Death Certificate

I finally decided to sit down and go through the mail. It wasn’t my mail, it was my mom’s mail. They were all medical bills and condolences from hospital staff. Tucked in all that was my mom’s death certificate.

She left this world on December 17, 2009. She’s finally home with her dad and her mom.

Knowing that was one thing. Realizing it was another.

I cried when she died. I cried daily for a while. I’d hear, see, or smell something that reminded me of her and I’d cry. Not because of the sadness and the emptiness that I felt, but because of the memories. She was an extraordinary woman, and I knew that she wasn’t coming back, but there was always this small piece of me that felt everything my family was going through might have been a nightmare. We were going to wake up and she was going to be sitting in her favorite chair with her dog curled up in her lap.

Holding her death certificate in my hand, made reality set in. There it was in black & white. Her date of death, her time of death, and the cold hard fact that she was not coming back. I wasn’t going to wake from a dream or a nightmare. I was already awake. She wasn’t going to be sitting in her favorite chair anymore, but instead her ashes sit on a shelf with a picture of her smiling down on everyone.

It’s funny how a piece of paper makes a person feel. I’ve been crying off an on for a few hours now. I’m letting go. Not of her, but of the hope that I held in my heart that her death wasn’t real. It’s real and I know it. I just wanted to have a childhood fairy tale to hold onto. That my parents would just live forever. That they would always be here on Earth.

I miss her a lot today. I miss her smile and her laughter. I miss her saying “good night baby” to me.

I love you Mama & I’m dedicating the song that’s playing right now to you: “You’re My Star” by Stereophonics

Not Query Time

There’s a lot of do’s and don’ts when it comes to sending a query to an agent, and I mean a lot.

The most important thing I’ve learned is sending a query before you’re ready to query.

What does that mean?

It means is your novel as edited and tight as it should be?

Are all the typos, errors, incomplete sentences, thoughts, etc gone?

Are your character timelines solid and do the happen in the order they are suppose to?

I could go on and on, but mostly, I follow the first question. Is the novel as clean, edited, and tight as it should be? Does it reflect what I want to be as a writer? Am I happy with it?

I wish I had done a little more research when I wrote The Dumbing Down of Love. I wish I had edited more. I wish I hadn’t queried agents with that project at all.

Why? 30 plus rejection letters. Mostly forms, some no response at all, and only 2 positive rejections that said it was well written and salable. Hindsight being twenty/twenty, I know now it wasn’t ready for queries. I was happy with the novel but it didn’t define me. Hell, I was just happy to have it finished and off my plate. I liked the novel, but did I love it? No. Writing a query for that novel was torture and it shouldn’t be. Writing a query should not make me feel sick to my stomach and it shouldn’t make me wish to stick hot pokers in my eyes.

Now that Barfly is complete and round one of edits are done, I know it’s still not query time. I know this for one reason only, I can’t sum up what the book is about. If I can’t sum it up, then how in the hell is an agent suppose to sell it? I know what it’s about, I wrote it, but a friend asked me, what is it about? All I could answer was love. What kind of craptastic answer was that? Love? Really? Sadly, that’s all I could come up with after I wrote 68,000 words in the novel.

So as the second round of edits begin later this week, I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll query agents with this novel at all. I do love the novel. I love the characters and I love the emotions it has evoked in me and my beta readers. I’m more confident in this novel than with The Dumbing Down of Love, but it’s still not time to send a query out for it.

When I can answer the question, what is your novel about and then I know it’s ready.

As for my new WIP, if you ask me what my novel is about, I can answer the question, but it’s still not time to send queries out about it. That reason is that it’s not finished. When it’s finished, edited, clean of errors, and I’m so happy with it I could run through fields of clover singing, then I’ll send a query out for it.

As for now, it’s not query time...

Listening to “It’s Your Touch” by The Black Ghosts

The A-T-L Recap

Let’s do a short recap of last week.

