A night in New York City

Joe took me to see Vinx perform. I'm floored by the talent, and you have to hear it for yourselves. Check out his CDs on amazon.com, and visit www.vinx.com for where he's appearing next. What a phenomenal voice, and the drum work was amazing. We had seats right up front at a great little blues club in the Village, and Vinx came over and sat down to talk with us. I didn't win the free CD (because I'm not crass enough, apparently -- Vinx handed over the CD to some woman in the front who was making endless suggestive comments...to shut her up, I'd guess ;) but he did sign for me, which thrilled me to no end. Joe included one of his songs on a mix CD that was one of his earliest gifts to me, and it was such a treat to catch the live show.

[I have to pause now...I have that mix CD on right now, and a gorgeous version of a Sting song is playing....sigh...]

On Sunday, Joe and I went to look at a house that he's considering buying. It's a pretty house with lots of space and storage, but we took one look at where the bedroom door had been kicked in and an alarm pad was right next to the bed...um, no thanks. As Joe put it perfectly, the house has had violence done to it. Not a good vibe. Granted, people buy houses based on far more than a vibe or a history, but it wasn't a good thing to see. I wish that family well and hope the child was protected from that door kicking incident. Joe's search continues, and I'm sure the right place will pop up. For now, we're watching a lot of House Hunting shows on HGTV and TLC -- learning a lot.

In other news, we're entering Butters the hamster into his first competition -- the Hamster Bowl at the local pet store. We expect our boy to just sit there and not move, but he could surprise us. This cracks me up, and we have a crowd coming to support Butters. Everyone wants to see this.

Oh, and I've done some work this weekend too. ;) A few big projects, a massive edit to "What's Your Bridal Style?" -- our veils section went missing on us! -- and sixteen idea proposals for a book series. Fingers, toes and ovaries crossed on that one. It's a breezy, beautiful day, and I'm plowing through some smaller articles and assignments in between doing the question part of "The Bride's Diplomacy Guide." Right now, it's just a list of crappy things that brides and grooms have to deal with -- the solutions come in the next phase. That's where the gold is.

And to close for the day, my suggestion for a great procrastination tool. At www.benjerry.com, you can create your own ice cream flavor. I pretty much dumped a bunch of cake batter ice cream together with cake batter swirl and chocolate chips and peanut butter cups. Not sure what you'd do with honeycomb (one of the possible ingredients), but hey -- if Ben and Jerry say it works, it works.

Back to work now...and go check out www.vinx.com!