Month: January 2003

I believe this page is now working as it should. I know there will be bugs. For one thing, I can’t figure out how to get the archives to work properly. But I’ll worry about that tomorrow. For now, you should be in the right place.

I was thinking this morning (always with the thinking!) that maybe it’s just time to merge the main dump page with this here blog. They do both serve the same purpose. And I now am getting more traffic to the blog than I do to the main page. I think that’s the kicker for me. Plus, it’s a lot of extra work to do the main page, which, quite frankly, pretty much contains the same type of content you are reading right now. When I’m writing, I don’t sit and think “Now is this more of a Dump entry or a Blog entry?” It’s more that when I figure a Dump is due, I just write there instead of here.

So, you ask, how are you doing to make this seamless? And what about the email notifications of dump updates? Well I don’t know. I haven’t figured any of that out yet. I will, eventually. I don’t think this will happen overnight. In fact, I know it won’t. But this is just your heads-up. I know last time I considered doing this I actually asked folks first what they thought of the idea and the response was to leave things as-is. Well, I’m not going to ask this time. If I lose readers, well, I guess that can’t be helped. Although I have no idea WHY I would lose readers. Anyway, which me luck trying to figure this out.

Okay, I think I’ve just found a new boyfriend! Here’s a photo of him. Aside from the X-treme mullet, the other cool thing is that he comes pre-tattooed with my name! On his neck!!

I don’t really have one, but my weak attempt is to ride on the coattails of anyone I can. My aunt [*waving*] just called to invite me to Leominster native Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s upcoming booksigning. Her book, Random Family is due out in February. It’s been getting excellent reviews, and having read the New Yorker excerpt last year, I’m dying to read the whole book.

The thing that amazes me is that she spent ten years researching this and interviewing the family it’s about. Ten years. And I can’t get my crap together to finish my Nano novel. And that didn’t require ANY research or interviewing. Hey, maybe that’s my problem!

In the meantime, I really need to find a writers group in this area. The last one I was invited to join was in Waltham. Not that there’s anything wrong with Waltham, but it’s a bit of a hike. Plus that was a few years ago.

I was driving home, er, to the “office” after dropping Junior off at his home daycare place, and was listening to a CD and trying to figure out something to put here in the blog. I was actually giving it THOUGHT, I tell you. And I saw a Ben and Jerry’s truck waiting at the same set of lights as me, and I thought. “Yum. I wonder if they have Cherry Garcia in there.” And then I thought “It’s forty below friggin zero out here and I’m lusting after an ice cream delivery truck? Am I insane?” But no, I’m not insane, I’m just from New England. We just put on another layer and grab the napkins. Junior and I were watching a Spongebob on the Tivo last night, the one with the fry cook olympics. One of the categories involves simulating an ice cream creation, and Patrick does a strawberry cone dipped in chocolate. The joke is that they show an actual picture of an ice cream cone and say it’s him. I looked at that strawberry cone and thought “Damn, why do the ice cream stands have to close in the winter?” There was literally a ten below wind chill at the time I said that, and yet I was lamenting the winter closing of ice cream stands. Gotta love New England.

Oh, and the CD I was listening to? Duncan Sheik’s Daylight. Oh my God, I love this CD. I loved self-titled 1996 CD greatly. Played it constantly. Then I got his Phantom Moon, which I wasn’t crazy about. So I figured it was another case of me hitting someone’s great first album that they couldn’t duplicate on subsequent efforts. But still, I liked the first one SO much that when Daylight came out, I read a few of the reviews, and decided to buy it.

Holy cow. Fantastic. Overall it’s better than the first one (although She Runs Away and Barely Breathing are still two of my favorite songs ever), if that’s possible. And the funny thing is that when I first bought it, I listened to it two or three times, said “that’s not too bad” and then kind of forgot about it. I found it in my glovebox about two weeks ago and put it back in the player and now I can’t take it out. Is this enough of a good review for you? You want kind of angry-sad songs that work really well if you’re unfortunately not in a good relationship? Someone dump you? He’s the man for you. But what really got me is actually listening to the lyrics of the song Magazines today. I really really want to know if it’s based on any kind of reality. It’s about a guy who spots an ex-girlfriend posing for a skin mag. And the song is just lovely, too…but who writes about that topic?! Nobody! I love it.

Okay, enough from me. Can you tell I have something to do and I’m avoiding it? Go to his official website… a popup comes that plays the song I JUST finished listening to, On a High.