Hell, I still love you New York

If you were looking at a CT scan of my heart, this is what you'd see:


Photo ©HouseofJules


On a sunny afternoon at the beginning of summer in the mid-90's, alone (in the sense of being by yourself in a place with 7 million other people, which is possibly more alone than you could ever imagine), but excited after having relocated to the place in which I wanted to live ever since I was a kid; fresh off the train in the underground part of Penn Station, doing a trial run to see how long it would take me to get from my new apartment to my new job in my new city. I had a map in my back pocket and knew the address of the graphic design firm I was to start working at the following week, but had no idea how to get myself from where I was to where I needed to be.

All the anticipatory stress I felt about that had been weighing heavily on my mind since I'd unpacked the week before--if not for the entirety of the 6 months I worked after college just to save up for my big move to my new apartment in my new city-- faded away like white noise in the background as I rode one of the escalators up from lower earth to the sidewalk, and the gigantic skyscrapers on 34th street were revealed to me at a slow-boat-to-China rate of speed; my line of vision directed first at their massive entryways, and going up, up, up, and up, trying to take in all the floors of the buildings and the realization of how small I was in comparison, as I was lifted towards street-level.

It was forced acclimation through sensory overload.

I was able to be still, standing on the right side of those electric stairs, while moving upward and gaping at the buildings, smelling the food being cooked at street carts, hearing the roar of traffic and horns, people hustling and bustling; while my heart was thumping louder than ever, welcoming me home. Finally.

Some people leave their hearts in San Francisco. Even before I actually lived there, mine resided in New York.

If you were listening to my heartbeat through a stethoscope, this song is what you'd hear:

Ryan Adams. New York, New York
Well, I shuffled through the city on the 4th of July
I had a firecracker waiting to blow
Breakin' like a rocket who was makin' its way
To the cities of Mexico
Lived in an apartment out on Avenue A
I had a tar-hut on the corner of 10th
Had myself a lover who was finer than gold
But I've broken up and busted up since

And love don't play any games with me
Anymore like she did before
The world won't wait, so I better shake
That thing right out there through the door
Hell, I still love you, New York

Found myself a picture that would fit in the folds
Of my wallet and it stayed pretty good
Still amazed I didn't lose it on the roof of the place
When I was drunk and I was thinking of you
Every day the children they were singing their tune
Out on the streets and you could hear from inside
Used to take the subway up to Houston and 3rd
I would wait for you and I'd try to hide

And love won't play any games with you
Anymore if you don't want it to
The world won't wait and I watched you shake
But honey, I don't blame you
Hell, I still love you, New York
New York

I remember Christmas in the blistering cold
In a church on the upper west side
Babe, I stood there singing, I was holding your arm
You were holding my trust like a child
Found a lot of trouble out on Avenue B
But I tried to keep the overhead low
Farewell to the city and the love of my life
At least we left before we had to go

And love won't play any games with you
Anymore if you don't want 'em to
So we better shake this old thing out the door

I'll always be thinkin' of you
I'll always love you though New York
I'll always love you though New York, New York, New York

-

Luckily, I made some g r e a t friends there who give me an excuse, if I need one, to visit my heart at least once a year.

****

Hell, I still love you New York

If you were looking at a CT scan of my heart, this is what you'd see:


Photo ©HouseofJules


On a sunny afternoon at the beginning of summer in the mid-90's, alone (in the sense of being by yourself in a place with 7 million other people, which is possibly more alone than you could ever imagine), but excited after having relocated to the place in which I wanted to live ever since I was a kid; fresh off the train in the underground part of Penn Station, doing a trial run to see how long it would take me to get from my new apartment to my new job in my new city. I had a map in my back pocket and knew the address of the graphic design firm I was to start working at the following week, but literally had no idea how to get myself from where I was to where I needed to be.

