hello, my loyal zero readers. i've been absent for a while since i've been back home in georgia. hope you didn't miss me too badly.

i've missed you. the end of december is always a very contemplative time for me, since i have that birthday which always makes me feel more than a year older, which tips off 10 awful days of contemplation leading up to the new year. yet i'm usually home with my family, where trying to seriously contemplate is like trying to meditate at a circus. there's always a game to be played, a crossword to be worked, an errand to be run, a child to be entertained, a cookie to be baked. and never alone. i don't dare blog from home because of the likelihood that someone's checking the history to make sure no teenage boys are looking at porn.

it didn't help that this year there was a lot of moody music to be listened to, some josh ritter and some patty griffin. bluegrass, my newly exercised passion, is heavy with mood.

and so am i. of course, the one day recently that i've been able to escape the mood i was hearing some live bluegrass. meredith and i went to a bar called madam's organ in adam's morgan, a self-styled dive, but not too cheesy or touristy. the band was truly awesome. and the evening was perfect for two sexy single girlz. we had beers and bummed cigarettes, and the men just kept coming up to hit on us. we were just sitting there like little man-traps and they kept coming over. i had some good conversations and even a little physical contact with one of them, a stoned special ed teacher whose true goal is to be an electronic musician. the fiddler came up to talk to us for just a little too long, and then proposed kissing us each under the non-mistletoe plastic holly hanging above our heads. funny, fun, colorful, good music, men. the fun part was knowing that if we'd wanted, we could have gotten laid with a variety of men that night, but also knowing that none of them really had a chance.