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Had a great show with the band on Thursday night at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge.

The show itself was great fun. We had a fantastic and receptive audience - thank you to everyone who came out. I love the energy, fun and amazing sound our live players bring. Matt Tahaney on bass, Frank Marotta, Jr. on electric guitar and Phil Aiken on keys. I am thrilled and honored to play with them.

Aaron Shadwell rocked the place before we went on and the Phil Aiken Army rocked it afterwards. Phil invited me to sing some harmonies on a few tunes as well as join in on their cover of Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac. Considering Todd and I did our cover of Dreams earlier I was surprised the Lizard didn’t put a special Fleetwood Mac’n'Cheese on the menu. If there’s a next time we’ll give them an advanced head’s up.

A big thank you to our friend Mike for kindly taking over photo duties, especially with a camera he’s not familiar with. And let me tell you, the Lizard is not an easy room to photograph in without a flash. My apologies to Phil whose one photo in the bunch was just too dark to make him out. And as you can see by the very last shot here, the one of Tahaney alone was pretty dark, too. I tried my best in iPhoto, but there’s only so much one can do with their rudimentary editing buttons.

On the first row below here on the left is Todd. You can see Phil a bit on the left of the photo and behind Todd is Matt on drums. Below right is Tahaney on bass standing slightly behind Frank on electric guitar.

Second row is another shot of me and then another shot of Todd. Third row is me, again (well!? don’t give me that look. it’s my blog! and I am the singer…), and then the poorly brightened shot of Tahaney.

My friend Nate brought along his portable mp3 recorder (thanks, Nate!) and got the whole show recorded, I believe. Of course, it’s a real possibility in retrospect I won’t think we did as great a job. yes, we’re all our own worst critics.

My plan was to write an entry (post? should the word entry be reserved for my journal?) called “please go away so I can eat this”. I imagined Easter Sunday morning gorging myself on a bag of jumbo strawberry marshmallows and coffee with a Hershey egg lodged in the roof of my mouth and surrounded by myriad bags of Easter candy.

And I’d be perfectly happy doing this all alone because to my mind, binging is a solo effort. Binging is overdoing it, and usually with food that isn’t good for you (you don’t often hear someone say, “Wow, dude, I ate, like 4 giant plates of steamed vegetables last night! What was I thinking?”) and I think it’s a little embarrassing. But to me binging is also entertaining in theory and in retrospect, which explains why I’m writing about it.

Yesterday in preparation for today I took a walk to Target for my Easter candy. I was shocked to find Target mostly cleaned out. Poor last-minute customers were begging the red-aproned employees if they were sure they didn’t have any more bags of jellybeans, and please, where oh where was the pink Easter “grass” for their kids’ baskets?! My god, it was a sad state of affairs.

You could probably guess there were no Hershey eggs and no strawberry marshmallows, either. I had to buy bunny-shaped marshmallows instead because I’ve discovered I have a real marshmallow weakness that has surpassed my love of chocolate. Weird.

I didn’t lose my cool, though. I knew I’d find the Hershey eggs I needed somewhere. And it was so nice outside I couldn’t fathom going back home just yet. My love of walking and my desire to stock up on cheap good-for-me food pulled me in the direction of Trader Joe’s. Yes, Target on Somerville Avenue to TJ’s on Memorial Drive is a hike, but as I’ve written before, I love to walk. So walk I did. By the time I got home, laden with I swear 15 pounds of foodstuffs, I had walked over 7 miles. I felt great, like, hey! I deserve all this candy, man. I couldn’t WAIT for Sunday (for once).

And I guess I couldn’t. Wait, that is.

Here it is, Easter Sunday, and I’m already over my candy freak out. I was up last night till 1 or 2AM watching DVDs and doing laundry (exciting, right? I thought so…). I was also watching the clock and once midnight hit I tore into my bags of candy like a wild animal. I gorged myself on marshmallows and pastel candy corn. I even ate the Kit Kat with caramel because it’s “new” and I just had to try it. Verdict? Eh… I don’t recommend.

(As an aside you might remember if you read my “taste the s**t rainbow” post I have this utter compulsion to try new candy. My absolute favorites haven’t changed in years, but I just have to try it if they put something new out there. Same with perfume, actually. I feel compelled to smell new perfumes even though I’ve been wearing the same scent for almost 8 years. Oh, and I did eat a few of those chocolate Skittles. Totally grody. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. You do much MUCH better with Jelly Bellies, trust me.)

Long story short I blew my load, so to speak, last night and by this morning I was loathe to even look at the 7 bags of candy I had left. I drank my coffee with the Hershey eggs (so divine, truly) and packed up the bags of sugar to bring with me to work tomorrow.

I’m glad I have some healthy food in my pantry and my fridge because I am so craving a salad right now.

As for the cartoon at the top there, you can thank Johnny, my natural father. He sent that to me today. You think sense of humor isn’t genetic? Think again.

I’ve finally met Matilda, my goddaughter, in person. She is amazing. The pictures I’d seen didn’t do that little nugget justice. She’s the most well-behaved, serene and smiling little round-faced marshmallow. I am utterly smitten.