    Wed - Charlotte Checkers game with Nikki. I was as a good girl and went home early for the night due to the drive to Raleigh I would be doing on Thursday.  Checkers won :)

    Thurs - New York Rangers game @ Carolina Hurricanes. Nathan & I hit the road around 2 and hauled our asses to Raleigh. I can’t express how much I dislike Raleigh. I just think of it as the arm pit of NC.  Rangers lost :(

    Fri - Charlotte Checkers game with Krissie. The exhaustion running through my body from the drive, kicked my booty, but I had to go see my favorite bar & bartenders. I also really just wanted a drink. Josh sends me a text about his date not going as planned and we shut down the bar with Nikki. The best laid plan of not staying out until 2 am, flew right out of the window. Got home at 2:30 am. Checkers lost :(

    Sat - New York Rangers game @ Atlanta Thrashers.  Pick up Ronnie, drop Nick da Dog off at my dad’s and cruise to The ATL. Ronnie & I eat a late lunch/early dinner at the arena, meet up with Brady & his wife for a quick cocktail after the 1st, and then back to our seats for the rest of the game. Ronnie declared the game stressful and I told him he hadn’t seen anything yet because we were headed into over time which turned into a shoot out. Rangers won :)

    After the game, Ronnie & I meet up with Darrin at Clermont Lounge. I’ve been wanting to go to this bar just because of The Constellations song “Step Right Up.”  There’s a drinking game or a could be a drinking game by the band. Clermont Lounge is Atlanta’s oldest strip bar and you must go at least once in your life. It’s not your typical strip club, but it may be one of my favorite strip clubs ever.  So after Clermont, we drop cars off at Darrin’s house and head over to East Point Tavern (Darrin’s version of The Gin Mill) and meet up with a gaggle of Darrin’s friends which were renamed to Gaggle of Gays. We shut the bar down and some of us return to Darrin’s for tequila shooting, drinking, dance party USA! Some people drunk dial or drunk text, I drunk tweet! 6:30 in the morning, I crawled into an empty bed and passed the hell out.

    Sun - Brunch plans turned into 2 pm late lunch at Front Page News but only after Darrin & I recapped the previous night through the tweets I have tweeted. Ronnie & I say goodbye and pour ourselves into my car for a long ride home.

Here’s what I learned over those 4 days:

    Sleep might be over rated when you’re having fun, but it’s wonderful when you need to recharge your batteries. I’m still not fully recovered.

    I love the gay boys. I love their freedom to have fun and their shamelessness.

    I like Atlanta better than Raleigh, but I hate driving in either city.

    NY Ranger fans are some of the greatest fans. Rangers & Red Wings fans know their team through and through.

    I love talking hockey and getting someone else to enjoy the game. I wanted the Rangers to win but since it was Ronnie’s 1st hockey game, I was kind of hoping for OT and a shoot out. I got it, and we won.

    According to Sean, “Alcoholism is the best disease ever.”

    “Don’t Take My Mind on a Trip” by Boy George is still a great song after all this time.

    BT’s “Never Wanna Come Back Down” is brilliant

    Big Wreck’s “That Song” will make everyone sing out loud at 4 am.

A-T-L I’m not sure if you know what hit you over the weekend, but you kicked me in my imaginary balls. I’ll see you again in February!

Faith

Faith - noun

1. belief in, devotion to, or trust in somebody or something, especially without logical proof

2. a system of religious belief, or the group of people who adhere to it

3. belief in and devotion to God

4. a strongly held set of beliefs or principles

5. allegiance or loyalty to somebody or something

I have questioned a lot about faith lately. The word faith, the belief in faith, what faith is, what it means to have faith, and so on.

I had faith my mom was going to get better. I had faith in someone above that wouldn’t take her from our family. I had faith in her to pull herself through the surgery. She didn’t get better. She died.

Her death made me question faith, made me question what do I have faith in now, what does it mean to me, and do I have a belief in faith.

In the movie Legion, a character asks the fallen angel “why do you still have faith if God doesn’t have faith in us?” (I won’t spoil the answer because I’m sure to get it wrong because it was beautifully scripted. Go see the movie. It’s really good.)

On my drive home, I asked myself what I had faith in and to be honest, I’m not sure anymore and I’m not sure if I ever will know the answer to that question. Then I thought, I have faith that my life will be what it should be and I will have what I need to get through this life. I have faith that tomorrow is another gift from the Universe. Does that fall under or anywhere near close to what the definition of faith is? Probably not.

