God Help Us All

We are putty in this kitten’s paws. Bow before the sleepy kitty. (First seen on Cuteoverload, thank you Cuteoverload, then downloaded from YouTube, thank you YouTube and Catheroo. I got some writing done, but that’s it so far on my to-do list. It was the most important though, so now I can goof off for a little while.)

[Video removed because the link no longer works.]

Cold Case Breakfast

I had breakfast with a couple of the detectives from the Cold Case Squad, Tommy Wray and Steve Kaplan. Steve wouldn’t let me take his picture, the BIG BABY. Tommy Wray is retiring this week. Breaks my heart. And his. He doesn’t really want to retire. Hopefully I’ll get to write about why. The really sad part is he’s retiring with the Christine Diefenbach case unsolved (this was one of the cold cases I wrote about — Christine was a 14-year-old kid who was murdered in Queens almost 20 years ago now). Talk about heartbreak.

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Wedding Daze

Diane and Brian were married yesterday at St. John the Divine. My flash messed up when they came down aisle, and I didn’t recover quickly enough. You can’t see Brian. (I got to sit behind the choir! My favorite was a procession by Ludovico Grossi da Viadana which they sang at the beginning. I’d never heard anything by this composer before, but I’m not terribly knowledgeable about early music.)

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Here is Brian later!

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And my friends Tom, Cori and Jim. Isn’t this a great shot?

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And here’s a freaking peacock that was outside the church! There’s a picture of a peacock on the church’s website, so apparently peacocks are a thing there. Hello peacock!

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Bizarre Moments of Happiness from Last Year

I started this journal — and I got the idea from Oprah, God help me — where I write down three things I accomplished each day, and three positive things from the day. The instructions where great. Oprah said something about how some days it’s hard to find a positive thing and she’ll make entries like, “saw a squirrel.” So, here are some of my positive things from last year. You can tell when I was scraping bottom.

– my tooth fell out and down the drain, but the super retrieved it [it was a cap, actually].
– my new calculator works.
– a blizzard has begun.
– the Frick.
– MacDonald’s french fries.
– the water that Ruby gave me at the movies.
– the headless bride painting from Cricket.
– my newly replaced shower water filter.
– Bill Owens wrote me back [photographer I admire].
– Finney not being poisoned.
– The Half and Half is still good [oh man, what kind of sorry-ass day could I have been having when the fact that my Half and Half wasn’t sour was the best thing I could think of that day??].
– Eye contact with the Mayor [Bloomberg, he spoke at an event that I performed at and totally checked me out].
– the pizza guys know me and usually give me a good slice.
– the cover of my book is up on Amazon!
– Deadwood.
– nobody I know died [really scrapping bottom that day].
– Naveen Andrews dancing.
– figuring out the higher level ipod shuffle.
– I could afford to pay my taxes.
– purring.
– New pjs, a quiet night, lovely breeze blowing in the scent from my candle. It’s like childhood with that nice long stretch of summer ahead.
– was able to give decent directions to three sets of tourists.
– Really nice visit with Dr. Shaler, love that guy.
– my tweezers are pink.
– Love love love love (to the infinity power) my new top, even Howard commented on it.
– Lovely lovely cruise up the East River, which is a tidal something or other, not a river, it turns out.
– Kim and Oscar Wilde people screaming for me [these are friends from a bookstore, I was drumming in a parade and they screamed out my name when I went by].
– It’s hard to remember after the fact three nice things so I’m going to let this one go, and just say: cats, cats, cats.
– Great idea from an editor at Ecco, I want to write this book BAD [and now I am!!].
– getting some medicine into Buddy without getting killed.
– Shaun of the Dead [this movie has appeared three times so far in my journal].
– Figured out Hark the Herald Angels descant.
– dinner didn’t suck [that’s when I was in Durham and couldn’t find a decent place to eat, I’m talking about a veggie burger from Burger King in this entry].
– people knowing my order at Burger King [I started going there a lot].
– Realizing I’ll be in good shape for my 50th birthday, at least I’ll have that [and I did!].
– Cats are totally eating [they were sick].
– Sean of the Dead [again! I don’t know which spelling is correct].
– remembering how wonderful a good book is.
– the parking garage guys across the street carrying the machine up, yeah, I had to pay them, but just having someone there to pay was a godsend [I couldn’t lift the computer Echo used to run on, much less carry it up five flights and no friends were around and I was STUCK so I was very happy].

Okay, now I’m back in the present. Today I’m going to the wedding of two people I met while volunteering at ground zero, Diane and Brian. Hopefully I will be back with pictures! I meant to buy a new dress so I’m not wearing the same dress I’ve worn to every warm weather event for the past three years (in fact there’s a picture of me in it up on this blog), but I forgot. I’m a pretty girly-girl, I think and then I have these lapses. The wedding isn’t until 2PM. Maybe I could go quick and get one before the wedding, if I didn’t freaking live in we-don’t-open-until-noon part of town, that is.