All the anticipatory stress I felt about that had been weighing heavily on my mind since I'd unpacked the week before--if not for the entirety of the 6 months I worked after college just to save up for my big move to my new apartment in my new city-- faded away like white noise in the background as I rode one of the escalators up from lower earth to the sidewalk, and the gigantic skyscrapers on 34th street were revealed to me at a slow-boat-to-China rate of speed; my line of vision directed first at their massive entryways, and going up, up, up, and up, trying to take in all the floors of the buildings and the realization of how small I was in comparison, as I was lifted towards street-level. It was a kind of forced-acclimation through sensory overload.

I was able to be still, standing on the right side of those electric stairs, while moving upward and gaping at the buildings, smelling the food being cooked at street carts, hearing the roar of traffic and horns, people hustling and bustling; while my heart was thumping louder than ever, welcoming me home. Finally.

Some people leave their hearts in San Francisco. Even before I actually lived there, mine resided in New York.

If you were listening to my heartbeat through a stethoscope, this song is what you'd hear:

Ryan Adams. New York, New York
Well, I shuffled through the city on the 4th of July
I had a firecracker waiting to blow
Breakin' like a rocket who was makin' its way
To the cities of Mexico
Lived in an apartment out on Avenue A
I had a tar-hut on the corner of 10th
Had myself a lover who was finer than gold
But I've broken up and busted up since

And love don't play any games with me
Anymore like she did before
The world won't wait, so I better shake
That thing right out there through the door
Hell, I still love you, New York

Found myself a picture that would fit in the folds
Of my wallet and it stayed pretty good
Still amazed I didn't lose it on the roof of the place
When I was drunk and I was thinking of you
Every day the children they were singing their tune
Out on the streets and you could hear from inside
Used to take the subway up to Houston and 3rd
I would wait for you and I'd try to hide

And love won't play any games with you
Anymore if you don't want it to
The world won't wait and I watched you shake
But honey, I don't blame you
Hell, I still love you, New York
New York

I remember Christmas in the blistering cold
In a church on the upper west side
Babe, I stood there singing, I was holding your arm
You were holding my trust like a child
Found a lot of trouble out on Avenue B
But I tried to keep the overhead low
Farewell to the city and the love of my life
At least we left before we had to go

And love won't play any games with you
Anymore if you don't want 'em to
So we better shake this old thing out the door

I'll always be thinkin' of you
I'll always love you though New York
I'll always love you though New York, New York, New York

-

Luckily, I made some g r e a t friends there who give me an excuse, if I need one, to visit my heart at least once a year.

****

Help a Seestor out!

When thinking about my favorite people, my college roommate Emily, her siblings, and their spouses dominate the list. Lucky for me, I've been symbolically adopted by the lot of them and taken my rightful place among them as a "Seestor"! Make no bones about it, this is a big deal to me. Every person in their family is crush-worthy. I get woozy when I'm around more than 2 of them at once. This is no joke as they make up a huge group of people. HUGE. Remember that show, Eight is Enough? Well, Emily's parents didn't think so! It's a good thing they had more than 8 kids because Emily is the 2nd youngest. I'm really glad they didn't stop with Em because one of my favorite memories includes the "baby" in the family: Seestor Amy.

Oh, darling Amy! She officially became one of our college group of peeps when she stayed at our off-campus house a week before Emily's 21st birthday. The timeline is only important in that there may have been a run-in with the police, who were doing I.D. checks at our favorite little bar in town, and there may have been people running away on foot from the police and some of those people may have been caught. There may have even been a fundraiser to pay for the tickets issued for underage drinking and running the eff away from the scene. That's a story for another day, though. Oh man, is it ever a story! I mean, maybe it's a story and maybe it's not. Could be, or I could be making it up. But I'm not, so keep that between us.


Amy & Emily, at Em's wedding. This isn't their mugshot. Not that they have one.


Joking aside, I'm really writing this post for a serious reason. One of their older sisters, Nancy, got diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis fourteen years ago. I remember being in our living room at college with Emily when she got the news. It was devastating. Nancy is an incredible person. Perhaps without intending to be, she's also an inspiration to not only her whole family, but to everyone around her, including the adopted seestor typing in this blog post (me!).

Every year since Nancy was diagnosed, Amy has been raising money towards a cure for Multiple Sclerosis by getting pledges for her participation in the annual Walk MS. It was something she could do to really show support for her seestor.

