LaurieWrites

I was going to write today, I swear.

But then I didn't feel very well when I woke up.

And then I spent too much time catching up with people when I told myself I should be working instead of working.

And then I felt better and I knew I was going to go out tonight to a place with great food, and then another event with copious shellfish, award-winning shellfish, even, and significant amounts of wine. White wine, because it's shellfish, but wine, all the same. So I thought I should walk, or do some kind of physical activity because I appear to have almost attained my late summer falling-off-the-wagon weight and that pleases me.

So I did that, and now I have two minutes before my last possible time I was going to allow myself to start getting ready, and I have nothing. Nothing except more pictures.

Laura Mayes came to town to add some color to D.C.'s gray, verysuperserious landscape with, well, herself, and the Kirtsy Takes a Bow book.

It's beautiful. You should get one.

The love part was totally my idea, by the way.

Joanne signed mine, and then did unspeakable things to it.

There were hydrangeas, which I love, and chocolate-covered pretzels, which I love more.

Amie and Sarah were there too, because they are Kirtsy editors and book contributors and also it appears that whither they goest lately, there goest I, or some similar horrifying and archaic grammatical construction.

It was fun. And that part I'm SO not phoning in.

Saturday Errata

First of all, I just realized that Top Chef premieres Wednesday and it's kind of embarrassing how much I'm looking forward to this. Some people I know and trust to have excellent taste are crazy about Mad Men and given that I've reduced my tv schedule down to approximately nothing else besides CNN, Bones (God I love that show) and The Office I'm a little afraid to watch it once because I'm sure that I'd get just as crazy. Also I have never seen True Blood. Don't talk to me about it, please. I can't add anything else to my already epic procrastination files, not a thing.

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In the "intentions for the universe" department, I went to an art show at an oppressively hot D.C. gallery on Friday night. It was mixed media but a lot of it was photography. I think I could put some of my own stuff out there, judging from what I saw. Some of it is way better than mine, some of it is just, eh, I'll admit I thought "Wow, I have some pictures that can kick that picture's ass." (I immediately feel guilty about that and want to erase it. I'm not going to. Go ahead. Judge me.) Anyway, I think I might try. If I write it down maybe I'll actually do it.

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I guest-posted on Greeblemonkey yesterday because I love Aimee and she asked and honestly I was totally flattered that she asked. I ended up rambling on about a Dave Matthews Band show I went to with her last summer when I was in Denver for the DNC, and Duran Duran discussions with Sarah and her and other matters related to music and making friends on the Internet who you totally would have been friends with if you had met them in real life first. The Internet - and the  blogging community I happen to hang out in - came in quite handy in these cases.

This is Aimee and me at that show. I love that she included this photo and thank her in advance for letting me share it here. I'm not sure why I look like I'm crying, or maybe stoned, because no, neither. At least I don't remember crying. Maybe I was overcome with Internet friendship, or altitude. I worked so hard that week and my D90 was stolen and I fell unceremoniously in a street in downtown Denver when I was hanging out with my girl Heather C. and also lost my press pass (I'm not kidding when I say I need a minder) so this night out with Aimee was pretty much the highlight, second only to being in Invesco/Mile High Stadium when President Obama accepted the nomination - a first place that she would understand better than almost anyone.)

Note: Aimee will come and pick you up on a street corner after you've met her one time and take you to dinner and to the amazing Red Rocks, if you call her and ask her and throw in a show ticket. Total score.

She also included this shot of Sarah and me that I'll put here again just because I can and I want it on my blog too, yo.

Sarah makes me look good in general. I first recall meeting her for real while attempting to slice my finger off in a door at BlogHer DC last fall. (If this was not the first time I'm sorry, it's like you've always been here dude what can I say? ;)) This didn't bode well for good pictures but we've had a run of good luck since then. I can't make her stand next to me all the time which is a shame. This photo - especially notable because it was way past wine o'clock and my eyes are still open - was taken by Laurie Smithwick, another friend who makes the best kind in real life because she makes me think better and makes me smile big. 

Oh, what the hell. It's Laurie and me. Lauries, even.

