'Tis the season, Girl Scout cookies are out and it's time for some serious money exchanging and pigging out on Thin Mints, which have to be the most cost effective cookie in the collection. My son likes Samoas, which are good because chocolate goes well with coconut, but not they're not as good as Thin Mints in my opinion. I'm a chocolate and mint kind of guy. Chocolate mint ice cream, creme de menthe over chocolate ice cream, grasshopper cocktail, grasshopper pie, York Peppermint Patties, Andes chocolates, the list could go on forever.

Tonight for dinner my son barbecued cheap grocery store filet mignons. Ours didn't fit the traditional description in that they were not thick slices of beef tenderloin. We could've had the prime New York strips the store sells and had gotten thicker steaks. But, no, he had to pay big bucks to get something special, which they were, but come on, with a few hickory chips any steak will taste good. Next time we buy steaks, I'm opting for the New York strips or T-bones.

I've started a new story in an attempt to keep the creative juices flowing if that is possible. It's a continuation of Remembering Tim and will take place in the early Eighties after Geoff has inherited a gob of money from his Uncle Walter's estate and bought a large Queen Anne style house in Warnton, NY, small college town in apple country of Upstate New York between Syracuse and Rochester. He's a professor of linguistics and hires a needy freshman as a houseboy. In his mind he's doing the boy a favor by giving him monetary and academic assistance, but the boy is incredibly cute and all the wrong synapses in Geoff's brain are going off every time they get close.

I think it will be a good exercise to see if I can keep my mind going while waiting for the new puppy to arrive in May. And, then? I don't know, maybe I can keep it going until I've written the obligatory 20 chapters, or more if I take it until the boy either dies (Geoff does have a problem with people dying around him), flunks out of school, or graduates, whichever makes the most sense. I can't make any promises on this other than I hopes it helps my now stable though drugged mental state maintain some sense of normalcy.