Got an e-mail tonight from my first editor, Hugh Iglarsh. Subject line, "God, what a verb." We haven't spoken in months. Here's the whole text of the e-mail:

I just like this sentence:

"Lockhorn had finished his drink very fast, and he got up and walked to the bar. Price's eyebrows went up as he heard the heavy slug of bourbon chortle into the glass."
—James Thurber, "The Interview"

Actually, all of Thurber's sentences are damnably good—"Price, who had jumped to his feet, stood bowing and grinning at his hostess. She barely touched him with her smile."

So how are things? Lunch sometime?

And as I'm thinking that one of the benefits to being a writer is you have writers for friends … I stumble on this, from last night's pool report, on Obama:

The Obamas left the Pritzker home at 8:53 p.m. Michelle Obama
proceeded directly to the SUV while the president-elect walked over and
shook hands with a dozen mostly teen or younger fans who had gathered
outside to cheer him on.

Obama carried a hard-cover book on Abraham Lincoln. Both Obamas wore winter coats. …

The Lincoln book was Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, by Fred Kaplan.

A writer friend in the White House. Who ever could have imagined?

A fundraiser at Scout's school caused me to get my Huff on.

I am here to say it is an exquisite pleasure to be (with the exception of your playing partner and seven deer) the only mammal on a golf course in Chicago in middle November.

Eighteen holes takes three hours to play. When it's 36 degrees, you keep your ass moving.