I like you guys, all y'all. I keep threatening (like, myself, in my own brain) to do a really late BlogHer post and maybe I will. This year was good.

Haha, Denise, look! I wrote "really late BlogHer post" and I actually meant the conference but that is such an honestly ambiguous statement. May this new leaf turn over with reckless abandon.

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The post I wrote for Aimee is largely about music. And somewhat related, I'm currently stalking archives because as stated above I have these friends now from the computer and I'm realizing how much of their actual blogs I've missed over my past three years of failing at reading blogs (or because I didn't really know them well yet so it wasn't technically my fault. Deflect, deflect! Also I could link like 20 more people which I probably should if I'm going to do it at all but I can't take the pressure. You know who you are.) I am forcing myself to sit still for much of today because I'm fried, and therefore just read a list of Sarah's top 100 albums that she wrote three years ago (do not go back and read it Sarah because you might start arguing with yourself. Leave it alone.)

Sarah and I have some things in common so it's not so surprising that large parts of her music category, in fact, (minus some of the kids' stuff with which I'm not familiar because I just have no reason to turn it on most of the time although I'm essentially a child, and the death metal because I just never went there in spite of my obsession with hair and harder, albeit mainstream, metal) are right out of my life. I'm kind of tempted to try my own list but the thought is so daunting that I'm trying to talk myself out of it, and I'd have to follow the honesty rule and frankly I like some really embarrassing shit. Let's just say reading this made me want to write about music more. I'll probably start with this a little later, just for grins. Maybe you should too.

I really do love archives, which I actually don't think is so weird. I read Eden Kennedy's and Wendy McClure's sometimes just because the writing is so good and it doesn't get old for me. I'll take inspiration where I can get it.

And on a few key points that I'll mention here, Sarah, so I can embarrass myself on my own blog rather than going back and obsessively commenting on three-year-old posts: You said "counterpoint structure in rock music" and I have no idea what that means so I'm glad there are people like you who do; Night Songs is the far superior record for Somebody Save Me and Nobody's Fool alone, although Coming Home is one of my favorite songs of all time and I think I might write about a recent interaction with it next; Soundgarden is one of the greatest bands ever and this is why I despise my ex-boyfriend Chris Cornell all the more for the travesty of his recent inexcusable solo material wherein he managed to remind me of Cher; I'm confused however by your omission of Temple of the Dog; none of Simon LeBon's lyrics make sense, except in Save a Prayer, marginally, and props to you for bonding with the first record because it's by far the best besides "New Religion" and "Last Chance on the Stairway" on Rio which win for (naturally) bass lines alone; I'd like a world with Cliff Burton, Shannon Hoon (my personal addition), Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley still in it. At the very least I feel confident that Cliff would have saved the world from the Napster hearings and the documentary where the band went through group therapy; more people should have always listened to the Cult because some of their stuff is genius, Fire Woman alone, good Lord, and Blood Sugar Sex Magic and Appetite = totally in my top ten, BSSM might have to be 1 or 2. Ten is in the top 15. Also Ramble On is my favorite Zeppelin song and on my top-ten favorite songs ever list as well. And I'll stop there. We are both very smart people with excellent taste, in my own mind. The end.

I could have e-mailed that but I really think my Chris Cornell rage needs to be shared with a wider audience. Bottom line? This archive-stalking really saves a lot of catch-up time.

(Also I'm using the word "stalk" facetiously here. Real, creepy stalking is not funny or appealing at all in the slightest. Don't make me tell you how in-depth my site stats are. Really, because I don't want to talk about it. Moving on. Lalala.)

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Finally, because my mother is making me leave my house to go see Julie and Julia, a book I disliked for much the same reasons that I disliked Eat, Pray, Love (I know. I'm not a real person, and also clearly not a girl either. Bring on the hate, bring it.) and a movie I'm not too excited to see either but she is and I'm curious in a voyeuristic sort of way about how blogging will be portrayed so I'm going, I want this. Badly.

I just got my time capsule e-mail from Photojojo.com, and they sell it through their site (in the "awesomeness" category in their store. I concur.) I've had a combined camerabag/purse for a number of months now because I take my SLR everywhere - hi robbers please don't follow me and steal it, I'm scrappy and hard to pin down anyway, always on the move, yes - and it's fraying on the edges and generally making me look like the crazy camera bag lady, so I needed something cute and functional and this totally scores.

