I'm done!...well, almost done

At 3pm this afternoon, after chaining myself to a chair at the kitchen table (with a tether long enough to reach the refrigerator) for nine hours, I sent off the (close to) final draft of another book project Rick Rusaw and I have been working on since May. I then put on a pair of shorts, a T shirt, grabbed my IPod and my Nordic Walking Sticks and went for an hour and a half walk on the open space west of our house. In September, while I walked in the mornings I've been listening to downloaded books on my IPod--Freakonomics, Between the Seas, John Adams (the two previous books by David McCullough) and a book on Benjamin Franklin that I just finished yesterday called A Great Improvisation : Franklin, France, and the Birth of America by Stacy Schiff. I have no more books on my IPod so I celebrated the near completion of the book by listening to Rascal Flatts. It doesn't get better than that--85 degrees, sun shining and Rascal Flatts singing. What I wasn't prepared for was the exhilaration of finishing the most grueling part of this book. I reflect on Thomas Paine's words:

"The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value."

Now Liz and I will go to dinner, come home, sit on the couch, hold hands, maybe make some popcorn and watch Extreme Makeover, Home Edition and Desperate Housewives. All is well in the world today.