Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

We got wakeup calls at 9 this morning (=yesterday morning!) and had breakfast in the hotel.  I ate an orange, I think it was the first piece of fruit I’ve had since I left Chicago.  Both the promoters in Vigo (Julio) and in Porto (Augusto) had been sniffling and complaining of bad colds… I always end up getting sick on tour, at least when I do it in the States, so I’ve been eating my Flintstones every time I remember, and maybe the orange will also help to fend off any potential bugs.  I feel fine right now, just the same as I do when I’m at home… just a few sneezes every day caused by allergies to dust or whatever.  Last night during the show I had to cough at one point… it kind of messed with my train of thought because I spent one entire song trying to sing and NOT cough though I really wanted to.  But I don’t HAVE a cough or anything.  I’m not really monitoring my smoking right now, only because it’s not bothering me at the moment… I can’t smoke as much as I do at home, because I’m busy running around and doing stuff, and I can’t smoke in the van, etc. etc.  Whereas at home I can literally smoke all day and it won’t interfere with anything I’m doing, other than washing dishes maybe.

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Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

Hey.  I’m in fuckin’ PORTUGAL, can you believe it?  I can’t.  We played in Porto tonight (=last night) at a place called Mercedes… actually the full name translates to "My Mercedes Is Bigger Than Yours".  Heheh.  This is probably… no, definitely… the most unspeakably beautiful city I’ve ever seen in my whole life.  I took about 65 pictures today so you can see for yourself once I put them online.  The town is just… I don’t know.  Medieval meets old-fashioned with a little modern thrown in, in all the right places.  It’s a river town and the club was practically on the waterfront, where all the action is.  This doesn’t seem to be quite as much of a party town as, for example, Caceres in Spain, which is also a really medieval-looking place.  There everyone was out drinking in the streets all night long, but here it’s really dead outside at 3 in the morning.  Of course it is Sunday so maybe everybody’s home tonight getting a good sleep for work tomorrow.  Which is what I should be doing!!

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Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

Just got back from the club where we played in Vigo, called Vademecum.  Great club.  It’s like a groovy dance club with a chillout room on the side.  The owner Julio said it’s only open on weekends.  We played at 12:30 AM and by the time we left it was really hoppin’.  Tonight was daylight savings night, so we got an extra hour to hang out without worrying about losing sleep.  :-) Anyway our drive tomorrow is super short, only a few hours to Oporto, Portugal.  I had a pretty good time playing tonight!  The audience was very good so I rewarded them (haha) with that Lydia Mendoza tune for an encore.  :-D There were plenty of people for my tastes, maybe 60 that came to see us play.  A lot more people came in later though, for the dancing.

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Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

Last night (=the night before last) we stayed at a hotel (hostal) in Caceres on the other side of the "parte antigua" (the old walled portion of the city).  We had some coffee and pastries at an outdoor cafe in front of the plaza where all the people were standing last night.  It had been totally cleaned up by then; no trash at all.  We had left our gear at the club overnight (gracias a dios!) so we went and picked it up and drove towards Madrid.  I was jamming MP3s off my iPod like I did yesterday.  :-)

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Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

Wow, what a weird day (=yesterday).  We had breakfast in the morning at the university, and I had time enough to run around the corner and get a half-hour in an internet cafe to check my mail and post a little blog entry.  We took off about ten and headed out to Caceres.

We drove until about 2PM and then stopped for lunch at a place that looked like it was frequented by truckers.  Bad idea!!!!!!  We sat down and the waiter wouldn’t give us a menu.  He told us we had maybe two choices… soup or salad for starters, and a choice of "chuletas" (chops) or some other kind of meat for the main meal.  We asked for the chuletas.  Andy got salad, which didn’t look half bad, but Ryan and I got the soup, which was very bland… mostly salt-water and a few noodles.  Then came the meat.  The waiter brought out a big platter of little miniature pork chops, but it was different; we weren’t going to ask what kind of meat it was.  It was tasty enough but it had lots of gristle; I had a hard time getting much meat out of 5 or 6 little chops.  I was a little bit revolted by it but Ryan and Andy seemed to think it was okay.

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Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

The show went great!!!!  I was feeling really really jumpy beforehand.  Ryan and I hadn’t played together in about six months, unless you count Ryan’s birthday party show we did in July, where I did mostly cover tunes anyway.  Tonight we played in one of the university’s auditoriums, or maybe it was the only one, I’m not sure.  It’s an old chapel that got converted into an auditorium about four years ago, they told me… not too big and not too little.  I guess there were around 150 or 200 people.  The acoustics were really really great.  I could hear everything perfectly and didn’t have to ask the soundman to adjust a thing.  All the seats were full and people were standing in back and on the sides.  The audience was so nice.  I was talking mostly in Spanish wherever I could, and I even did a song in Spanish for one of the encores, an old Lydia Mendoza cover called "No Es Culpa Mia".  I GOT TWO ENCORES!!!!  I’m totally stoked.  :-)

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Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

Ryan and I both got here around 2:30 or so in the afternoon.  We were met at the airport by a nice young woman named Marisa.  No problems with the luggage; the guy at customs asked me if I was here for work purposes and I said yes, told him I was ‘una cantante’.  (Even though I’m not really sure that’s the right word for ’singer’!) He had me open up my guitar and asked me if I was taking it home with me — I told him ‘por supuesto… esa guitarra es mi vida!’ He didn’t even need me to open my suitcase, which was the one with all the shirts that they might have charged me for.  Nice of them to let it slide, because every penny counts on this tour.