I threw the definition of faith out the window and decided to make my own. Faith - to believe.

Here’s what I believe:

Tomorrow’s going to be better than today

Love of one’s self needs to exists in our hearts first before we can love someone else

Family is important

Friends who help you grow and are there as you grow are worth their weight in gold

Encouragement from others is like a wind in the sails of a boat

Believing in yourself is more important than what others believe in you or about you

The time is now and the past is dead and gone

Listening to “Good Times” by Tommy Lee

Becoming the Writer I Am

First:

WIP update - new WIP is going well. I’m hitting about 1000 plus words when I write even though I should be hitting the 2600 plus words a day if I want to finish it in 25 days. I won’t complain though. I’m writing daily and wanting to write daily. The muse is here and we’re working together perfectly.

Second:

I have recently realized that maybe the writer I wanted to be is not the writer I am becoming. I wanted to write about vampires, werewolves, beasts of the night, and so on. I wanted to write about immortal fighters and ask kicking fairies. What I’ve written about is love and relationships.

A writer writes what a writer knows. **insert me laughing loudly**

I don’t know squat about being in love and relationships. I haven’t been in a relationship in forever. It’s been so long, I’ve lost count. I’m not in love with anyone and there is no special man I’m rushing off to see when I leave work. My only relationships are the ones I have with my family and my great friends. I’m happy with that.

So where is all this love and relationship writing coming from? I HAVE NO CLUE

All I know is that THE DUMBING DOWN OF LOVE and BARFLY are both stories that involve love and relationships. They don’t involve any vampires of the blood drinking kind (maybe an emotional vampire) and they don’t have anyone shooting silver bullets at anyone during a full moon.

Right now, my gut tells me that I meant to write women’s fiction. Right now, I’m actually okay with that. (If anyone had asked me in the middle of last year, I’d laugh.) Right now, I want to give anyone who’s reading anything I write, a little bit of hope and reality.

My friend Krissie was the first to read Barfly’s rough, rough, draft and she said this to me, “I'm a HUGE Nicholas Sparks fan (I know, I know, but the man has mastered the "how-to--give-a-single-girl-unrealistic-expectations-of-love love story), and this is so much better and so much more real than anything he's written.  I think maybe it's because there's a lot of you in it, lot of real feeling and emotion behind it (whether you want to admit it or not!).” Being compared to or contrasted against Nicholas Sparks, is something I’ll take any day with a smile. Yes, Krissie could be being nice and just saying that, but I know her and knows she’s an honest NJ native who’s not going to lie to you.

So I write women’s fiction. I write it from my perspective. A thirty something year old female, single, living a grand life.

I may not know about being in love and in relationships, but I do know what it’s like to want to be in love and in relationship. I don’t hold back in writing anymore. If I feel it, my characters feel it. I don’t look over my shoulder and make sure that no one is there when I write a sex scene (I do often find myself giggling though, but that’s just the girl in me. Seriously, throbbing is a term that should only be used to describe a headache or a heart not any part of a man’s sexual organs.)

Listening to “All Ways, Always” by Lostprophet

Made a Wish

I’m not sure exactly where my mood switched from being in a good one into being on the verge of blah today, but all of sudden, i felt the blues hit me. Then I felt that maybe if I punched something or someone, I’d feel better.

Sadly, I didn’t punch something or someone. I just tried to ignore that urge.

After work, I picked my dad up from his job and drove him home. I enjoy car time with my dad. We talk about everything under the sun. On this trip, we talked about my mom, what bills I needed to write checks for this week, and when he was going back on the road and how long he’d be out. Nothing in particular but everything we needed to discuss. I get my laid back attitude from my dad. I get my get it done now attitude from my mom. Opposites but complimentary to each other.