You should get the Time Capsule too. Connect it to your Flickr account and twice a month they e-mail you with a bunch of images that you uploaded exactly a year ago. It's very cool. If you're a nostalgia junkie like me it fits that bill plus it reminds me of pictures I'd completely forgotten about. The only sad part is they sent me photos of my dog after he died and I was in a crappy mood and it kind of made me cry to see him pop up in my e-mail and I'm sure the same will happen with my grandma but whatever, it's still a genius idea and I support it completely. I'm sure they've been waiting for me to weigh in on it, so there it is.

He was cute though.

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I think that's more than enough from me. Make it a great day.

Friends With (Legal) Benefits: Putting the Bond on Paper

Friendship runs deep in individuals and in humanity. It's an essential fact of life for most people, a vast collection of relationships reported to lower blood pressure and the risk of depression and provide social interaction and connection in an increasingly disconnected age. It's immortalized in songs and in its own section at Hallmark. When it works it survives bridesmaid horrors, periods of remarkable self-absorption and the collection of bumps and bruises that life gives every relationship. It can be painful and it can be glorious.

But should it be legalized?

Arguments for and against legally recognizing friendships came out this summer, first in an essay by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow in the Boston Globe and then in a response blog post from Jane Gross at the New York Times Health Blog.

Tuhus-Dubrow wrote about what she calls a "nascent movement" among scholars to give designated friends legal rights and responsibilities, from access to the Family Medical Leave Act and write-offs for certain "friend expenditures" to the right to make health-care decisions and even just ride in an ambulance or visit a hospital room should a friend get sick.

While some of her sources said that the government shouldn't be involved in everything and this kind of movement encourages too much control, others said that it's just the ticket for people who don't have a family support system for times of need.

Gross doesn't have children and has made a few arrangements with friends to serve as health-care proxies and potential roommates, but in her essay "Single, Childless and Terrified" she says that as a "single, childless woman" she lives in fear that there will be no one to care for her when she needs it the most.

But, having witnessed the “new old age’’ from a front-row seat, I’m haunted by the knowledge that there is no one who will care about me in the deepest and most loving sense of the word at the end of my life. No one who will advocate for me, not simply for adequate care but for the small and arguably inessential things that can make life worth living even in compromised health.

Gross suggests that friendship should be lifted from its "second-class status," given some clout. Reader comments are sad, hopeful, angry and resigned. Alex says a lonely old-age is what selfish people who haven't chosen to raise children get, especially if they have money left over. Jen in Astoria says she's going to be just fine regardless and doesn't appreciate Gross's "fear-mongering." Presumably a very different Alex says,

How amusing! You assume that those people with children are somehow not going to be magically stuffed into a nursing home and ignored by those children.

Hey, I get it. Single, childless, here - although not terrified, yet. And since after years of social work with seniors I'm in touch with the realities of aging - financial and daily caregiving aspects - it's crossed my mind that not having kids or a spouse removes a common layer of human beings who are both legally tied (in the case of the spouse and frequently in the case of the kids) and emotionally connected enough to make sure I don't waste away alone.

This assumes that those people in the traditional roles are there at all. Let's face it - it's often a couple of my friends now who've got my back, along with my sister, and those are the people I would trust in a serious jam. Some of my married friends know they could depend on me or another of their close friends should there be a serious problem or absence of a nuclear family. One friend who recently separated from her husband just put me down as an emergency contact at her child's school, because her family is in another state. Most of my closest friends are young enough to have living parents who are still involved with our lives, single or coupled, so we're still benefitting from that support system in a variety of ways. I'm confident I'd be writing a different response to this in 10 or 15 years. Divorces happen (and already have.) Kids move away. Older relatives die.

Increases in domestic partnerships and civil unions in recent years include rights that some quoted in Tuhus-Dubrow's article say should be allowed for friends as well.

"If the law decides to support some relationships, why not others that similarly involve care and support?" asks Washington University's Rosenbury. "What is it about marriage or marriage-like relationships - that is, relationships that are assumed to have sex in them?"

