Mission Possible

I was a spy today. I didn't know that I would spend the day being a spy, but that's just how it turned out. I had planned to spend the day doing taxes, dishes, running one Kung Fu class, then more of the same. My darling wife was away for an all-day training session, so I had Monkey with me all day, but he's generally pretty easy to work with.

After watching a Backyardigans episode, my imaginative young son informed me of the fact that we were now spies. I decided to go with it. I sat down with him and discussed our upcoming mission: Phase 1...go to the Kung Fu school, sneak in (while avoiding various imaginary booby traps), and retrieve a box of records (tax info for me). Phase 2...meet with our operative at the bank to retrieve some important papers (more tax info). Phase 3...go to the bookstore and find the books on the super-secret spy list (that I had printed for us). We chose to accept the mission, and had an absolute blast. All during the day, we held to our spy identities, avoided traps and detection from various authorities, and achieved our goals. It was a great day for the home team.

An unexpected pleasure rolled my way today as I got a call from my cousin and her parents. They were on their way back home to Indiana, and they wanted to stop by. I was thrilled to see them, but sad that we couldn't spend more time together. Even though the visit was short, I was really happy that they could take the time to come out and see us.

Before all this happened, I started going over some of my old notes from my novel this morning, and found more and more stuff to work through. I'm starting to see some new directions, and more importantly, some new questions. By asking myself lots of questions, I can figure out the answers...the answers make up the story. I shot a quick email to my favorite author, Dennis L. McKiernan, after finding a handful of written notes that I had taken during a short lunch meeting we had back in 2000 at a writer's conference. He gave me some invaulable advice back then, and I'm still grateful to him for taking the time to talk with me. Heck, he even asked me to describe a palm strike for him, and I showed him exactly what one of those looks like. So as I said, I sent him a quick thank you...and he wrote back within 5 minutes, I kid you not. What a guy!

And dear old Dad is on the mend. He's starting to get his strength back, and has been bellyaching to go home, as expected. Hopefully, he'll return home tomorrow. I'm sure he'll be up and around, terrorizing the neighborhood soon. The main character in the comic strip 'Crankshaft' reminds me a little bit of my Dad, except that Dad doesn't set the yard on fire if he barbecues. He is hell on a moped, though.