As I left, I found the brightest stars in the sky and a sliver of the moon and made my wish as I do nightly. Since my mom passed, I really haven’t wished for anything. Everything just seemed to be a stupid childhood dream. Tonight though, I found the urge to wish for all my crazy dreams, hopes, wishes, and ideas to come true. I want to own that island, the hockey team, vineyards in France, have homes in Australia and Key West, and have quarterly visits to Vegas with the girls. I want to win the jackpot lottery and take care of my dad, my sister & her husband, my nieces, and my best of best friends. I want to own my very own tapas style restaurant called Garnish and a funky restaurant called The Listening Post. I want to have my own jewelry line and my own handbag line. I want to be on the New York Times best selling list with a novel every year. I want one of my novel’s to be on Oprah’s book club. I want a novel I write to be turned into a blockbuster romantic comedy. I want that love that takes my breath away when I look at the man that I consider is my soulmate, best friend, my lover, and partner in crime. I want to own a small music club that has a recording studio in it and that takes care of the artists that come in with a warm meal, a soft bed, and a great home cooked meal. I want to save the world from hate and starvation and make a difference in the life of someone. I want to be the brightest star in someone’s sky.

That’s what I wished for tonight. That’s what I’m going to wish for every night until I have it all.

I dream big. I might not be able to hold the galaxy in my arms, but I can catch a falling star.

Listening to “Closer to the Edge” by 30 Seconds to Mars

Nurturing Me

So, shoot me for doing something that I want to do and arranging my schedule to fit around it.

That’s what I wanted to say to people today. Not in a mean, screw you type way, but in a I have goals and I’m sorry you can’t understand or don’t understand.

First, I want to finish both novels that are cycling through my head by March 31st. This is a lofty goal. It’s an epic goal. I may not reach it, but I’m going to damn sure try. Between January 17th - March 31st, I have 74 days to write. Of those 74, I took 14 days off for whatever life may throw at me. That gives me 30 days to finish each novel. That’s 2667 words a night to reach a goal of 80,000 words. Plausible and possible. We’ll see. I won’t punish myself if I don’t reach it since my original goal was to finish 1 book per quarter.

Second, I will be going to every home game the Charlotte Checkers have. I rather enjoy hockey. No, I love hockey. I love the sound of the skates on the ice and for about 2 hours, I don’t have to be anywhere other than watching the game. It’s like meditation for me. I don’t think about work, about writing, about any problems I have etc. I think about only if the puck is going to make it into the net and what the stats of the team are and how they’re doing in the league, conference, division. If I had a NHL team, I’d be at everyone of their home games too. (Read my love of HOCKEY blog post for further info)

Third, I’m going to try like hell to at least write a blog a week but my goal is a blog entry a night. I enjoy letting the randomness of my head out into the world. It may not make sense, but it feels good to let go.

Fourth, I will take more time for me. I will sit and read more. I will write without guilt. I will go to concerts that I really do want to go to. I will go to a hockey game here and drive to DC to see the Rangers play and give myself a pat on the back for doing something that interests me. I will be more selfish with my time because quiet frankly, I gave a lot of myself last year to others, their time, their needs, etc, and I didn’t get a lot back.

It’s a new decade & a new year. It’s all about nurturing me, my spirit, and my soul.

If you don’t or can’t understand it, then I’m not going to apologize to you. I’m going to take care of number one, me, and I don’t feel guilty about it at all.

I’m going to be quiet happy and content.

Listening to “Superman is Dead” by The Floyds

Hello Muse

Somewhere in the middle of writing Barfly, my next novel came to me.

Normally, I would just stop what I was writing and start the next one, but I forced myself to focus on Barfly and made notes about the future WIP (work in progress) and what needed to be written and so on.

Then today, another idea came to mind. Completely inspired by a very short and brief conversation. It is always surprising to me how my muse will present an idea to me. I am completely obsessed with new idea and the old idea.

And when I say, obsessed. I mean OBSESSED.

Now, I must choose between the two ideas. I know, why not write both at the same time? I don’t know if I can write both at the same time. I’ve tried writing multiply projects before and none of them ever progress into what I think they should and then I just grow tired and bored with them and leave them all together.

I love both ideas too much to ruin them.

The dreamer in me wants to buckle down and write the new WIP in 25 days and then move immediately to the new idea. My head is spinning with both books begging to be written.

I have gone from what will I write about next to actually having to choose an idea to write about.