Carolyn McConnell at Rock the Cradle is in favor of legal friendship and says that it's not just for single and/or childless women.

Jane Gross in the New York Times focuses on those who are single and childless and their need for support in old age. But this isn’t only an issue that should concern single women. It’s past due time for women to consider that most of us will spend less than half our lives married to a man (see my old article in Salon on this topic). I’ve already considered that my spouse is likely to die many years before me (sorry, sweetie) and that my friends will be the support of my old age.

To put that into pop culture terms for my Gen-X brain, "I Love Lucy" didn't last into Lucy and Ricky's divorce or Fred's death, and the Lucy Show didn't count, so it's hard to say how Ethel would have had to step up to the plate if Lucy got sick and Little Ricky flaked out. I'm pretty sure she came in handy regardless, though. Tuhus-Dubrow mentions Friends and Sex in the City as influential shows that a tribe of friends as a support system - although transitional, before "real life" begins.

Leanna Hamill, and elder law attorney in Massachusetts, writes in her blog that single or coupled, planning is key.

It is true that those clients with children generally have an easier time choosing who to appoint as a health care proxy or power of attorney, but those childless clients who have to think about it more, and have conversations with friends about the responsibilities may be ending up with people who are more willing to serve and who know their wishes better.

Msmeta at Adventures at Midlife includes Gross's post in ruminations about a friend suffering from dementia.

But none of this is any guarantee that, when it’s time, the biological switch won’t get pushed. And so many of us will have to depend on the kindness of family and friends — and in some cases, even strangers — to guide us through those last confused years.

Candice Watters at The Boundless Line: bringing focus to the single years says that Gross's fear reflects an "unintended consequence of the cultural assault on marriage and children," that giving legal rights to friends would extend.

I think Gross has stumbled onto one of the reasons God made families...The reality of an aging, childless population is undeniable. How we care for them, however, is yet to be decided. Where some see tragedy, I see opportunity. The church is uniquely gifted to step in with compassionate care not only for the body in this life, but also for the spirit with a view toward the next.

Chronicles of Spinster isn't buying it.

I read this article today in the NYTimes and it irritated the hell out of me. I understand its a NYTimes "blog", but pllleeaaassseeee.

Although I understand the sentiment I refuse to spend the next 40 years of my life worrying or being terrified about this shit. Build strong relationships, know your rights, take care of your finances and your health as best you can, and it will be what it will be. Why do fearful women want to scare the hell out of the rest of us? There were no useful suggestions in this crappy waste of space.

Model Minority read the comments on Gross's post also and came away concerned about the "system" we live in.

What amazes me when we talk about prisons, schools or the elderly is our unwillingness to criticize the system in which we live and how it may affects our lives on a structural level.

The possibility of legalizing a relationship assumes permanence, and what wasn't addressed much in the essays or the comments was what happens if a friendship should go south? How do you know who to trust? One of the most-read posts I've ever written on here that also received the most emotional responses across the board dealt with friendship "break-ups," something I called an art and a sadness. Considering it in this context, though, it's not very different from other partnerships that, when legalized, don't always make it, or in other ways let us down.

Writing through this was tough. It's a complicated topic where the focus too easily veers back into single-peron-bashing with a side of self-pity, but it could really affect anyone. One of my mantras in working in the senior community was, "it's hard to understand because until you've been old, you haven't been old," and I still believe that's true. It's impossible to say what kind of support you'll need in your old age, or how it will be provided. My parents have already stepped up to help out married friends with terminal illnesses, and my father just turned 60.

I don't know if "legal friendship" is the answer but I do know that in a world where people often "choose their family" there are ways to designate wishes and responsibilities to those who do not share your blood, household or marital tie.

I don't know what I would choose. I don't know what kind of care I'll need tomorrow or years down the road. I don't know if I'll live thousands of miles away from my sister at that time like I do now or in the same area. I have a godson, and the one time I cracked a joke about my old age in his presence (seriously, a joke) his mother made sure to tell him that he had no responsibility for me, so that's awkwardly out. I don't know if I'll end up married or remain single, but I do know, as I've stated before, that I will not marry just for security as I'd rather deal with a stable of nursing assistants than one incompatible man in my house, so there's that.

