If you read Indie Albany on a regular basis you might have noticed that I’m something of the black sheep of the family. First, I write then I just stop. I’m like the “off” ox on the team. It’s not a lack of inspiration that stalls me. And it’s not a lack of remorse for goofing off. What seizes up the fingers on the keyboard is an abundance of good ideas. They’re everywhere!

Let me illustrate….

If you saw the film “UP” then you might remember the dog, sort of a crazy lab mix, tail thumping and tongue hanging out. Folks who know me compare me to that dog. I like to think it’s in a nice way. The hard cold fact of it is I’m just not good with STOP! And I’m not so stellar with GO either. I’ve started (and failed to finish) posts about living in my car trolling back and forth across the state for work, languishing in a hellhole of a historic building, weeds in the garden that might be smarter than they look, and something nasty I saw one night. Honestly, there really are just too many squirrels that need chasing.

Which brings me to Tuesday forenoon and a compelling reason to stop. As you head out the door around noon to contemplate whether it’s going to be tuna on rye or a salad for lunch, someone highly skilled, an artist really, will be contemplating my heart…from the inside. I will not, however, be awake to enjoy the festivities taking place in the cardiac cavity but I plan to stick around for the big rousing finale: waking up in the recovery room. I suspect that I’m a classic case. I missed the whole “the good die young” thing and I believe the eternal tug of war will proceed just as well without adding me to the team just yet. I have a few more good stories left in me.

For instance, I was visiting West Burville last weekend on my Grand Tour before I’m off my feet for a week when I ran into Hooter. As it happened I caught up with him as he was endeavoring to find a marginally legal way to circumvent community service while looking like he was doing the appropriate amount of groveling before the bench. Nothing’s ever as it seems in West Burville.

He told me the most amazing story of something remarkable and inexplicable he saw when he and the other Counter Dwellers were keeping vigil in the woods awaiting the arrival of the Great Horned Owl, a mythical critter native to the Piney Woods. I should forewarn you that he meant “native” in the way some of those things H.P. Lovecraft said he saw were “native”. He promised a full detailed description of the apparition for publication. And as the reporter at large for The West Burville Gazette I have a duty to publish. I much prefer that to the alternative, perish.

I also learned that I have a capacity for three years of tolerance that has allowed me to co-exist with a variety of quirks of the architectural kind in a house with more holes in it than Swiss cheese and a mouse with a limp. And there was that one time a month or so ago when I had the bejeezus scared out of me by something that looked back.

I’ll explain later.