Been a while...

Of course, I'm sure you were all hunkered up to the screen waiting, breath baited, for the latest edition.

Yeah right. Your ass hurts...

Let's just put it this way: I been busy.

Somewhere between a hurricane, a wedding and the semester from hell these last few months, I've barely had time to fart proper. Of course, I'm sure the Old Lady might beg to differ. I'm sure that's got more to do with flavor than the savor of true and proper execution, but that's another story for another time. Thank God, that's all behind me now.

Well, sort of. Speaking of stories, I really should be getting on with my mine. Enough vacationing. I write my thesis this year, which if all goes to plan, should land someplace between an original short story collection or novel, whichever works out first, I suppose. Gotta have it done to graduate come December, and the first draft is due about mid-March.

'Nuff rest for the wicked, I suppose. Time to get 'er done, drop the boys off at the bowl, or whatever you wanna call it. But it truly is now or never, for me anyway.

I doubt I'll ever have such an opportunity again. Not without a job sucking the life out of me. Or these cigarettes. Just one of them oughta do the trick soon enough. Personally, I'd much prefer it were the smokes.

Kinda funny that something so utterly mundane like a heart attack or cancer or a mosquito bite would take me out now. Ask most anyone who knew me in my twenties, and I'm sure they'd have said my death would somehow involve a great fiery crash while jumping my Harley over a tankful of sharks hauled by an eighteen-wheeler down I-35 at rush hour. Can't tell you how many times I bragged I'd be dead by thirty.

Sad part is that most people who heard me do so just paused a second or two to consider the source, and then simply nodded. Sadder still: Thirty was fifteen years ago now for me...