Blue Skies

Blue Skies - Makes me think of a Willie Nelson song I use to hear at Willie's Illini Inn in Champaign when I use to make "thick and cheesy" pizzas back in college. The skies were incredibly blue today. The Cubs radio announcer Ron Santo even commented on how clear they were. To bad it didn't help the Cubs. They lost to the Atlanta Braves 8 to 6 and are officially out of the playoffs, mathematically eliminated. Maybe next year. Oh well. The WGN Channel Nine News www.wgn.com had an excellent shot of a young girl about 6 or 7 crying because they lost. I bet she wasn't the only one crying. Now we have the Bears to watch. Their quarterback Rex Grossman is out for the season. My sons have their football homecoming tomorrow. Only three games left in their season. My beautiful little niece "Abby" was over today. Her Mom was doing some house cleaning so her Aunt Joanna brought her over. She's already five months old. I worked a couple hours overtime at the my day job while the boys were at football practice. Those two hours went really fast. Too bad I can't work just two hours every day. This past Thursday night I went to a booksigning at Border's Books www.bordersstores.com in Oak Brook for one of my favorite authors - Robert B. Parker. He talked for about an hour. He's written over 55 books and I'm sure I've read over half of them. The new one is Melancholy Baby. I had him sign 7 books. I went through my office and was able to grab them before I went to see him. I think I have about 12 or 13 first editions signed by him now. I always enjoy hearing authors talk and finding out how they work. You could say I'm an author "groupie."He's very disciplined and writes 10 pages a day minimum, starting at 8:00 a.m. in the morning until about 2 or 3 in the afternoon. He pointed out in this new book that the dedication to his wife, Joan was misspelled "Jean." He's dedicated over 40 of his books to his wife. Maybe my book will be a collector's item. I asked him a couple of questions - "Does he listen to any music when he writes?" - No. "When he was a professor did any of his students go on to be authors?" - No. One of his favorite authors is Elmore Leonard, another favorite of mine. When he was signing and I got to talk with him. I told him I was at a book signing of his back in 1981 at the old Kroch's and Brentano's. I still have the newspaper ad. His Spenser books are excellent and it sounds like he writes one a year. He talked about some of his Hollywood experiences and mentioned Joe Mantegna, Burt Reynolds and Holly Hunter who are all fans of his books.