The contrite post

Eric doing his Neil Gaiman imitation while autographing CDs at the Chris Harford/Ween show on Friday


Yet another example of why I need to read the manual that came with my digital camera...I had no idea I was taking an avi and can be heard to exclaim "What the hell?" while I was trying to take photos of my son, Ween, Chris Harford, etc. They all sat at a really long table after the show for a meet and greet autograph session like it was a Rolling Stones press conference or something -- so freaking cool -- and I had to wait in a long line to say Hi to my own son (where I was also a major dork, bought a Chris Harford t-shirt, and made everyone autograph it)

So yeah, this is called the contrite post because I feel kind of bad I dissed the chick who is winning the Best of Blog, Diarist right now...especially as yesterday she really did post a pic of her naked tits in the shower. I mean, who can or wants to compete with that, no wonder she's got a lot of readers. I know half of you are rushing right now to go click on her site...go ahead...I'm not going to make it easy for you by posting a direct link...but um, you can find her site by clicking on the Finalist Best of Weblog logo below and voting for me, where you will find links to her and all of the finalists.



So that's enough out of me on that subject...I am officially letting it go and prefer to carry on with other stuff.

Daughter Julie and I did in fact get a hotel in New York City this coming Saturday night so we're gonna hang out all day, have the New York Christmas experience, shop here and here among other cool places, and then later in the evening we'll go and see Eric bang on the drums with Fugazi's Joe Lally at the Lit Lounge. So yeah, sounds like an awesome weekend. Julie and I have made it a yearly tradition to hang out for the weekend in NYC at Christmas every year, and if you want to read about one of our more insane experiences, you can find it in my archives -- here's Part I and here's Part II.

Let's see. What else. Oh yeah, over at the Adrian Belew store you can order new t-shirts with the Side 1 cover on front and Ade's name at the bottom:

That's the cover, and it's a long sleeved black t-shirt. Oh, and while there, you can also order a bunch of Belew CDs for Christmas...right now you are listening to "Asleep", from his brilliant "Side 2".

Speaking of that, the most amazing thing happened. Rena Fay, Ade's most diehard fan, sent my family the greatest Christmas present yesterday. For me, a handmade Belew shirt...one of four that exist in the world, one of which is owned by Rena herself, one of which is owned by Martha Belew, and the other of which is owned by daughter Julie. So now I'm in the exclusive club and yep, I feel special.

Oh, and she also included the most incredible chocolates and a funny, photoshopped picture of Gary.

I was going to take a pic of the chocolates but I turned my back for ten minutes to look for the camera and it seems they'd already been eaten. Too bad. They were really pretty, too.

But I will take a photo of the shirt when I wear it to New York on Saturday.

In other news, I've added some new permanent links on the right side here...Your Drum, which I've been meaning to do for a while because I love it and not just because yesterday they featured me; Jon Swift, who is also a weblog finalist in the Humor Department (and please vote for him!), writer David O'Neal, author Frank Daniels who is on a mission to change the world and I totally adore him; and also, The Publishing Spot/Jason Boog, who did that wonderful interview of Susan Henderson last week. All required daily reading for sure...lots of fun and good stuff.

And not one is naked in the shower. Imagine that.

Oh well. Today I must be "normal mom" and bake massive amounts of Christmas cookies with Julie and then go out on a hunt to find tins large enough to accomodate mailing them all across the universe (why oh why do I forget about buying tins every year and then the only ones left are the tiny ones at the dollar store in which you are lucky if you can fit six cookies...and since I don't have the tins, so far we've eaten every batch of cookies we've made ourselves because they are just too damn good and too damn easy to get to just piled on trays); in a perfect world we'll also do the family tree-trimming thing tonight -- we bought a beautiful Balsam yesterday that is way too big for our house but who cares; and then naturally no one was home to decorate it -- Eric had a gig; Julie had a date, so I drank a bottle of wine and re-read the revisions to my new novel for like the twenty thousandth time this month and maybe, just maybe, it will finally be done this week.

Okay, I've got to go. The television is blasting VH1 Classic (it wasn't me who put this on...it had to be Eric before he went to bed!) and God help me, they've got an Aerosmith song playing. I've got to jump up and change the channel before I suffer serious and permanent brain damage.

Later,
xo