January 9, 2003
Lots of rewriting on Blazer’s Mill. Brought in Fred Nolan’s book, The West of Billy the Kid. I don’t agree with his sequence, but he has much information that skews the story.

Went home for lunch and answered E-mails.

I came back from lunch and there was a new magazine called 944 on my desk. It had sexy women on the cover and inside were all these “cameo” shots from the various hipster bars in Scottsdale, Tempe and Phoenix. Of course, the women inside were all knockouts, but there was something kind of eerie or disturbing about them. I think it’s because we’ve entered The Land of The Surgically Enhanced. Some of the people don’t look like real people if you know what I mean. The publisher had a letter and I read it and thought it was stupid (he was bragging about the magazine being so hot and sexy and that they’ve started to get prisoners at Florence asking for it) so I brought it home to show to Deena. She took one look at it and said, “Oh, yeah, I’ve been in that magazine.” Ouch! So I asked Deena to read the publisher’s letter and tell me if he is being serious or trying to be funny. She read it, looked up at me and said, “Dad, he’s trying to be funny. It’s so obvious.” That hurt.

Tommy came back from Flag. He went up there to go snowboarding for several days. Says the snow covering was a bit lacking and he nicked his board, but he had fun. Deena feels better and we had a family dinner at seven and then she went back to her hell hole in Tempe.

“Every path has its puddle.”
—Old Vaquero Saying