A case of the Mondays.

On Mondays I usually plead with my fish Martha, whom I keep in a bowl on my desk, to finish writing my stories so I can write sentences that start with things like "... a man walked into a forest and stumbled into a clearing, where under the shade of a sycamore tree a redheaded woman was seated at a piano playing spy music."

So what am I doing with this moment? This 1:18 p.m.-on-a-Monday moment when normally I'd be glued to a story, the next callback, a too-tiny reporter's notepad and a bout of procrastination? I'm drinking a Coors Light on the balcony of a big blue beach house on stilts, trying to figure out why there are currents in the Gulf of Mexico that are wavy and currents that are calm.

Joe's working on an album, not at this moment but in the ongoing sense of it. He's wants to record an album concerning the various wooden sea creatures that are nailed to the walls of this house. The tracks are all named after each species of wooden sea creature. 1. The Blue Marlin 2. Hammerhead 3. The Dolphin Saves the Day and 4. How Did a Cow Get in Here? I copied these titles directly from the reporters notebook he scribbled them in.

We're burning through books and with no amenities on St. George Island save for The Big Top market located on the mainland 15 minutes away, we're off to find a bookstore in Eastpoint, Florida (population: 2,158.)

In a county where the nearest city is Apalachicola, which sounds to me like something pirates fall sick from, I have no doubt we'll find an interesting used bookstore.