The muse is crazy like that.

I guess, I’ll sleep on it tonight and see what my feelings are like tomorrow morning. Maybe I will love one more than the other. Maybe I’ll love them equally. Maybe I’ll just have to flip a coin and choose that way.

Listening to “Walk On” by U2

Barfly

Barfly is finished. 68,708 words and 23 chapters. It only took me 25 days (from November 21st to Jan 14th) to write from beginning to end.

I’m sitting here amazed by that fact...25 days. Yes, I wanted it finished by the end of December, but life is not something you can always plan out and it threw me a major curve ball when it took my mother from me. I actually didn’t think I was going to be able to finish the novel. It felt foreign to me after her passing.

Then I rediscovered my characters and in the process of doing that, I got a little closure on my mom’s death. I also discovered another story waiting to be written. Maybe two.

From writing Barfly, I’ve learned that creativity and the Muse will strike you when you least expect it. It will throw something at you that seems so trivial but turns out to be something so inspiring that it drives you to finish the piece that you are working on.

If you had asked me in the beginning of November if I’d ever finish Barfly in my lifetime, I would have answered no. It was a project that I had started with no intentions of finishing. It was inspired by the lyrics to a song. It had no middle and end in sight.

Then the Muse gave me a little gem. Something, that said to me, just jot this down and save it for later. Save it for later became, NEED TO WRITE, NEED TO FINISH.

So the editing process begins. I give it to friends for an initial reading, hope they don’t tear it apart, hope they say it’s something they’d buy, and edit, edit, edit.

Then, hopefully, by end of February, I’ll be ready to send out queries for it. I won’t rush to send queries like I did with The Dumbing Down of Love. I’ll take my time & make sure I can see my reflection in the polished version of Barfly.

I’ll then sit and wait for the rejection letters and hopefully a request or two come in.

Listening to “Chocolate” by Snow Patrol

The Last 15,000

Last night as I sat down to write, the words were struggling to come out. I didn’t like the way the sounded together, apart, and so on. They didn’t move the story forward. They didn’t do anything. They just sat on the page mocking me. I studied my outline, read what I had written, and got nothing.

Today, I realized why the last 15,000 words are so difficult for me to write.

I simply don’t want to end this story. I love my characters. I love the story. I feel that if I finish it, a piece of me will be forever lost. A piece I cannot get back once it is gone. These two characters are pieces of my soul and I don’t want their story to end. I want to hang onto them as long as I can.

I realize I can’t though. If all goes well, I will have Barfly finished next week. I realize I have to let go and move on.

It is time for their story to end and for another to begin.

Listening to “Munich” by Editors

10 in 2010

Here’s a recap of the first 10 days in 2010 (in random ass order):

1. 3,250 crunches into the 10,000 crunch challenge...yeah, my abs hurt.

2. 3 times I cried over missing my mom.

3. 40 plus times I’ve listened to Buffet Hotel by Jimmy Buffett.

4. 3 days I’ve worked out.

5. 30 minutes on the treadmill.

6. 6000 words written and only 15,000 left to write in Barfly & 5 blog entries written

7. 10lb weight loss challenge between me and Amy by Feb 14th.

8. $100 spent on Rangers & Red Wings shirts

9. 2 Checkers game attended and they won both games

10. 1 book bought & 1 movie watched (Daybreakers - good movie)

Listening to “Drowning (Face Down)” by Saving Abel

Hockey

I realized last night as I was looking at hockey stats for a team I could care less about that I have become very obsessed with the sport. Then I realized why...

For those that know me, they believe I have suddenly become a super geek fan of hockey. They’ve wondered what the hell? Hockey? Huh? You like a sport?

I do. I like two. Figure skating and hockey.

First, a little background, I first developed my love for hockey and the Red Wings because of a guy I met in 2002. I learned everything I could at the time but only with half a heart. I just wanted to be knowledgeable when it came to discussing the games and I wanted to be able to hold my own when it came talking the talk. Nothing ever became of that guy, but my love for hockey developed. I fell for hockey hook, line, and sinker. I didn’t talk about hockey with friends though. I wasn’t even sure I had friends who liked hockey. My enjoyment in watching the game was my own. I didn’t really follow the sport for a season or two as my life grew busy. I couldn’t have told you who was on the current roster anyway so if the game was on and I was near a TV, I’d watch it. If not, no big deal.