This disease does not discriminate: Nearly two years ago, in May 2008, Amy was also diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

In her own words:

I wondered where my donations went, what I was REALLY walking for, and if the MS Society REALLY utilized their money/resources wisely, since Nancy was not getting any better.

Then with my diagnosis came the answer...there was immediate assistance from the Society guiding me through each step of the process of now living with MS. All of that monetary help from every sibling, friend, spouse or loved one of someone with MS revealed itself. It was in the financial assistance of my medication; the check-ups from RNs on a regular basis; and the continuous support of people who truly understand all that I'm going through now.

I want to do something for the people who have been diagnosed and because I want to do everything to prevent more people from learning what it means to live with this disease. Today, there is no cure for MS, but hopefully with the support from you, we'll be that much closer to finding a cure!

Nancy, was diagnosed with MS... to everyone's surprise. She has shown amazing strength and determination in battling her illness, so I had a guide as to how to deal with adversity. I've been relying on her example when dealing with my own illness; I can only hope that I'm making her proud.

Nancy & Amy. You make ALL of us proud!


This year, I'm joining their team & walking with them! Seestors are flying in from all over: Emily from California, their sister Debbie from Boston and I think a few others, too (they have a big family)! Some of our college friends will be there as well and I'm looking forward to being a part of this positive movement towards a cure.

Just as they did last year, Nancy and Amy have inspired me to offer the following:

Everyone who donates $10 or more to our Walk MS team before the end of April will get a one of my photographs (your choice, see the teaser shots below) FOR FREE. They'll eventually be for sale for in my as-yet-completed Etsy store for... more than that.

If you donate $25, I'll send you 2 photographs of your choice. I'll ship them right to your door, at ZERO cost to you.

If you donate more than that, I'll totally make out with you! Just kidding. Or maybe not. Let's just say: expect it when you least expect it.

Mother's Day is coming up, you know. Someone you love is about to have a birthday. You deserve a little something! A beautiful photograph would be perfect for this occasion, don't you think?

Go on, click HERE and give up some cash for my beautiful seestors Nancy & Amy, and for everyone else affected by Multiple Sclerosis. I have less than 3 weeks to make my goal, and really need your help!

E-mail me after you've donated (or leave a comment) with your information and donation amount so we can get this whole thing rolling.

All of the following images ©HouseofJulesPhotography. All rights reserved. Ahem, please don't steal.

Mini-Gallery:

All images ©HouseofJulesPhotography. All rights reserved. Ahem, please don't steal.

CLICK TO DONATE HERE!!

****

Heavy Things

Infidelity is not okay.


Domestic violence is not okay.


Acceptance of either is a crime against yourself.


Speak up. Get help. Get out.



****

You NEED this reminder!

Trust me: You really, REALLY need to read my guest post over at Ree's (aka The Hotfessional):

CLICK HERE.

You can thank me later.


****

Public Service Announcement: Black Friday and Everyday

My mom spent decades managing a group of Hallmark stores. I worked retail jobs all through high school, partway through college and for years afterward on weekends. It is hard work, not only physically, but also emotionally... especially this time of year.

1989. Working hard at the after school/weekend job. I just finished putting together that entire display with the one token dude we had working there. Lucky for me he was hot and a gentleman at that, so he did all the heavy lifting; because honey, trust me when I tell you that I spent entirely too much time on my hair that day to work up a sweat installing ornaments in freaking July. YES, July.

1989. The Hallmark Maven, aka Boss Lady. She will crack the whip, and not in a good way.

There are more days than I care to remember that after working an 8-hour shift during the holiday season, I'd get in my car & cry on the way home from not only being yelled at by many customers, but also from the searing pain in my feet, back and every muscle. The pain was so all-encompasing and downright awful that my co-workers & I would always refer to this scene from the Stephen King movie Misery after those ass-busting shifts:


Feeling like we'd been hobbled after working retail during the holidays was more common than not.


I say the following from experience:

• The customary response to "Thank you!" is "You're welcome!"

