February 15 2003
Rain finally stopped. We got two and a half inches. Really needed it. Cave Creek is running. It’s been dry for months.

Finished an ad for Festival of the West yesterday. We’re trying something different this year. You can win one of my cover paintings. We are framing and offering the Butch & Sundance Ride Into Hell original gouache painting as an incentive to buy subscriptions at the event. For every subscription you buy, we put your name in a jar and we’ll draw a name on Sunday, the last day of the show and hand over the painting to some lucky winner.

The gunfighter artist Richard Ignarski and his girlfriend Stella came around noon and we went to lunch at El Encanto. He is scouting locations for a gunfighter museum. He is moving his entire family from Albuquerque to Arizona and is looking at Tombstone, Prescott, Sedona, Phoenix, Scottsdale and Cave Creek to open a museum. My advice was whatever you do, have a business plan (we didn’t have one for the first year and it almost killed us). I don't think he thought I was serious (see quote below)

Delivered the Festival ad down to Mary Brown’s at about two. Got a haircut at Supercuts ($20, includes tip), then stopped at Bashas’ and bought roses for all the women I work with and the one I sleep with ($88 biz debit).

Looked at travel issue proofs late in the day. Very strong issue and huge: 136 pages. Several problems with ads on the same page as editorial reviews. We are moving several. This doesn’t make production very happy, but it just looks too whorish to me.

At 5:45 Kathy and I drove down to Buster’s in Scottsdale for a belated birthday dinner (for me) with Russ and Wendy Shaw. Place slammed, but we had reservations. Loads of fun laughing and joking with Wonderful and his honey (they bought).

“There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.”
—Heisenberg