The Wife’s long running campaign for a vacation is a success – tomorrow we depart for an excursion.

samhilliard.com returns on September 27th, 2004 with a slew of enhancements including:

1) Comments. Yes, let your voice ring! Think a blog rocks? Think it sucks? Now you can say so in your own words.
2) Gallery. Five albums worth! Pictures of the cast and a play by play of the secret vacation.
3) Poll. A new poll, courtesy of Pollster. Pollster, if you’re reading this can you send one along please? Thanks! You rule
4) Picture of the week
5) Master Buddhapuss

In the meantime, if you haven’t subscribed to a mailing list, consider it. What’s in the subscription for you?
1) Good karma
2) Access to the comments feature
3) Access to download a short story ( coming soon! )
4) Notification when samhilliard.com returns and other announcements
5) A chance to win an Ask Master Buddhapuss t-shirt. What could be cooler?

Also side point – there’s an Ask Buddhapuss backlog and that’s a good thing. Have faith. The cat will get to your question.

Whether by coincidence or by intervention, the bones scattered across the trail suggested a disquieting possibility. But one possibility changed the course of hike club – that the arrangements of the bones were not coincidental.

Todd spotted the first one, the tip of the femur propped against a rock. The length of the bone dissected a bright orange mushroom patch. Moss coated the opposite tip, as if painted over several times with a brush caked in paint.

That bone led us to another femur, and then another. We crisscrossed the trail several times. Searching the left side of the trail netted a large cache of femurs, three and four to a pile, chunks of vertebra and slabs of shoulder girdles. On every level these piles of bones seemed random. Or were they?

In time, we pieced the events together. A pack of coyotes had intercepted 5 deer and ripped them to shreds, tearing and scattering the bodies as they consumed them. Darwin, you b****.

So that’s how my Saturday went. And seeing the bones led to ideas for a screenplay and the 3rd Mike Brody book.

I’m a long term subscriber to Investor’s Business Daily who allowed his subscription lapse. For more than 6 years, 5 mornings a week a paper person delivered the current issue by 7am. Sometimes the paper landed on the lawn, other times the porch. For awhile one of the neighbors stole it. Let’s just say they stopped doing that.

It’s a good newspaper, and eventually I will renew. Why did I stop? Not because I don’t find the paper valuable – more because I’m curious to see how hard they’d fight for my renewal. Yep, I want to be wooed.

At 297 bucks a year and 6 years in, I figure I earned a little love. And boy has it come! Since the subscription lapsed every call from the CSR has included additional incentives.

I’m holding out for 2 years for the price of 1 which is the cost of the last renewal. Works for me.

So here’s what I learned today – refusing an offer can lead to better offers.

I’m in the middle of a writing streak and in the interest of finishing the 6th draft by the end of the summer, I’ve placed myself on blogging probation.

Samhilliard.com will return on September 1, 2004 with a new Master Buddhapuss and poll.

Thanks for your patience and support. Any one signed up for the general annoucements mailing list will be notified.