Then last season during the chase for the Stanley Cup, I discovered this little team called New York Rangers via their goalie Henrik Lundqvist. He was doing a post-game interview and I was like who the hell is that? I’m not going to lie, he’s hot and easy on the eyes even if he was a hot sweaty mess. I totally developed a big ol’ stinking crush on him. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, Google him. If you’re disappointed, you need to get your eyes checked. Hello Rangers, meet your biggest fan...me. I had decided I wanted to have a team I could pull for that didn’t involve my past. (Don’t fret, I’m still a Red Wings fan.) So I threw myself back into hockey. The Red Wings were playing in the playoffs and so was my new favorite team the Rangers. I watched other teams play and respected their players for their skills. I truly enjoy watching the Caps play because Ovechkin is a bullet on the ice. I rediscovered why I loved the sport. It’s fast. It’s brutal. It’s honest.

I kept up with the sport in the 2009 off season. I knew when the pre-season was starting and had it marked on my calendar. I even counted the days and had the schedules for both the Red Wings & the Rangers in my BlackBerry. I knew who was who and still found myself getting the right and left wing players confused. I also started going back to ECHL games. I’ve always gone to see the Charlotte Checkers. More when Holly’s husband was playing and assistant coaching for them and less when work got crazy busy and this thing called life happened. I would never make time to go and would always have an excuse on why I couldn’t go, but by chance, I got a pair of tickets to the 1st home game for the Checkers and I realized how much I do enjoy the sport on any level and made a promise to myself to go to every game I could. I’ve only missed 3 this season.

I’m pretty proud of that fact because I made time for something I wanted to do that didn’t involve work, going to a concert, or writing. For about 90 minutes, I can get lost in watching grown men fight over vulcanized rubber with wooden sticks as they ice skate. Besides, there’s nothing better than the sound of skates gliding over ice. It’s also one of the reasons I love figure skating in any form and yes, when the Winter Olympics come around, I’m happy as a clam in sand.

I realized that during the month of December, I became maybe overly obsessed with the sport. I even read the NHL rule book for hockey. It’s not easy reading. It might as well have been instructions on how to build a nuclear bomb written in Sanskrit. I had more questions than I had answers, but I read the whole damn thing in one night and despite the many questions I had, I did learn a few things about the sport that I didn’t know.

As I had previously said from the beginning of this blog, last night, as I was looking up stats for neither of my favorite NHL teams or ECHL team, I realized why I had a sudden obsession for stats and standings.

I was refocusing my thoughts from one subject to another. And that subject was the death of my mom. Reading hockey stats, standings, headlines, bios, rule books, watching games on tv or even in person, etc was taking my mind off of her. I didn’t have to deal with the creeping reality that she wasn’t alive anymore. I didn’t have to face the edging darkness that I was feeling take over my soul. I didn’t have to believe anything other than what was on paper and that was stats or the standings I was looking at.

I could have easily let the depression and sadness I felt take over me. My mind has been in dark places before and it’s not a nice place to be. It’s not a place I ever want to go back either. I struggled very hard in my early twenties to get out of depression without drugs and therapy, if it thinks I’m going back, then it’s going to have to take me kicking and screaming.

I made a confession to my boss today that I was worried about my new found obsession and told him why I was doing it and he said I wasn’t drinking or doing drugs which was good. He said most of all, it made me happy.

And I realized, it did make me happy. I can’t quote scripture but I’d say I’m well versed in several things and that’s music, figure skating, and hockey. So if you wanted the stats on Marian Gaborik for his 1st season with the Rangers, then I could tell you that information. (I’m assuming you might be thinking who? what? and so on...here are his stats as of 8:19 pm tonight: 27 goals, 25 assists and 52 points. He’s beating Ovechkin by 2 points. And as for Mr. Lundqvist, he’s starting his 16th straight game in the net tonight against the Bruins). As for the Red Wings, they’re off tonight but play the Anaheim Ducks tomorrow and desperately need a win in my own opinion.

