A while back I tweeted facetiously that if I went to Hell the music I’d hear for eternity would be Zamfir. Today he graciously and inexplicably ‘liked’ my tweet. I want to say for the record, I meant Yanni.*

*Also, for the record, if I hear from him, I’m going to say I meant Nickelback. Wait…that is what I meant.

When someone finds my blog through a search engine, I can’t help but wonder what they were actually searching for.

So I finally get to my favorite writing place despite the snow mountain range formerly known as crosswalks. Then two guys stand next to the table behind me and start a conversation…well, actually one of them delivers a monologue (20 minutes and counting), about how painful it is to be an artist.* The gist is, nobody values or helps artists. No, young man. NOBODY WANTS TO HELP YOU. YOU ARE ANNOYING.

*I am tempting to show him the meaning of pain

I’m latte and cookie-deprived, can’t dig my car out, and I’m too uninspired to do anything more than to decide whether my chapters need to be shorter or longer.* I have sold my soul to Netflix. Good thing I don’t own an xbox or I would have succumbed to controller-induced psychosis.

This is what thirty inches of snow can do to an otherwise sane person. Also to me.

*The answer is both of the above.

Betty Buckley. Followed her into the role of the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio with the Prince Street Players. It was a really neat costume, and, also, the Blue Fairy always gets the most fan mail. This is me, shot slightly before the invention of pixels.

I was waiting for a friend  in the Cafe Edison in Manhattan when Louis Guss (Raymond Cappomaggi in Moonstruck) asked if he could join me until his friends (three other old actors) showed up. We had a great conversation, mostly about his son who was moving to DC and was looking for the right synagogue to join. My friend showed up. His friends showed up. End of conversation.

He is no longer with us. Neither is the Cafe Edison. Sigh.

 

*Do not nag me about my ending a sentence with a preposition. Everybody does, ok?

No, not the movie. I’m referring to a giant version of the thingy* the dentist uses to tap down fillings, which is hard at work right outside my office (formerly known as my dining room). If you need me,** you can find me at Bump ‘n Grind sipping a latte and writing.

*Technical term meaning ,”I have know idea what they call this.”

**If you don’t need me, I’ll be there anyway.

So I’m editing a YA novel I’ve been working on since the first flea circus* and I had one of those “How did I miss this?”moments, in which I did the same stupid thing bad horror movies have done since Muybridge invented the zoopraxiscope.** My protagonist is attacked my a ghost in the middle of the night and sleeps in the same room the very next night, anyway. She is not an idiot. She would never ever do that. And yet, she did. At least she used to. And that, my friends, is why there’s no such thing as a completed manuscript.

*That would be 1578 according to Wikipedia, which is never wrong.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_circus

**I have no idea what this is either, so don’t feel bad.

I love them. I think that covers it.

In pursuit of accuracy and continuity for my 70% completed* novel set in Charlottesville, yesterday I visited the Barboursville Winery, had dinner at Fleurie,** and stopped by an all night Harris Teeter.

Two out of three ain’t bad.

*This is a hypothetical. There is no such thing as a completed novel. Ask any writer.

**Note to current IRS agents: I really, really, did. Keep that in mind when you review my tax deductions next year.