Below, my mostly squared away desk, including the keyboard tray I made from original house baseboards.

 

I feel like I’ll be able to start writing again, now.  I’ve found a cluttered desk is the death to productivity.  Read up on it, apparently your brain feels like it needs to check everything in the environment before it can focus on the task at hand.

Or, it’s a hold over from my Coast Guard days, when I had to have my Rescue Swimmer gear organized so I could find life-saving equipment at a moment’s notice in the dark, while dripping wet and slightly hypothermic myself.

Speaking of those days, here is a class photo from Coast Guard Aviation Survivalman School.

 

We were pioneers in the job at the time:  the Coast Guard decided they needed folks to jump out of helicopters, but not every duty station had yet tooled up to support having swimmers.  Most of the folks the photo weren’t as fortunate as I.  I went to Coast Guard Air Station San Francisco, which was one of the few “live” stations at the time.

In the way of these things, I would consider myself friends with almost every one of the students in this photo.

 

Finally, I was driving around East Texas this week, and this semi-abandoned building caught my eye.  I stopped for a closer look at the mostly empty fountain/pond.

 

A couple of locals happened by, and one of them, PeeWee (he was not) told me a bit of the history of this pond and the woman who had once owned the property.  But I’ll not spoil that story now.  You’ll read about it later…

 

…in my next novel series.