What I do know is that I have some really great friends, and an extended family I love who love me. I can only hope that that's enough, and that beyond the boundaries of legality, a few of those people will be there for me as I know I will be there for them for the long haul, like I would be there today if they really needed me. And I'd kind of like to see someone try to keep me out of a hospital room if I felt that was where I really needed to be.

Laurie White writes at LaurieWrites.

My friend called from New York last night where he just moved to tell me that the first morning he was there he went to the park with his roommate to walk his dog.

"Did you know that you can take your dogs off-leash in Brooklyn parks before 9 a.m. and then again at night?"

I did not.

"You can. And there are SO MANY DOGS. It was BEAUTIFUL, the greatest thing."

He did not hear me crying, this struck me too as beautiful, something so much better than my own day had been, and not just because I don't have a dog anymore, live with one who doesn't have much interest in me, and have no plan to get another any time soon.

I had a terrible day yesterday and today I'm still not feeling well. I can't find a check I need. I have to handle some stupid-ass personal conflict. Someone who tried to help me set me back without meaning to.

I am so over being like this. I want to have better news. I will better news to come, consistently...for the things to stop happening that send me spinning. And it almost seems like the more I try, the more effort I invest in bringing people closer to me and developing good relationships and trying to move on, I get more stuck. It's so weird. Driving home on the highway in the dark, though, I was so happy for my friend. His progress, too, has been a long time coming and this move monumental. It was good to hear about it as it began.

Cindy Lee

My friend Erica called from San Diego last night to tell me that our friend Cindy died suddenly in the Barnes and Noble where we all used to work. She was 50 years old. I'll write the 75 words first, but then some, because...because.

"Sometimes we cut a wide swath, baby, and that's okay," she said at my goodbye party, as I worried over leaving everything that knit my Dayton life together. She hated bullshit and I loved that. I’ve repeated her words to myself many times since, a Cindy mantra that soothes me. I just knew even then the loss of leaving people like that, people who tell you the truth, who you stupidly lose sight of but never forget.

These are my extra words for her:

She let her husband Bill get another car once. He likes classic cars of some money-sucking sort that I can't remember now. She came into work after the decision had been made, and he called her during the shift to tell her, just in case she didn’t know it, that she was “so fucking cool.”  Cool because she didn't give him any shit about getting the car. Cool because she laughed and said some stuff like "that man" or "his toys" or whatever, and she just moved on from it. She knew he loved them, and because she handled the money, as I recall, she'd just make the thousand dollars or whatever it was happen, and she'd pull her car out around the extra vehicles in the yard. Because, she said, there was nothing she could really do about it but do it, because it made him happy and it was no big deal anyway. Another car, a few more dollars.

They were one of the great love stories I've ever met in person. No one wrote stories or made movies about them, but they just honest to God really loved each other, and loved their pets and house, and whatever it was that made their lives tick, and I find that one of the most underrated beauties of life, maybe because I don't hear about it or see it that much.

He came in to the store the other night, apparently, just to be there, to be where she really did love to work after escaping mindless shifts of “Hello, thank you for calling Hugo Boss fine leather goods, how may I help you?” Erica said he said he didn’t know what he was going to do without her. Sometimes it's hard to know, beyond just putting one foot in front of the other.

Cindy was always kind to me. She always made me laugh. She was one of the coolest women I've ever met. She rarely went out socially, and when she came to my goodbye dinner, it really, really touched me and made me feel pretty special too. She inspired in me absolute positive regard, something I'm ashamed to admit doesn't come along as often as it maybe should.

The photos below are from the summer of 1999, when I left for home and Vic moved to Seattle, and we had parties all season to say goodbye.

The top photo is Vic on the left, Cindy on the right. The next one is Cindy on the left, Erica on the right. I really, really love these women. It was such a good time for friends.

And yes, sometimes you do cut a really wide swath, and it just has to be okay.

Writing at the Open Mic

Andrew: That's quite a tattoo. Quite a commitment.
Me: It's a look.
Andrew: That's how they'd be able to recognize them in emo kid concentration camp. 