• The appropriate follow-up after YOU bump into someone else is "Pardon me!" or "Excuse me!" or anything besides rudely grunting as you barrel through their skeletal system.

• People working during any kind of Black Friday sale are likely overworked and often times, not treated very well by shoppers. If someone goes out of their way for you or does a great job, ask for their name (if they don't have a nametag on) and let their supervisor know as soon as possible. If not that day, call or send an e-mail the next day.

Be kind, especially near the end of the business day when they've been running around like chickens with their heads cut off in order to try and keep up with the demands of shoppers. You'd be surprised how far looking someone behind the counter in the eyes and smiling at them will go.


****

Hell, I still love you New York

If you were looking at a CT scan of my heart, this is what you'd see:


Photo ©HouseofJules


On a sunny afternoon at the beginning of summer in the mid-90's, alone (in the sense of being by yourself in a place with 7 million other people, which is possibly more alone than you could ever imagine), but excited after having relocated to the place in which I wanted to live ever since I was a kid; fresh off the train in the underground part of Penn Station, doing a trial run to see how long it would take me to get from my new apartment to my new job in my new city. I had a map in my back pocket and knew the address of the graphic design firm I was to start working at the following week, but literally had no idea how to get myself from where I was to where I needed to be.

All the anticipatory stress I felt about that had been weighing heavily on my mind since I'd unpacked the week before--if not for the entirety of the 6 months I worked after college just to save up for my big move to my new apartment in my new city-- faded away like white noise in the background as I rode one of the escalators up from lower earth to the sidewalk, and the gigantic skyscrapers on 34th street were revealed to me at a slow-boat-to-China rate of speed; my line of vision directed first at their massive entryways, and going up, up, up, and up, trying to take in all the floors of the buildings and the realization of how small I was in comparison, as I was lifted towards street-level. It was a kind of forced-acclimation through sensory overload.

I was able to be still, standing on the right side of those electric stairs, while moving upward and gaping at the buildings, smelling the food being cooked at street carts, hearing the roar of traffic and horns, people hustling and bustling; while my heart was thumping louder than ever, welcoming me home. Finally.

Some people leave their hearts in San Francisco. Even before I actually lived there, mine resided in New York.

If you were listening to my heartbeat through a stethoscope, this song is what you'd hear:

Ryan Adams. New York, New York
Well, I shuffled through the city on the 4th of July
I had a firecracker waiting to blow
Breakin' like a rocket who was makin' its way
To the cities of Mexico
Lived in an apartment out on Avenue A
I had a tar-hut on the corner of 10th
Had myself a lover who was finer than gold
But I've broken up and busted up since

And love don't play any games with me
Anymore like she did before
The world won't wait, so I better shake
That thing right out there through the door
Hell, I still love you, New York

Found myself a picture that would fit in the folds
Of my wallet and it stayed pretty good
Still amazed I didn't lose it on the roof of the place
When I was drunk and I was thinking of you
Every day the children they were singing their tune
Out on the streets and you could hear from inside
Used to take the subway up to Houston and 3rd
I would wait for you and I'd try to hide

And love won't play any games with you
Anymore if you don't want it to
The world won't wait and I watched you shake
But honey, I don't blame you
Hell, I still love you, New York
New York

I remember Christmas in the blistering cold
In a church on the upper west side
Babe, I stood there singing, I was holding your arm
You were holding my trust like a child
Found a lot of trouble out on Avenue B
But I tried to keep the overhead low
Farewell to the city and the love of my life
At least we left before we had to go

And love won't play any games with you
Anymore if you don't want 'em to
So we better shake this old thing out the door

I'll always be thinkin' of you
I'll always love you though New York
I'll always love you though New York, New York, New York

-

Luckily, I made some g r e a t friends there who give me an excuse, if I need one, to visit my heart at least once a year.

Help a Seestor out!

