powerful, to the right sensibility, than Sodom if I got it right. And who knows if I'll have time and energy to do that. But finishing a chapter troubling me today is encouraging. We'll just take it one small advance at a time. And I finish or die first.

Love the prep work before grilling, getting everything ready, the food, the grill, the set up, deciding what if any wood to add ... my kind of labor intensive, slow work that encourages my favorite activity, which of course is brooding.

Earlier I had a glass of COLD buttermilk. This is a highlight of my day. I usually have one a day. Sometimes two, if I have the first like at 4 in the morning. I'm making a couple quarts a week, so I drink about a quaart a week, the other always in the refrig, for cooking as well as for drinking. The chicken marinade was great. It is essential in my biscuit recipe.

Turkey burgers and turkey hot dogs tonight.

Ah, another surprise, email from a former student checking in ... too complex to explain my life now in an email, we are having coffee on Friday. And I look forward to it! The student now has two Masters degrees after her name.

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