Have you ever just been tooling along thinking you had everything running smoothly and then all of sudden it occurs to you that a lot of "stuff" has just been floating along without direction. Here I am. It's January, nearly time to return to teaching, and writing, and I'm undecided about how to get my next collection of poetry put out. I'm around...I'm just thinking...Drop me a note if you have any suggestions for getting into gear!

I'm in the process of working through writing some mad song poems. This is a fairly old verse style composed of three octaves, each with a different rhyme scheme: ababccd, ababcded, ababccdd. Sounds difficult, yes? Nevertheless, I am intent on spreading my poetic wings (a bit of license here) and improving my "chops."

So I'm watching Ancient Aliens, which is weird enough, when I see an advertisement for another program which interviews people who have been abducted. One woman says an alien crawled into bed and snuggled up with her. What is up with that? I would like to believe in aliens and ghosts and such, but just can't quite get there. Have you ever seen something in the night sky that made you wonder if aliens were visiting the Earth? I've seen a lot in the night sky but have always been able to identify it as falling stars or airplanes or even meteor showers. Got any insight on this?

There's just something about coming home from a long road trip and seeing the sign that you've crossed into your home state. It's frankly heart warming. Although I was born in Iowa and grew up in Sioux City and Ankeny, I've lived in Texas for nearly 30 years and it's home for me.