When thinking about my favorite people, my college roommate Emily, her siblings, and their spouses dominate the list. Lucky for me, I've been symbolically adopted by the lot of them and taken my rightful place among them as a "Seestor"! Make no bones about it, this is a big deal to me. Every person in their family is crush-worthy. I get woozy when I'm around more than 2 of them at once. This is no joke as they make up a huge group of people. HUGE. Remember that show, Eight is Enough? Well, Emily's parents didn't think so! It's a good thing they had more than 8 kids because Emily is the 2nd youngest. I'm really glad they didn't stop with Em because one of my favorite memories includes the "baby" in the family: Seestor Amy.

Oh, darling Amy! She officially became one of our college group of peeps when she stayed at our off-campus house a week before Emily's 21st birthday. The timeline is only important in that there may have been a run-in with the police, who were doing I.D. checks at our favorite little bar in town, and there may have been people running away on foot from the police and some of those people may have been caught. There may have even been a fundraiser to pay for the tickets issued for underage drinking and running the eff away from the scene. That's a story for another day, though. Oh man, is it ever a story! I mean, maybe it's a story and maybe it's not. Could be, or I could be making it up. But I'm not, so keep that between us.


Amy & Emily, at Em's wedding. This isn't their mugshot. Not that they have one.


Joking aside, I'm really writing this post for a serious reason. One of their older sisters, Nancy, got diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis thirteen years ago. I remember being in our living room at college with Emily when she got the news. It was devastating. Nancy is an incredible person. Perhaps without intending to be, she's also an inspiration to not only her whole family, but to everyone around her, including the adopted seestor typing in this blog post (me!).

Every year since Nancy was diagnosed, Amy has been raising money towards a cure for Multiple Sclerosis by getting pledges for her participation in the annual "Walk MS". It was something she could do to really show support for her seestor.

This disease does not discriminate: Nearly one year ago, in May 2008, Amy was also diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

In her own words:

I wondered where my donations went, what I was REALLY walking for, and if the MS Society REALLY utilized their money/resources wisely, since Nancy was not getting any better.

Then with my diagnosis came the answer...there was immediate assistance from the Society guiding me through each step of the process of now living with MS. All of that monetary help from every sibling, friend, spouse or loved one of someone with MS revealed itself. It was in the financial assistance of my medication; the check-ups from RNs on a regular basis; and the continuous support of people who truly understand all that I'm going through now.

I've registered for Walk MS 2009 because I want to do something for the people who have been diagnosed and because I want to do everything to prevent more people from learning what it means to live with this disease. Today, there is no cure for MS, but hopefully with the support from you, we'll be that much closer to finding a cure!

Nancy, was diagnosed with MS about 13 years ago... to everyone's surprise. She has shown amazing strength and determination in battling her illness, so I had a guide as to how to deal with adversity. I've been relying on her example when dealing with my own illness; I can only hope that I'm making her proud.

Nancy & Amy. You make ALL of us proud!


Nancy and Amy have inspired me to offer the following: 

Everyone who donates $10 or more to Amy's Walk MS team before THIS SUNDAY will get a one of my photographs (your choice, see the teaser shots below) FOR FREE. They'll eventually be for sale for in my halfway-completed Etsy store for... more than that. 

If you donate $20, I'll send you 2 photographs of your choice. See how this works? I'll ship them right to your door, at ZERO cost to you. 

Mother's Day is coming up, you know. Someone you love is about to have a birthday. You deserve a little something! A beautiful photograph would be perfect for this occasion, don't you think?

Go on, click HERE and give up some cash for my beautiful seestors Nancy & Amy, and for everyone else affected by Multiple Sclerosis. Amy is already 91% of the way to her goal! With 48 hours to spare, help her get there!

E-mail me after you've donated (or leave a comment) with your information and donation amount so we can get this whole thing rolling.

All of the following images ©HouseofJulesPhotography. All rights reserved. Ahem, please don't steal.

Mini-Gallery:

All images ©HouseofJulesPhotography. All rights reserved. Ahem, please don't steal.

CLICK TO DONATE HERE!!

Help Joe Keil and you'll sleep better tonight.

If you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you will recognize the name Spammon. He raises the bar when it comes to leaving witty commentary. I've feared getting fired more than once for reading them while at work and laughing so hard I cry a little. He's married to Linds, who has left her own zingers in the comment box and I completely (I never say this about anyone, mind you) "heart" her. If I ever found myself in Utah, I would make sure that we got together to hang out. They are totally my kind of people.

