July 28, 2004
As of 7 p.m. tonight I’ve been married to the same woman for 25 years. Amazing. But the bigger, and even more amazing statement is this: one woman has put up with me for 25 years. That is bordering on semi-sainthood. I’m buying flowers tonight, and we’re flying to San Francisco tomorrow evening.

If I had to ascribe the reasons for this improbable accomplishment, I would have to say it's partly a combination of luck, communication skills and the ability to forgive (on both sides). But our biggest ace in the hole has always been this cold, hard fact: it’s hard to be mad at someone who makes you laugh.

This morning Julie Rose and I drove out to Litchfield Park to meet with Tom Swinford at his new book store. It’s about an hour jaunt to the West and I hadn’t been out there since my high school basketball team played Agua Fria High School and we had to have a police escort out of town (it seems when they visited Kingman and beat the snot out of us as they invariably did, several ne’er-do-wells in a big Impala followed their bus out of town and tried to run them off the road. So, when it was our turn to visit them, well, they reciprocated). Tom’s store is beautiful and chocked full of Custer-mania. Great posters, maps and paintings of the Little Bighorn battle. We took photos for his ad in the next issue, then he took us across the street to Zamora’s for a great Mexican food lunch. Had the tampiquena and horchata (a sweet Mexican drink). Tom bought.

On the drive back out to Cave Creek Julie and I shared many of our New Times tall tales and this took up almost the entire drive as we laughed and laughed (in sales they had a drinking game called “Jim Larkin’s Head”), and although every story is painfully true, I’m not sure anyone else would believe them. That was truly a legendary place to work, full of bigger-than-life penis heads and pirates (and that's just the owners).

Got back into the office at two, had an executive session and went over finances and circulation issues. Sometimes it gets daunting but I think this quote says it all: “We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.”

"To some it's just a six-pack, but to me it's a ‘support group.’"
—Leo Durocher