Well hello, Hank. Nice to see you. Taken in Pine Mountain, CA April14, 2005.

Woke up about 6:45am. Not my usual crawl out of bed time, but I had a deadline today and had to get up and running. Jumped in the shower, made the bed, headed downstairs to find my fiancee fixing me eggs (nice fiancee). Ate breakfast – two hardboiled eggs, toast and tea, my usual – and read the LA Times. Checked email and then got to work. My deadline is for Valentines cards requested by my greeting card licensee, Recycled Paper Greetings. I started my presentation last week, did some work on it yesterday and today had to finish all of my designs, print them out, assemble the mock-ups, and create the presentation packaging. I managed to get 3-6 mock-ups of four different ideas for lines that are fairly off the Swirly path. It will be interesting to see how they are received.

I got everything packed up, printed my overnight UPS label, and walked a few blocks down to the shipping store in Marina del Rey. Found out I had a couple more hours before the UPS pickup deadline, but I’m glad I finished early (about 2:30) because I had not eaten lunch yet and was fading fast. On my way home I saw an unusally big ladybug, and for some reason it made me wonder, "What do baby ladybugs look like and how come we never seen them?" Then as I walked along the canal that runs from Venice to the Marina, I noticed that one of our local ducks had been killed. He was just lying there on the side of the canal, while his usual companions swam around on the other side of the canal. I see these ducks all over – in the water, walking by cafes, even sitting by a parking meter watching the traffic go by on Washington Blvd. I felt sad for this little creature, as if a neighbor was suddenly gone.

After I returned home from dropping off my package, I made lunch – tuna salad piled on top of a regular salad – and started the LA Times crossword puzzle. I also read a wonderful article about Jonathan Safran Foer, author of "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close". I have this book and have been letting it sit on my living room table for weeks now, enjoying the anticipation of reading it. I have read such great things about this book and I think Mr. Foer’s approach to writing is fascinating. One of his quotes in the article was,

"You know how sometimes you’re in bed, and you get an idea, and you have to decide whether to get up and write it down? Writing a novel is a lot like getting out of bed a hundred million times. I want to be someone who doesn’t lose things. Writing is less about creating things than keeping them."

I am now going through the piles on my desk so I can dust my desk, as for some reason there are all kinds of bits and pieces of dirt, sand and glitter all over it. After I finish getting through my administrative stuff I will head upstairs to our living room to write. It is now 4:06pm. I do not know what I will do for dinner tonight or what I will do this evening. I have the movie "Pillow Talk" with Doris Day from Netflix, so I might watch that. I rented it because my mom won a Doris Day look alike contest when she was 20 years old. She was flown from Texas to LA with a lot of other contest winners from around the country, and got to meet Doris Day. She has a picture of the two of them together, and the resemblance is quite striking. Especially the boppy blond hair and girl-next-door smiles.

The End.