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Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

I’m in the parking lot behind the 400 Bar in Minneapolis.  We got here right on time for load-in at 6:00 but of course nobody’s here to meet us.  If we’d been late, you know they would’ve been here waiting!

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Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

You know my Incredibly Strange Music group on Audiogalaxy?  I had to remove (expel) a member just now for the first time.  And it’s a shame because he was one of the original members when I first started the group in December.  Well, he was a pain in the ass then and he’s been a pain in the ass all along, despite repeated warnings and threats to eject him.  His infractions were almost too numerous to mention: he would flood the message board with egocentric posts.  He would insult me on the message board and insult anyone who also felt he was being a pain.  Worst of all he kept sending crappy commercial music.  Not 100% bad shit, maybe 66% was questionable and 33% was good.  That’s why it sucks that it had to come to this, because I will miss the 33% good shit he posted.  What an idiot.

Ryan Hembrey’s back from his month-long European tour with Manishevitz.  Him and Adam Vida are coming over on Monday for a band meeting, to discuss how we’re going to work out the money arrangements and everything for the tour.  Come to think of it I guess I should ask Jim if he wants to come too!  Don’t want to exclude the only other Chicago bandmember.

Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

Learned another new word today: Blog.  It means some sort of web-log or online journal. Of course I used to have one before the word existed…!!!

This weekend I moved edithfrost.com away from my pal Carl Steadman’s server and onto a new account I got at BinaryBlocks.com.  It was easy!  I paid $35 for a year’s service on what they call a BabyBlock account, which is 50 megs.  My site currently only uses a little over 8 megs, so I’m fine with that.  I then went to Network Solutions and went through the e-mail routine to change the ISP.  Now it’s been a couple of days so the website is live, and the edithfrost.com e-mail address is working too.  I need to write Carl and tell him to delete my old account.

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Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

Heard a new word today, on the Wired website.  "Hacktivism"!!  Pretty funny.

I’ve been e-mailing back and forth with Mike Frye about the tour I’m doing in April with Central Falls.  We’re going out west.  Most of the schedule is complete now, we’re only waiting for Omaha to confirm.

Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

Hello!  It’s sure been awhile since I’ve written anything.  I’m just burning a CD now and sick of playing solitaire.  Can’t run too many programs while I’m burning or I’ll end up with a coaster.

Everything’s been going pretty well.  Nothing too exciting to report.  Robert Fisher was in town a few weeks ago to do a couple of shows opening for the Handsome Family, at the Hideout on Jan. 24th and then Schuba’s on the 25th.  It was cool seeing him, and of course I did backup vocals on both shows like I always do.

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Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

Sorry I haven’t written in so long.  Things have been going pretty well.  Daddy hasn’t been feeling very well… he went home from Oregon and then got an infection; his latest wound wasn’t healing properly.  He went to see a surgeon yesterday, got the wound treated and has another checkup tomorrow (Friday).  He says he feels like shit but that he’ll live.  (If he was going to die, he’d tell me!)

Now Daddy wants to know what I want for Christmas, other than money!  Gawd.  I didn’t know what to tell him, my mind has been so wrapped up in getting my damn taxes taken care of.

John and I bought a fake Christmas tree today.  :-)

Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

We had a nice Thanksgiving.  Daddy had surgery on Tuesday and it went well, so that was definitely something to be thankful for!!  I didn’t get to talk to him though; I only had his cellphone number and not Joy’s, so I could only leave a message.  John cooked his first turkey for Thanksgiving, it came out great!  So we had the whole feast.

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Note: This is a journal entry — it was written on paper or on my computer, then transferred to my website, maybe years later.

Finally get a day to myself… I’ve just been listening to MP3s, mostly a bunch of old girl-group stuff I found on Audiogalaxy.  The Stolen Child benefit last night went great… it was a lot of fun.  Kind of intense, but in a good way.  It was definitely worth the effort to do… getting to see Wilco do "California Stars" as an encore was a total rush.  John came along with me, we hung out together the entire show, except when I was on stage of course.  I did "The Fear" and "Hear My Heart", and had Jim, Glenn, and John Stirratt from Wilco backing me up.  It was pretty awesome, the PA’s so huuuge!!