Grazed and defused...

...by a day that, while far from ideal, had its nice moments.

My one-day "feud" with an editor evaporated quickly. I finally dug up the answers to the last "couple of questions" sent to me yesterday and emailed them. Less than an hour later, my story was emailed to me with a comment saying "anything you want to change, tell me."

I was, frankly, astonished. I had to read carefully to see where the added details were set into place, so well had the editing job been done. It was a damn good story -- as the editor had made clear -- and any small fixes were simply part of the scenery.

So I sent a little thankee-kindly message: "I got no kick at all with the edit. If I hadn't written the original, I would be raving about the author's genius way with words...."

And got back the kind of ego-stroke that always perks me up a bit: "The author does have a genius way with words -- hence my decision to edit your piece first as a way of easing into the new year and the next issue. I always start with the ones that are the most pleasant to edit!"

It's the old "blow in my ear and I'll follow you anywhere" act. And it works. I almost blushed.

Of course the non-arrival of checks took a bit of the breeze out of the ol' mainsails. But I woke up this morning thinking this was going to be a day full of grade-A horse dung, so good things of any size are more than welcome.

Had another nice moment this afternoon as well, but that will be filed for possible future use.

And I'm sitting here listening to the radio again, and the same damn movie ads are running in between people nattering away about that same bunch of generally worthless and almost uniformly crooked people who are spending what's said to be $200 per vote to con the people of Iowa into giving them a boost.

Not going to talk about that. I want to preserve what's left of my good mood.