Lump sat alone in a soggy marsh, totally motionless except for her heart.

Now we're cookin' with gas. I received a very touching guest blog entry from my buddy, Husker, written on the plane after dropping his daughter off at college. I will post it later this week.

The first installment of WWJD (What Would Joe Do), my very own Dear Abby/Miss Manners-type advice column, will also be up later this week. It involves a conundrum about the heady, hypnotic fragrance of a co-worker of the opposite sex.

Please feel free to email guest blog entries or questions for WWJD to joemilitello33@yahoo.com
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It is another gorgeous Montana day. I am going to take a nice, long run this afternoon.

There was a plane crash in Athens, Greece last week. There was a report today that all 121 bodies on the plane were frozen solid, even those who had been charred by flames in the crash. This was likely due to catastrophic cabin pressure failure at 35,000 feet. Either that, or not enough of those tiny blankets and pillows.

This story was oddly synchronistic with my reading schedule, as last Friday, I finished a book called Mayday by Nelson DeMille. The book was about a Concorde-like plane that flies very fast, at very high altitudes (60,000 feet). The plane gets hit by a military drone missle with no warhead, so it just rips through the plane without exploding. The book is quite descriptive regarding the physical and biological effect of sudden depressurization and lack of oxygen at 60,000 feet.

Next time you are flying somewhere, pick it up. Nice read. Actually, I like DeMille a lot. He wrote The General's Daughter, a good book which was butchered into a mediocre Travolta movie. His best, in my opinion, are The Gold Coast, a thriller about a disaffected lawyer (go figure) in a wealthy Long Island community who gets sucked into the world of his mafia neighbor, and Up Country, another thriller, about a Vietnam vet who returns 20 years later to revisit some memories, and ends up uncovering details about a massacre that certain people would like to leave buried.

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I have received a series of emails from people back in Wisconsin, exhibiting a growing concern about my lifestyle as a Man of Leisure. I suspect it is the world-renowned, Upper Midwest, dawn-til-dusk work ethic at play, tiptoe-ing silently through the medulla oblongata and hippocampus while you read this journal chronicling my adventures and explorations, quietly prodding you, "Hey. This guy should be working. You're working. We're working. It's what we do."

Ignore that little gnome living in your brain.

I am still waiting for a response from Redford, and the Costco thing didn't pan out. I may become a poet. Or a shepherd. Or a poet-shepherd, tending to my flock whilst composing sonnets. I am looking into the whole Gentleman-Farmer thing, except I really don't like dirt, so I may need to hire some folks to handle the "Farming" part of the operation, freeing me to focus on the "Gentleman" part of the business.

The gnome is now clawing his way through your frontal lobe, and will soon commence hammering against the inside of your skull. If he becomes too unbearable, causing insatiable curiosity, send me an email. If I know you and like you, I will reply with a truthful synopsis of my financial and vocational situation. If I don't know you or if I don't like you, I will likely send you a polite, bullshit-laden response.

Wondering which response you get should cause the gnome to burst forth, fully formed, through your eye or nose, shake off your DNA and start pummeling your computer.

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The Dude: "It was a 1972 Pontiac LeBaron."

Cop: "Color?"

"Green. Some brown, or, uh, rust, coloration."

"And was there anything of value in the car?"

"Huh? Oh. Yeah. Tape deck. Couple of Creedence tapes. And there was a, uh. . . my briefcase."

"In the briefcase?"

"Papers. Just papers. You know, my papers. Business papers."

"And what do you do, sir?"

"I'm unemployed."