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Me: She's really not bad. But why must every girl who looks like that look like that in the same way?
Andrew: Yeah. The leg warmers. The argyle tights. The harshly cut bangs.
Me: I mean, it's like they go to the same school for it.
Andrew: The bangs.
Me: Those bangs look good on no one. And oh my God, she has him banging that tiny little drum. That's really unnecessary.
Andrew: I was just thinking that that drum was unnecessary. I love hanging out with you. We think the same things. We're the same. Except you like Dar Williams and I like German thrash metal bands.

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Me: I just had the insane thought that I miss working for Restaurant Digest.
Andrew: Me too.
Me: Yeah, I miss those messed up times when Bruce was alive.
Andrew: Yes. There was a time when Bruce was alive.
Me: And how sometimes he'd give me money when he was alive. And I'd actually get it. That was nice.  Maybe I just need money.
Andrew: It was better when he wasn't crying when he gave me money.

We are all connected.

A couple three years or so ago in a small town that would soon play host to some primo outlet shopping, a young boy picked up a trombone.

And then he put it down.

Wait, that's not the end.

Some years later, there would be guitars. And amplifiers. And thousands upon thousands of spinning discs, first big and black and then small and silver, that play music. And lo, so many, many, many other various and sundry musical things, many of them limited editions and beyond my repertoire at first, but I tell you, the things I've learned about that there music and how to consume it from my friend Mike Conrad, whose website I would link you to if he'd get it going already.

He's currently living in a city well known for many things historical and more recently, a bit fanatically, for all things baseball championship-related. Today, I hear he's putting on a little a show there. I told him I'd keep him in heart and mind and send him whatever good vibes I could (in an impressively random fit of niceness.) In doing so I realized that I'd not linked here - I don't think, at least I can't remember now - a project that he worked on last year that supports the women and children of Darfur.

I believe it is all Berklee College of Music students (and maybe some faculty too, don't know...) on the cd. So if you have...umm, looks like 13 bucks and you want to support music produced by people who aren't getting paid big bucks to do it, I suggest you throw your money behind We Are All Connected, and the work they were doing through music for some people who sorely need it. It's also not a bad record, at that. You can buy it at iTunes like the rest of the sheep, or at CDBaby, which is a little more fun.

Mike's song is called "Side by Side", performed with Carol Souki. Simple lyric: "Sing with me, stand with me, so that we can create world peace." Maybe I should send a copy to the White House?

Here's another link or two where you can learn more about the Darfur conflict, and the Sudan in general. Most important reading isn't easy, and there's a reason this topic keeps coming up. It really does suck over there.

Here's another nice link I found from the Berklee Darfur page for a project called Art of the Song, just for kicks.

Anyway, there's a show today, and that's exciting. And since I'm talking him up at the moment, it's probably worth noting that he has an internet radio show as well that you may well find interesting. Seriously, this guy works harder at this stuff than you can imagine, you just have no idea. And if there was a person I could hand a dream on a platter to, he'd be one of my first choices.  What can you wish for someone that surpasses luck? Whatever that is, it's sent his way, every day, but today especially for sure. I'm sure it'll be fabulous.

Pumpkin Party

Dan: I have no reason to blog.
Me: Everyone has a reason to blog.
Lauren: I just don't know why anyone would care about what I have to say. Like maybe three people?
Me: That works for me.
Dan: Like what do you blog about? Starbucks?
Me: Why in the hell would I blog about Starbucks? Oh...wait, now the pumpkin spice latte, THAT I've blogged about.
Dan: See, blogging about Starbucks. I can't blog.

I'd actually been thinking that it was time to blog about Starbucks again, because I had the best such latte I've  ever had the other day. EVER. And while driving along and sucking it down like I do, I may have spontaneously said aloud "It's like a party in my mouth." Not that I'd ever tell him that.

Steel City Saturday

Day one conclusion: Pittsburgh might be the most humid place on the East Coast. This is a challenging - and unfortunate- lottery to win.

I just woke up, and my hair resembles Rick Allen's, (who is now, by the way, spiritually transformed, playing with Krishna Das, and running the Raven Drum Foundation with his wife.)

