Boyoboy, I have a lotta blogging to catch up on.  So let’s get to it!  Well.  Last week was full of post-tour errands.  Paid Derek for the booking, returned the leftover tour merchandise and paid for the stuff I’d sold, took care of all the dirty laundry, did a whoooooole lotta sleeping, and put away my suitcase and everything else I’d been lugging around for the last few weeks.  Now everything’s pretty much back to normal in my apartment.

On Wednesday Eric and I went to see Ocean’s Twelve at the Davis.  It was… preposterous, but a good romp I guess.  This was the first movie we’d seen in the theater since our very first Not-Date in October, when we saw Sideways.  So this time it was that much more fun ‘cuz we got to hold hands during the movie and stuff.  Hee.  :-)

Saturday morning I went to see Dr. Guenther — if you need a dentist in Chicago, he’s your man.  Dr. Guenther on Washington St., and tell him I sent you!  I got my teeth cleaned and had him check up on the broken tooth-or-crown, I wasn’t sure which.  How’m I supposed to keep track of these things anymore?  Well, it was a broken crown, not a real tooth, and there wasn’t really anything that could be done about it other than order up a new one… but since the broken-off part wasn’t bugging me and wasn’t visible from the outside, I declined to get it replaced.  So he just rounded off the corner of it and sent me on my merry way.  Now my tongue’s used to it and I can barely tell the difference from how it was before.  Bah, why worry.  I just got me a mouthful ‘o’ broken crockery, as Vonnegut would say.

After the dentist I met up with Eric and went for a walk in the snow so I could pick up vitamins at Walgreen’s on Western & Lawrence.  I wasn’t feeling so hot; maybe this was the first time he’d ever seen me in a blue mood, but he took it well and I cheered up as the afternoon wore on and we had a chance to talk about it.  Talking is good.  So anyway, we walked down ’round Lincoln Square, all decked out for a German-style Christmas, and picked up a bottle at the wine store.  Got the van and picked up food at Andie’s on Montrose and brought it back to my place to eat while we watched my DVD of City of Lost Children.  Opening the wine was a bigger project than either of us had bargained for; unfortunately I only had a crappy corkscrew with a plastic handle that broke almost immediately.  We had to get out the pliers to try to get it out of the bottle, which we did, but that left the fucked-up cork still in the bottleneck.  We succeeded in jamming it down into the bottle but at that point the bottle nearly exploded and wine was splashed all over my face, onto the floor and splattered artistically all over the walls and ceiling of my kitchenette.  I had a real good time scrubbing that shit off this morning.  :-)

After dinner it was snowing hard but we went out anyway, to the Beat Kitchen to see some friends of Eric’s play: a new band called Lovers on 3rd, opening for Zapruder Point.  We grabbed the booth in the very back and it seemed like everyone in the room was coming by to say hi to Eric, he was a total Mr. Popularity.

Tonight (=last night) there was a holiday party for Satellite Booking, it was AWESOME.  I’m so psyched to have hooked up with them I can’t even tell you.  Yay!!!  Anyway, the party started out at Derek’s with a get-together for the musicians and their s.o.’s, and ended up at the Lead Way with dancing and a DJ and everything.  Eric came along with me to that too, and oh man is he great at parties!!  I love that guy.  He can talk to people whether he knows ‘em or not, isn’t that a special talent?  I’m like that too, after two pints of Bell’s anyway, but he’s a lot more of a natural at it.

So that about wraps up what I’ve been doing since the tour ended; what’s up for the next few weeks?  Well, I’m not going home to Texas this Christmas; that’s gonna have to wait another month or two.  So knowing that, I accepted a wee lil’ gig… on Thursday the 30th I’ll be playing a shorty-short-short set on a bill with the band Canasta, and a bunch of solo performers too, including my boooooyyyyyfriend.  It’s a benefit for the Tangerine Arts Group, who are cohorts of Eric’s and Canasta’s.  The lineup so far is Canasta, Brandon from Palaxy Tracks, Annie Higgins, Canasta, Daniel Knox, me, Canasta, Zapruder Point, my boyyyyfrieennnnd, and of course Canasta.  The show starts at 8:30 p.m. and there’ll be an $8 cover.  And Canasta’s playing too!  Almost forgot!

Speaking of playing, I’ve been playing a lot of Literati lately and completely stopped playing regular Scrabble.  It’s a real crackpipe of a game, mainly because you’re given a RATING when you start, and the rating goes up or down depending on how well or how shitty you’re playing.  It’s a terrible, horrible waste of time but I’m diggin’ it.  It’s more satisfying than Scrabble somehow ‘cuz one game is all over within just 15 or 20 minutes instead of being dragged out for days like we do with my favorite version of online Scrabble at the Pixie Pit.  Which is awesome but… well, it’s just a whole ‘nother can ‘o’ worms ain’t it.

That’s it for now… if I don’t blog again before then, have a happy and healthy holidays y’all!  :-)

p.s. I can’t wait to get my iBook back.  Soon, maybe tomorrow.  It got a total lobotomy from what I hear; a whole new drive.  Wahhh.  But… yay!  New drive!!