i mentioned the other day that i had some personal issues to deal with this weekend. so as it turns out, one of my best friends and i haven’t talked since the fall. back in september, her dad passed away, and he was somebody who really made an impact on me. his name was joe o’brien, but everybody called him pops. he was a retired new york city fireman, an old irish guy who had the biggest heart in the world.

back in college, i used to head upstate to middletown and crash at the o’brien place every couple months, and pops was always there and ready to have a good talk about anything and everything. he really was a great person to be around.

since i missed out on being at his funeral and my friend camille and i really needed to catch up, she crashed at our place last night? and then we headed upstate to have a day to pay respects and visit his final resting place, joining his wife who’d gone on before him about 16 years ago. to be honest it was a pretty heavy day and it was tough to go through with it, but i’m glad i made the trip.

now i’m on the train from port jervis to the city and still have to take the subway home from penn station. i probably won’t get home until 12-1am tonight but it’s worth it, i think.

i didn’t post a fiction blog post on friday, and i was planning on doing some writing on the way home, so we will see how that goes. i’m honestly pretty drained from the day and want to do some thinking before i dive in. i’m going to have to make up that missed post from friday this week, and i’ve got a lot of work to do, but the next step is casting, and i really need to make sure i’m populating this town with the right people. the hometown crowd is going to be so essential to the roots of this story, so i can’t let the people be shallow.

i’ve made a couple of casting choices, but still have a long list of roles to fill. one thing i do know is that i want pops to make an appearance in this book, just a way to pay him some homage. the hard part will be giving him some good company.