And you can dance ... for inspiration!

Yes. I am totally gay.

But, it has been an inspiring couple of days. I have been slow off the mark in following up on the contacts I made at last week's event (though I did finally get Kelly her check in the mail) but there has not been much time since then. At least, no time I can make work for me, if that makes sense to any of the other parents of small children out there - and Brian, that's for you, because you are no doubt the only one still reading this.

But two things came my way in the past two days. First off, check out the pictures of this stud-muffin running the New York City Marathon. May I admit I am actually a blood relative of someone who looks like that. My family tends towards the chinless, pale and flabby, but check out my cousin JT!

Can't remember if I wrote about this when I was in Maine ... we had arrived too late to participate in "Friendship Days" and the morning when we did arrive was the 5 K or 5 mile run they have, and my cousins JT and Amy were on the front page of the local paper in the race. If I'd known better I would have tried to get us all there the night before or something, I was really jealous. That would have been fun.

Not that those two would not have left me in the dust - in NYC last weekend JT came in 6th in his age group. Isn't that nuts? I mean, that's it - last summer I made a pledge to run a marathon before I turned 40. I have got to keep up with this or its never gonna happen.

Meanwhile, just today, I had another little surprise. I am sitting in my little cubby at work when Daniel calls me and says come downstairs, Suzan-Lori Parks is about to give a private talk to some students from Early College.

Yes, things like this happen to me all the time.

She had just come from an interview on a local public radio affiliate, and was to give a talk for a much larger audience in the Ohio tonight. But this was for a half-dozen or so young women ... and folks like me who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

photo: Must I make that face?

It was real informal, but Ms. Parks just said some awesome stuff I really needed to hear right now. There's a new play (my third? - is that all?) I have been struggling with for ... oh, hell, nine years ... but it's just starting to come into focus as a result of the election.

She said she wasn't sure there was any such thing as talent, just love. A love of writing. And if you keep at it, maybe that's "talent." Something like that. And a lot of supportive words about keeping at it.

No, without direct quotes, it sounds like a lot of the usual advice for aspiring writers. But even writers need to tell other writers these things, or I think we'd all just stop.