K8 was in town with her husband Peter who was attending a conference at the Hynes Convention Center. She came over on Sunday and we went to brunch on the corner. Matilda is so well-behaved, she was quiet and merely grabbed at things on the table and got oodles of compliments on her beautiful, smiling face from other patrons.

We spent some time at my place and took a nice little walk to a toy store. Maudie loved the air filled little… horsey? We figured we need to buy that for her next time.

Because this was my first time meeting Matilda I took Tuesday off to be with K8 and the little one. I’ve been wanting to visit the IKEA in Stoughton, MA and since K8 and Peter had driven up from Hoboken and K8 was interested in getting a few things, too, we decided a fun shopping trip was in order. Despite Peter thinking we were crazy, I met the girls in Copley and we drove South.

IKEA took up our entire morning and some of the afternoon. I’ve always hated traffic driving South and that had a lot to do with what took so damn long. The other two things that may have taken up time were the fact that IKEA really is an enthralling, enticing, museum-like place and the fact that we were with a six-year-old. Even though I found her to be extremely low-maintenance, she still needed to be fed more than we did. So we paused here and there and took our sweet time wandering and looking at all the things we wanted to buy.

After getting our own sustenance (IKEA hot dogs hit the spot - yummers!) we headed back to Somerville to drop off my new chairs and hung out with Tony for a few hours. Later that night we went back to K8 and Peter’s hotel and then had a delicious meal at Tapeo.

Another great visit.

Do you watch What Not To Wear? I do. I’m absolutely addicted to it. Makeover shows in general really suck me in. The reality shows I like are This Old House, WNTW, The Biggest Loser, Dirty Jobs, Beauty and the Geek, lots of the shows on TLC.

Dirty Jobs is cool because Mike Rowe is a great host and I love the behind-the-scenes aspect; I love learning about jobs I never even knew existed, like the guys who clean up the blackened gum from city sidewalks or the people who deal with rebuilding and maintaining the ancient brick sewer tunnels in San Francisco. Incredible stuff.

As far as the other shows I listed, I think transformations are fascinating. One show that’s a real exception is 10 Years Younger. I watched it a few times and cannot stomach it. First of all, it depresses the hell out of me. Secondly, something really bad is going on there. All the fake teeth and surgery and botox, all the comments no normal person would make when asked about someone standing in a plexiglass box in a city square, not to mention the wackadoo looking makeup artist and the hyper, gay cartoon-like host… It’s too bizarre even for me.

Back to WNTW. When I first started watching I found myself more in the Stacy London camp. Not that you need to choose one or the other, but she’s definitely a louder person/personality and for whatever reason I felt like Clinton Kelly was just sort of … there. He didn’t add much to the programme. Slowly, as with most of the men I’m attracted to, he grew on me. It’s true. The guys I like usually don’t appeal to me at first, in fact, I might not even notice them. I must need to get to know them. The fellas to whom I’m immediately attracted I lose interest in fairly quickly.

I feel I’ve gotten to know Clinton Kelly and not only has he grown on me, but I’m in absolute love. It’s a crying shame because, of course, he’s gay! Dur, a man on a fashion show is gay? Don’t that beat all? I love gay men, though, so this should come as no real surprise. But with Clinton I’m honestly attracted to him. He’s cute, he’s 6′4″ and he’s slim and muscular (I like tall and lean boys…). He’s also very witty, well-read, silly and clearly loves to laugh, maybe even as much as I do. C’est la vie. Pouvre moi.

I did a little online research and found out he was going to BC for some of the time I was at Emerson. Huhn …. Wonder if we ever met at any parties. As I’ve always said, small Boston.

Small world, too. A little bit of a tangent here, but a few years back I was visiting my friends K8 and Mel in NYC and on this particular day we ran into six or seven different people I knew. K8 and Mel acted all theatrically pissed saying they’d been living there for years and never ran into people they knew randomly on the street!! How the hell did I manage that!?!

Well, I’m naturally overly gregarious and tend to make friends wherever I go. Recently K8 reminded me how I used to arrive in NY to see her and I’d be talking all about the new friend I’d made on the train. Guess that’s just how I roll. So with my gregariousness intact, maybe one day I’ll at least be friends with Clinton Kelly. Unless he dumps his boyfriend and goes straight. HA.

I’ve been noticing the way people pronounce things. Well, I’ve noticed the way people pronounce things for a long time, but lately certain words have been sticking out to me.

I’m not referring to the regional differences due to an accent, things like leaving off your ‘d’s or saying fah ev’ ah instead of for ev’ er like we do up here in Boston or adding more syllables like we do in Nashville. I mean the varied ways we pronounce things in general that seem to have nothing to do with where you’re from. Words like the following:

data - do you say day’dtuh or dah’dtuh?

adult - uh-dult’ or ah’-dult?

aunt - ant or auhnt? (I’ve noticed the latter to be a New England thing.)

mature - muh cher’ or mah tour’? (I believe I’ve only ever heard old men say it with the latter pronunciation. For some reason it really bothers me, too.)

route - root or rowt?

comparable - comp’rabull or com-pare’-abull

applicable - uh plick’ uhbull or app’ lick uhbull

advertisement - ad’ vertizement or ad ver’ disment

garage - guh raszch or gare’ aszch

Are these all regional things? I’m curious. And I want to know if you have any other words that you hear pronounced in different ways.