Sample quote: "I’d say that Hare Krishna has more energy attached to it in terms of thousands of years of being uttered than “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”"

Right on. Yay for evolution. But I don't know...there's some sick energy concentrated in late-80s ROCK, dude. Don't underestimate it.

Yes, Pittsburgh hair. And also, I'm trapped in some "All the Right Moves" Tom Cruise/Willy Wonka Guinness Factory. Freaky.

Other observations thus far:

1. There is a freaking Bravo here. Pasta Bravo, friends: "Our signature dish-rigatoni tossed with wood-grilled chicken and mushrooms in roasted red
pepper sauce." GUESS WHOSE face will be smack in the middle of a plate of that lovely, lovely stuff before the day is out? RICK ALLEN'S, channeled by ME, that's who! Pour some Pasta Bravo on me, in the name of Krishna Das and drum circles! Please!

We have Brio at home, their upscale version, but it's just not the same. I spent many nights at the Dayton Bravo. I even worked there for two days.

2. Speaking of drums (please see Rick Allen item), I met a nice man named Michael Vignole at the festival who will sell me a handmade bodhran for a reasonable price. He tells me if I have rhythm I can play it. And oh, that's really not a problem. There's a workshop today. I'll be there.

3. Got into an argument - an ARGUMENT, because I apparently have deeply held opinions about such things - with a guy in a Flogging Molly t-shirt at the bar last night about the necessity of indicating that such and such a band is an "IRISH" rock band, and the validity of said "Irish rock" as a genre. I seem to recall posing the question of whether aHa really needed to be labeled a Norwegian band, when "a band who are really just cartoon renditions of men, who also happen to ride reindeer" would suffice. (kidding about the reindeer part.) He totally started it, I swear. I just stated an OPINION. Why bring the noise so fast, huh? Calm DOWN. I know it's alarming when a damned GIRL has drawn a conclusion or two about music, but it might happen again. Prepare yourself for the onslaught. Of course he's from DC. Apparently these guys are supposed to change my mind. Also, Dropkick Murphys! Rawr? Ruh-roh?

4. Sandwiches come with French fries and coleslaw ON THEM here.  Seriously, this place?  Insane. And at 2 a.m.? Insaner. They're open 24 hours a day.

5. I learned in Breezewood, town of motels,  (one of my favorite roadtrip places, honestly) that there is reliable wireless internet access at over 470 truck stops nationwide.  It is not free, however. 

Also, there is a MySpace for truckers, in case your world is missing MyConvoy.

6. Beer monopolies at Irish festivals are a bad idea.

7. Pittsburgh has a ton of bridges.

8. Finally, this town is home to a band called the Corned Beef & Curry Band. Not as trainwrecky as the title could suggest. Bob Bannerjee, fiddle player and vocalist, is a very talented guy. Props to the rest of the crew, too. It was quite a jam session.

More illuminating points later. And some more embarrassing pictures, because that's my self-created job.

Phoning it in.

Oh my God. So busy. Mind blown. It's all - or most of it - good, though.

Here's today's BlogHer post. It's  about family ties of the chosen variety.

I hope to actually have some time to write something tonight and tomorrow, but it's funny how they want you to read in this grad school situation - like, right away. Hmm.

Honestly, the first week was better than I expected. The juggling act part of it, (and the broken down car on my first day of school, that was great! More, please! I love being a grown-up! And oh how I wanted to learn that my car "thruster injectors - haha, twelve years old, haha - or whatever they're called, along with all the other apparently filthy, carbon-coated components of my car that are singlehandedly killing the environment, causing Al Gore to wind up on my doorstep any day with his goons - would collectively cost a hyperbolic million dollars to clean.) Where was I? Oh, the attack of the parentheses strikes again. Yes, the juggling act part of it? Not so much.

Now I'm headed to a town I haven't been to in a while to see some people I don't see very often. On the way, I'm going to stop off and visit a baby donkey. Sheila E. has nothing on me. Pure glamour.

First day of school below. Dork! (And that's melted mascara combined with exhaustion...and a couple of happy tears that I may or may not admit to. Milestones, man. Gotta love 'em...sometimes.)