May 13, 2005
This is a day we have been looking forward to for some time. The Tomcat graduates from college this afternoon. Last night I was standing in the middle of a lonely road, above New River, waiting for Wonderful Russ. I scanned the long, broken ridges and sloping plains and reflected on my checkered life, and my son's. I dropped out of college six units shy of a degree and for the past 36 years I have had it on my list of things to do, to finish.

Thomas Charles, the boy who gave us some fits and was kicked out of more than one school, will have done it in four years. Amazing. I guess I won’t believe it until the cap goes in the air. That will be at about 3:30 this afternoon.

Russell got lost and showed up about 6:30. He followed me in his Porsche up to Brian Newmeister’s extravagant studio in the high foothills, overlooking I-17. Russ and I have been recording radio spots together for 25 years so we have some experience at the game. However, both he and I were stunned at the newest computer technology. In the old days. I would bring the scripts, Russ would do several read thrus and we would pick the best one. Sometimes if there was a flub or glitch on a word we would re-record a paragraph and cut it in, by hand, on tape.

Not anymore. Brian had Russ read each word with two different inflections and then he cut all of them together, using just the best ones. He literally built the spots word by word. Amazing. And scary.

Got out of there at eight, Deena called and wanted to know if I’d join her for dinner, so we met at El Encanto at 8:30. Place totally slammed with a twenty minute wait. Decided to sit at the bar and eat. Good talk with her. As we were eating several of her Creeker cronies, kids she grew up with, came in. Kaylin Cumming and Hillary Williams joined us. Kaylin is going to ride his bike to Boulder, Colorado. He says it will take 21 days and he’s following the interstates. I told him to be careful. Crazy Cave Creek kids.

Got home at about ten. Long day. We’re going up the hill in about a half hour. Tomas just called and warned me to bring my tennis shoes so he can whup my ass in B-Ball. Frankly, I don’t have to go up to Flag to find out the answer to that question.

"People are capable of doing an awful lot when they have no choice and I had no choice. Courage is when you have choices."
—Terry Anderson