I truly like rainy days. It isn’t the whole ‘you can’t appreciate the sunny days without the rainy ones’ for me, but there’s probably some of that in there. I like sunny days, too, but as I’ve written before, I prefer there to be clouds up there, too. Mostly because my eyes are light sensitive and my pale skin would prefer to stay pale. Also it gives me something to look at in the sky. The other day I was outside getting my lunch downtown and the clouds were moving so fast! I just stood there with my neck craned, staring at the sky framed by buildings. It was like a movie. I could have stayed there for 20 minutes, it was amazing. If I could have filmed it I would have.

But there’s something cool about a rainy day and not being able to tell what time it is by looking outside. I love that. It was lovely to be lulled to sleep by the sound of the rain pounding on my roof/ceiling, too. I need those days when I don’t feel obligated to enjoy the fine weather, when I can stay in and get things done inside and ignore the out-of-doors. Today’s that kind of day.

Of course, I woke up later than usual this morning, no thanks to staying up so late last night. I essentially got up and went straight to class. Then I went to brunch with my friend Terri to do some catching up. We hadn’t seen each other since December (!!) so, as you can imagine, I didn’t get home until 3pm. Zoikes.

I’ve much to do yet today because tomorrow is a big day. Tomorrow I finally get to meet my goddaughter, Matilda!! Yes, K8 is in town with her husband, Peter, at a conference. She’s coming over tomorrow after my step class (are my priorities out of whack?) and we’re hanging out in this neighborhood and maybe Harvard all day. Should be great, but I have some things yet to check off my to do list. I also took Tuesday off to hang out with them in town. I’m doing this right.

In case you need something happy and light to look at on this rainy day, I’ve included a nice, bright orange painting by Mark Rothko as well as the blue one up above that mirrors the day a little more. He’s one of my absolute favorites, if not my favorite. I found this one the other day and used it as my desktop’s background. Can you tell I like orange? Makes me happy. But there’s nothing like a Rothko in person; the paint appears to float and hover in front of the canvas. It’s wild.

I’m off to check things off my list.

Who knew my entry about my falling from grace would inspire so many to want to try those nasty pepto-pink strawberry marshmallows? The power of the “printed” word, eh?

And now see what I did? I put some negative qualifiers in front of what I was calling soft, fresh and delicious. Let’s see what happens now.

New topic:

Last Thursday during spin I began coughing this weird new cough. I did what I usually do and ignored it. Took my usual Friday off and when my throat acted scratchy Saturday morning I shrugged my shoulders and made my way to Bosu. By 4PM I was in desperate need of a nap; I went down for two hours, an unheard of length of nap for me. Lucy was loving it. I was lying on my side and she climbed up on top of me and stretched out along my waist and down my thigh like a little purring throw pillow. Gear.

Sunday I was beat from Bootcamp, as usual, but the lure of Tavia’s infectious exuberance was too strong, so off I went to Advanced Step. There is such a feeling of accomplishment in that class when you do all the moves right and you’ve do the routine flawlessly. So fun!! Even though I am working hard and dripping with sweat in there, I think of it as active recovery.

Sunday night I intended to go to the Burren, but the nagging, niggling signs of the cold were settling into my bones. I stayed put in front of 60 Minutes and got to bed early.

Monday morning was a no-go. I slept till noon, washed my bedding and ate a little bit, then put the clean linens on the bed. Once fresh and clean on the bed they looked so enticing that I climbed on my bed and was out for another four hours. That’s when I know I’m really sick - I sleep and sleep and sleep. I do like sleep, but I am not a big sleeper. I prefer to be awake. It may be an inertia thing, I’m not exactly sure, but I am really resistant to sleeping. Case in point, I should get in bed now it being 1AM Friday night, but here I sit and write.

Tuesday I made myself go in to work though I wasn’t even at 70%. I had a hair appointment at 9:30AM and no way was I going to pay any amount for a missed appointment. Eff that. Plus this was to be the first time since before chemo I’ve had my hair colored. A woman I met in the treatment center at BIDMC told me her hair stayed put until she got it colored and then it all fell out. And we were on a lot of the same drugs, so… yeah. I was excited to get some highlights again.

Decided not to press my luck by working out Tuesday night - I waited till Wednesday morning and did a 45 minute spin class. Yay, back up and running. It was a tough class because this week we were doing criteria runs which involve mostly fast-twitch muscle fibers; big blasts of energy in short bursts all throughout. Very exhausting and great for you. A nice change of pace from intervals and endurance rides.

Not entirely sure what the real nature of this entry was. Perhaps I wanted to get a little caught up and explain why I hadn’t written much this week. It certainly wasn’t because I forgot about you. Not a chance.