Spammon is hardly ever serious on his blog, "The Daily Rebuttal", but what I read over there tonight infuriated me on behalf of his family. See the following from his blog and then please sign the petition. I made a direct hotlink at the end:

"This is in regards to my Uncle Joe Keil, Associate Cabinet Minister of Samoa. As an American citizen, on September 9th, 2008 while on his way back to Samoa from Brussels, Belgium on a diplomatic mission to the EU, Joe stops in Branson, Missouri to visit with family. He is forcibly detained by agents of the US Immigration Customs Enforcement, (ICE) His possessions were both searched and seized. No warrant for the search or for his arrest was shown. Joe was subsequently placed in handcuffs and shackles and housed in a cell in Missouri. He was initially denied visits from family and friends except for his legal counsel the day after his arrest. He is charged with felony counts of illegally obtaining and illegally using a US passport, though he has provided documents to DHS agents to prove the validity of both his US citizenship and the legal use of the US and Samoan passports.

September 12, 2008. Joe is finally allowed a visit from his three daughters, who cried upon seeing their father, stripped of his dignity in a jail jumpsuit, cuffed and shackled. He was kept in this fashion anytime he was outside of the cell until Monday, September 14, 2008, when Sheriff Jack Merritt and Captain Clayton kindly ordered the removal of these handcuffs and chains. He also mentioned the kind treatment he received from Lt. Howell and others during his time in jail.

September 17, 2008. Joe posts US $10,000 bond and is released from jail. The terms of his release include restricted travel no farther than the western half of Missouri. Upon release Joe found that his personal effects are missing to include his: California drivers’ licenses, US Federal Aviation Administration issued airline pilot’s license, his original Social Security card and both his US passport and diplomatic Samoan passport.

You can read the full time line of his life including his birth, service in the U.S. Air Force, election of offices and up to the time of his arrest here.

My family has started an online petition to free him and drop all charges that have been brought against him.

CLICK HERE to sign the petition . All you have to do is enter your name, e-mail address, hit "submit" and you're done. It'll take 2 minutes, tops; and then you can go to bed tonight knowing part of your day was spent doing a totally selfless act. Besides that, it's probably the only free thing you're going to do this week. As of this posting, there are 541 signatures. Let's see how many more we can get on there. Pass this along to everyone you know.

**If you have a blog and want to post this, I'll even e-mail you the HTML coded stuff to save you some time. Leave me a comment or e-mail me (see right sidebar)!**

Private Dancer, dancin' for money...

If anyone wants to join me, my sister & Oprah* at what will be presumably your last chance EVER to see Tina Turner live-in-concert**, I have 2 extra tickets that I need to sell!

Date: 10/6/08
Time: 7:30p.m.
Place: Chicago's Allstate Arena, Rosemont

E-mail me ASAP (see sidebar) for seating location & price. I'm just looking to get face value + Ticketmaster fees. This is not a scheme to make a big pile o'dough.

I would need payment via Paypal by this Tuesday (9/30) morning and will overnight them to you that evening.



Whenever I get tickets to a show, I make mix CDs for myself & the people I'm going with. The cover of the latest mix is of my sister & I in a vintage photo of Tina Turner, aptly titled, "Private Dancers '08". In our own ways, aren't we ALL dancing for money? It can't be just the 3 of us in this black & white photo.

We've seen her in concert before, and she will blow the roof off the mothertrucker. If you're tempted in the least, you should just go for it, and I'm not saying that just to sell the tickets. Seriously.


*If you don't like Oprah, pretend I didn't mention her name.

*In Chicago.

Hell, I still love you New York

If you were looking at a CT scan of my heart, this is what you'd see:


Photo ©HouseofJules


On a sunny afternoon at the beginning of summer in the mid-90's, alone (in the sense of being by yourself in a place with 7 million other people, which is possibly more alone than you could ever imagine), but excited after having relocated to the place I wanted to live in ever since I was a kid; fresh off the train in the underground part of Penn Station, doing a trial run to see how long it would take me to get from my new apartment to my new job in my new city. I had a map in my back pocket and knew the address of the graphic design firm I was to start working at the following week, but literally had no idea how to get myself from where I was to where I needed to be.

