No, no quote again today.  I wouldn't be able to scrounge up the red ink for it anyway, it being the end of the month and all.  But I have managed to put up a blue background, a white table, and then drizzle some low-fat blather over the top thanks to the help of my guardian angel, Ringworme.
     It was no easy task.  I have no idea what your guardian angel may be like but mine last saw fit to help me back in first grade when I needed some assistance suppressing my vomit reflex after some auditorium-confined nurse pricked my skin as part of a so-called TB test.  Ever since, Ringworme has been content to rest on his laurels.
     "Hey - that was some vomit reflex you had there!  It's a wonder I was able to help ya out at all, so shut up already!" is the way he explained it once to me at the court-ordered hearing three sheriff's deputies dragged him to, kicking and screaming and beating them about the head and torso with his wings every step of the way.
     In recent years he's had an unlisted number.  I was only able to reach him today because his name accidentally got him posted on a new web site dedicated to helping people get in touch with the skin disease of their dreams.  Had I not chosen this very afternoon to finally track down that bad case of scabies on the cafeteria workers that I'd admired from afar in high school, this space would now be blank.

     Not that it was easy even after I'd discovered Ringworme's private cell phone number and called him up.  First I'd had to get past his answering service by pretending to be his bookie.  Then I'd had to get past his secretary by pretending that he'd just called me and demanding that she stop wasting my time.  
     Then I'd had to deal with the angel himself.
     "Yeah?" the vaguely familiar voice had entered my ear for the first time in decades, instantly taking me back to my old vomit reflex. 
     "This here be God Almighty," I winged it, figuring not even Ringworme would be so brazen as to hang up on a line like that.
     "And what can I do for you, Mr. Almighty?" the angel instantly replied after suppressing that chortling which the joy of unexpectedly hearing from the Man Hisself can induce. 
     "I've just been going over the records and it seems an awfully long time since you guardianated that Dan fellow of yours," I told him in the most all-knowing and all-powerful tone I could muster with a cat at my feet suddenly begging for food. 
     "Well, shame on me and my big, fat, lazy ass," the angel made an attempt to apologized, clearly out of practice despite trying to cover up the fact with a little girl voice.
     Being all-merciful, I was just about to let him slide when the need to stifle frantic meowing with a colander swat caused me to jerk my arm in the one direction which brought my cordless phone receiver squarely between my basement furnace and a certain satellite in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles out in space.
     "I don't care how much grits and hominy she's offering, I am NOT going to go ashore in the Old South - you hear me?!  She promised me Florida, she took away Florida - let HER go ravage the Carolinas!  I'm headed to New York where they appreciate big winds!!"
     "Dennis, come on - be reasonable.  You're not the storm you used to be.  OK?  It's time to face facts.  The Carolinas are the best Mother Nature can offer ya now.  Maybe Virginia - but don't hold your wind."
     "Hello?!  HELLO??  Are you there, my man?  I hope you're there now because I think some crazy guy was just on the line and said to me that the Carolinas are the best I, a certified hurricane,  can do.  It certainly couldn't have been my agent 'cause any agent of mine would know that a certified hurricane deserves a certain amount of respect!  Not to mention a helluva lot better squall line advance team if he wants to stay my agent."
     I quickly used the colander to launch my cat into the laundry room, slammed the door, and got out from between my furnace and that satellite.
     "Are you there, Ringworme?" I asked, trying to hide my breathlessness behind a handful of holy sneezes.
     "You tell me, Lord," a vaguely familiar voice finally started showing some proper diffidence.
     "Don't you be getting sarcastic with ME or I'll blow your ass to motherfuck Iowa!" a low whine from somewhere out in the Atlantic cut in. 
     "Can't help Dan from Iowa," the vaguely familiar voice replied with a vague threat.
     "Dan?!" the low whine turned into a high-pitched screech.  "Dan was 1997!  Danielle was '98!  This is Dennis!  D-E-N-N-I-S!!  Lord have mercy, not only do they expect me to settle for ravaging the stupid Carolinas but the history books are gonna give the credit to some dumbass storm dead for a year or two 'cause I got me the most incompetent agent working in climatology today!!  I left the tropics for this?!  I swirled my ass off for days and days without a break for this?!?!  Lord have mercy...! "
     Someone slammed a receiver down.  I prayed to Myself that it hadn't been Ringworme.
     A bit of vaguely familiar chortling mercifully allayed my fears.
     "Help," I got right to the point.
     "Sure," Ringworme agreed.  "But only because you really know how to amuse a tired old atheist after a bad day playing cards with Fate and Destiny.  At least I didn't lose everything again like Free Will, poor fellow."
     "You're an atheist?" I asked, a bit stunned.
     "Sure - all of us angels are," Ringworme confided as I heard him wiping the last few tears of laughter from his eyes.  "Once you've worked with Him as closely as we have, you really have no choice."
     And so I got my blue background, my white table, and enough Arial letterage to squeeze out one more entry when my cupboard was bare.  Of course I had to promise not to bother Ringworme again for another 35 years or so, but that seems like a small price to pay for continuing a writing streak going all the way back to May 4th.
     The only real down side: Having to suppress my vomit reflex all by myself again tonight as I watch the weather woman on the 11 o'clock news point at motherfuck Iowa as if she was a nurse about to prick it as part of a test for TB.
     Fortunately after all these years of practice, I succeed three times out of five.