When I started noodling the pages that would become “Rube” the novel, I figured it would be a short story. I didn’t have much of anything to start with but somehow the universe kept throwing people and places and numbers at me so I started jotting them down. One file in my Google Drive was “50 days” I had no idea why I named the file so anachronistically. What was becoming obvious is that I was writing a countdown to something.

As I have mentioned I started writing the novel right after a surgical procedure that restored much of my cognitive ability. It was pretty bitchin. I sat down and wrote the first draft in 2 weeks. I think it ran 70k words. I then reached out to a childhood sweetheart who has grown up to be a formidable writer and editor. She agreed to do my editing since I had previously recorded the audio version for one of her novels.

If you have been following my exploits of late it is obvious that I am working under adverse conditions. At this point the magical, mystical, myopic medical practitioners are giving me somewhere between next Wednesday and 6 months from now before I die. Oncologists of every shape and size seem to be such chicken shits. It would be nice if they could give you their best guess. At least this would allow us to take our own silly wild ass guess . “what do I do with the time I have left?”

Would hate to book that trip to Minorca only to discover that I was dead before I could take advantage of the enormous AARP discount.

I decided to save the medical profession countless hours of research and procrastination, So I have driven the metaphorical stake in the ground. I’m predicting October 15, 2024 and yes there is a serendipitous little yarn to be spun around all this math.

The first thing I did was to pick the month. From there it was just a hop, skip and a jump over to my own natal day and I thought how quaint and serendipitous THAT would be.

Born October 15, 1957 Died October 15, 2024

Also consider that I was born and raised by the Romani which not many of you know. My credentials around guessing baby shit is impeccable. With that in mind I feel pretty comfortable with my own best guess. So there you have it – my pretty good guess at my departure details. Please proceed to Gate A32.