All the anticipatory stress I felt about that had been weighing heavily on my mind since I'd unpacked the week before--if not for the entirety of the 6 months I worked after college just to save up for my big move to my new apartment in my new city-- faded away like white noise in the background as I rode one of the escalators up from lower earth to the sidewalk, and the gigantic skyscrapers on 34th street were revealed to me at a slow-boat-to-China rate of speed; my line of vision directed first at their massive entryways, and going up, up, up, and up, trying to take in all the floors of the buildings and the realization of how small I was in comparison, as I was lifted towards street-level. It was a kind of forced-acclimation through sensory overload.

I was able to be still, standing on the right side of those electric stairs, while moving upward and gaping at the buildings, smelling the food being cooked at street carts, hearing the roar of traffic and horns, people hustling and bustling; while my heart was thumping louder than ever, welcoming me home. Finally.

Some people leave their hearts in San Francisco. Even before I actually lived there, mine resided in New York.

If you were listening to my heartbeat through a stethoscope, this is what you'd hear (which is made even easier by clicking the hotlink):

Ryan Adams. New York, New York
Well, I shuffled through the city on the 4th of July
I had a firecracker waiting to blow
Breakin' like a rocket who was makin' its way
To the cities of Mexico
Lived in an apartment out on Avenue A
I had a tar-hut on the corner of 10th
Had myself a lover who was finer than gold
But I've broken up and busted up since

And love don't play any games with me
Anymore like she did before
The world won't wait, so I better shake
That thing right out there through the door
Hell, I still love you, New York

Found myself a picture that would fit in the folds
Of my wallet and it stayed pretty good
Still amazed I didn't lose it on the roof of the place
When I was drunk and I was thinking of you
Every day the children they were singing their tune
Out on the streets and you could hear from inside
Used to take the subway up to Houston and 3rd
I would wait for you and I'd try to hide

And love won't play any games with you
Anymore if you don't want it to
The world won't wait and I watched you shake
But honey, I don't blame you
Hell, I still love you, New York
New York

I remember Christmas in the blistering cold
In a church on the upper west side
Babe, I stood there singing, I was holding your arm
You were holding my trust like a child
Found a lot of trouble out on Avenue B
But I tried to keep the overhead low
Farewell to the city and the love of my life
At least we left before we had to go

And love won't play any games with you
Anymore if you don't want 'em to
So we better shake this old thing out the door

I'll always be thinkin' of you
I'll always love you though New York
I'll always love you though New York, New York, New York

-

Luckily, I made some  g r e a t  friends there who give me an excuse, if I need one, to visit my heart at least once a year.

For everyone (and everyone you know) who has a dog in Milwaukee... this one's for you!

Awhile back, I came to the end of a long process of growing out my hair to donate to Locks of Love. The minimum required for a donation is a 10" tip-to-tip ponytail, which is a lot of hair to chop all at once. Since I didn't want to end up bald, I knew I had to take someone with me who I could trust to ensure that my head wouldn't end up as somebody's "special art project".

I knew immediately my friend of 20 years, Sue, would be up to the task, and she came along happily. Just before the scissor-wielding stylist started the first sawing actions through my thick ponytail, Sue unexpectedly whipped out a ruler and measured several times to confirm it was the right length, because as much as she knows that donating hair for kids with medical hair loss is a great cause, she also knows that I don't ever want to look like a dude.

There isn't anyone I trust more with my hair and more importantly, with my life. The point of this post is to announce that after many years of dreaming about it, she has started her own professional* dog walking service, and she'd love to add your pet(s) to her important client list! It goes without saying that if I had a dog and lived in Wisconsin, I would hire her in a heartbeat.

Click HERE to get to her website. Please pass along this information to every dog-owner you know in and around the Milwaukee area, suburbs included!




*She's professional, which takes the pressure off of your dog.