Happy New Year! We enjoyed a nice holiday in Cincinnati and Columbus, visiting friends and family. We got reacquainted with the fabulous Andrew Bawidaman, who makes the best pin-up art around (www.bawidamann.com) his work was recently published in a collection of erotic art, a book called Ars Erotica ( Picasso and Kandinsky are in it!). It was fun reminiscing about our college days.

Azalea and I had fun frogging around with my good friend Jessica Wiesel (known as Weasel to her buddies). She is so brilliant, we have a good time just talking and bouncing ideas around. I wish she lived in Asheville.

My folks came up from Florida for a few days to see Azalea. She and my mom get along supremely well, so much so that this morning, at dawn she woke up looking for her Lula, as she calls my mama, and wouldn't stop looking and crying until I told her we would visit next week. I like that she loves my mom so much, but some primitive part of my brain gets jealous; when Gramma Lula is around, nobody else exists!

We have been working to catch up on work that has accumulated over the holidays, so we are back to being busy, which is good, because I hate feeling like a slacker! I made a few new beads, and sketched in my book, I'll post some pics to show my progress.

I'm shaking off some bad juju, trying to clear my mind of negativity. The holidays make me miss my older bro who's been missing for sixteen years. It puts into sharp focus the importance of being good to each other and not holding grudges - you might not see that person ever again. Which leads me to another source of agitation, folks snooping in my personal files on my lap top. I don't mind someone getting on the internet, but looking through personal files? That's rude. And disrespectful, like looking through someone's purse. I don't want to hold onto that anger (though I think some part of me is largely vindictive and is even now plotting revenge). I'm going to look at it as though I've just been educated about boundaries.

Greg ordered The Absolute Sandman for me! I love Neil Gaiman, but never read his comics, so I'm excited. I think Stardust is one of my all time favorites. American Gods is amazing - disturbing and exciting. I want to send him a bunch of my beads with a note proclaiming my admiration for his skills, his use of imagery, etc.,etc., but don't want to sound like I'm a stalker. Or a lunatic fan that wants to be his best friend, although the latter wouldn't be too far off the mark.

Azalea is asleep, exhausted after a rough and tumble visit to the mall playland. She is so nice, letting other kids go ahead of her on the slide, making sure they know to hold on. She is also extremely fast and hard to see in a crowd; let me just say I nearly had a heart attack when I saw her running away from the playland and into the mall, dissappearing around a corner. Needless to say we left directly, with lots of lecturing on the importance of staying near mama.

Well, I got some reading to do, have a good one!