So, there it is. My nasty little obsession over hockey and hockey stats. I might have useless knowledge for the sport but I know it saved me for an all too familiar dark hole.

Thanks hockey! And one day, the day dreaming, hockey loving side of me, will own my own team...

Listening to “Life Short, Call Now” by Jimmy Buffett

Goals of 2010

Resolutions...um, can I just call them goals instead. They sound more attainable that way.

My goals for 2010 (in no particular order):

- Edit, revise, & polish Barfly: A Novel

- Send out agent queries for Barfly

- Write 3rd novel by March 31st

- Workout a minimum of 3 days a week

- Take better care of myself physically, mentally, emotionally, & spiritually

- Continue to eat healthy as a vegetarian

- Spend more time with the nieces, the Sistah & Bro-in-law, & Dad

- Enjoy more me time

- Write EVERY DAY

- Accomplish the 10,000 Crunches in January Challenge with @CharliePratt and @DWCharlotte (they are doing pushups though)

- Learn more Russian

- Learn German

- Continue to expand & push my horizons by trying something new

Listening to “Buffet Hotel” by Jimmy Buffett

Albums of 2009

Here’s my list of albums that I loved in 2009 (they may have not come out in 2009, but I just freaking loved it)

JIMMY BUFFETT - BUFFET HOTEL

I love Jimmy. He takes me to another place and puts me in a serene state of mind. Today, the 1st of the new year & new decade, I listened to this album all day. I wanted to start the year off in the right state of mind. So far, so good. Besides, Jimmy just inspires me to own my own island and be creative.

Favorite song: “WINGS”

RAMMSTEIN - LIEBE IST FUR ALLE DA

I love Rammstein. (Yeah, I said that about Jimmy too.) Rammstein is one of my top 5 favorite artists. There new album did not let me down. I have been waiting for years for this album to land. It was one of the most anticipated albums by me. I may not know German or what the hell they’re saying, but I can put any Rammstein CD on and be in a good mood.

Favorite song: “WAIDMANNS HEIL”

MATTHEW RYAN - DEAR LOVER

When I first heard of Matthew, I immediately bought everything he had out. This is CD was also on my highly anticipated albums of 2009. Matthew has such a beautiful way of creating a picture within his lyrics. Each song is a mini story if you listen to it. You can see the characters and their movie unfold if you just close your eyes.

Favorite song: “SOME STREETS LEAD NOWHERE”

ROB GRAD - NO APOLOGIES

When Rob sent me this CD, I knew it was going to be great before I even peeled open the envelope. It has been such a great journey to see Rob’s hard work come to fruition. He is such a talented singer song writer and I know he will take 2010 by storm. Rob has the ability to make you realize exactly what you’re feeling when you’re not sure of what to feel.

Favorite song: “BE GOOD TO YOURSELF”

U2 - NO LINE ON THE HORIZON

U2, another top 5 of my favorite artists. I’ll go ahead and say it too. I love U2. I own every album they have made and even had a U2 ipod until it died so needless to say this album was also on my most anticipated album list. I just love this CD. It’s epic, it’s beautiful, and it’s poetry in motion.

Favorite song: “I’LL GO CRAZY IF I DON’T GO CRAZY TONIGHT”

THE CINEMATICS - LOVE AND TERROR

If you don’t know them, I feel very sad for your ears. Go and buy this album and their first CD “A Strange Education.” They’re fun and just a great band.

Favorite song: “YOU CAN DANCE”

SERENA RYDER - IT IS O.K.

This CD has been a companion to me as I write Barfly. She has such a great voice and her lyrics are beautiful. I have felt every emotion that she sings about.

Favorite song: “WEAK IN THE KNEES”

Nods (aka honorable mentions and in no particular order) go to the following albums as well:

Muse - The Resistance

Ryan Star - Last Train Home EP

Our Lady Peace - Burn Burn

Diane Birch - Bible Belt

Piers Faccini - Two Grains of Sand

Burn Halo - Burn Halo

The Airborne Toxic Event - The Airborne Toxic Event

Listening to “Wings” by Jimmy Buffett