Eileen was closed on Monday and Tuesday. Brew decided to make a side trip tomorrow, to see the show. He could do that, now that he was a hospitality industry report writer and folk art critic again.

When Suent Scientific in Atlanta laid Brew off, he moved into Brenda's old home place in Point and Shoot and fixed it up. Her siblings let Brew and Brenda live in it, rent-free, until Uncle Wayne's estate was settled, and the title was clear. That should take two years.

Brew had a sabbatical year coming, between, or among, ten weeks' separation pay, at Suent, an early, reduced-benefit social security check, 26 weeks of unemployment compensation benefits, and one 13-week extension.

Brenda stayed in Atlanta to sell their house in Norcross, then live in an extended-stay motel until she got laid off, so she could draw 39 weeks of unemployment in Florida.

Brew opened up a new web site he called roman-feuilleton.com. He wrote what he called a saga-novel.

He drove around, visiting local sites, then writing about it, at his web site.

He called himself a hospitality industry report writer and folk art critic.

After Brew's sabbatical year ended he went back to work, to start paying for the house.

He shut down The Daily Bugle and roman-feuilleton.com when he took a job as a technical writer with a defense contractor, because he was paranoid about security clearances and loyalty oaths in time of war. He didn't want to give his enemies a sword to hang him with. To mix a metaphor.

But that's when he started posting his books at The Daily Bulletin.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

He still wrote things he was leery about the Homeland über alles Security Czar seeing, so he redacted some entries online. You'd have to wait and buy the book to read them.

When he worked as a tech writer he called himself an ecotourism specialist.

The joke there was, an ecotourism specialist was supposed to attract tourists, to sell them on environmental diversity, the unspoiled nature of the area, but tourists spoiled it, so Brew told them to stay home, or to go back home, and was laid off for having an attitude. This was art mirroring life.

When they laid Brew off, and he went to see the employment counselor, at the state Job Service office, and she asked him what job he thought he was qualified to do, he said, "Sex tourism specialist?" Making fun of Beach Clubs with wet T-shirt contests and Spring Break on the Redneck Riviera.

After Brew got hired as a grant writer, he called himself an adventure travel correspondent, for outdoor magazines, because the northern part of Walton County was still primitive, with springs, creeks, rivers, and forests. Most of Eglin Air Force Base was wild. That's where special forces troops were trained. Swamps, quicksand bogs.

Brew made fun of himself by writing things like The Covered Pedestrian Bridges of South Walton County, a most overdeveloped area.

He carried a Nikon Coolpix 3100 point-and-shoot digital camera and took his own photographs, too.

He said that Robert Kincaid got his photographs in National Geographic, but he couldn't even get his in the National Lampoon.

And if a lonely farmer's wife tried to seduce him she would be from The Golf Courses of Red Bay, Florida: Sandy Pines Home Sites and RV Park.

Now he'd lost that job and was back to being a hospitality industry report writer and folk art critic.

Between the time that Brew's sabbatical year ended and the time he got the tech writing job, he was at the house, writing, and Brenda was working.

One day he drove over to Wakulla Springs for Creaturefest.

His car almost broke down on Highway 267 between Highway 20 and Wakulla Springs.

Brenda told him he had no business driving around and eating seafood, out, when they were broke, then printing up pamphlets about his trip like Blue Ball Blues.

I Drive To Panacea, she called such pamphlets, because he usually visited Slim McElderry or Jack Rudloe when he was over there.

This time, when Brenda okayed his LDA grant, she asked him not to do that. He promised he wouldn't.

Now here he was, driving to South Walton County, with his camera in a fanny pack, like a real writer. Like Frederick Turner, writing A Border of Blue, or Alex Shoumatoff, writing Florida Ramble.

Why couldn't he just sit at home and remember or imagine visiting such places?

He would.

After tomorrow.

Hell, it wasn't as far as he drove every day, when he was working.

Jeff Klinkenberg told Brew he looked forward to reading his upcoming saga.

Brew looked forward to writing it.

He looked forward to thinking about Jeff Klinkenberg going in to the St. Pete Times' office, on Tampa Bay, near the Dali Museum, booting up his computer, going to his list of Favorites, clicking on The Daily Bulletin, downloading and printing out the day's installments, sending a friend a link, or xeroxing the pages and mailing them to a friend, who didn't have a computer. Did a columnist have franking privileges at the mailroom?

Postage was a big part of Brew's operating costs.