Hey Jakey,

Someone found my blog doing a technorati search for "David Lowery." Hmmm. Could it have been David Lowery himself? Here, let me say the name "David Lowery" again. Hey, David Lowery, if you drop by again, leave a gal a comment, m'kay? And I, um, love your work.

Won a guitar pick from Mr. Brian Henneman himself of the fabulous Bottle Rockets (far left in the picture... he's much slimmer than that nowadays, thanks to Dr. Atkins, nice job!). He said he'd send me a good used one. Yes! Don't EVEN ask me how I won it. It was teh geekiest Friday night web-fest... ever. I will soon be the proud owner of a pick that (hopefully) at one time in its life plucked out the the tune of one of the finest odes to white trash in all the world: "Kerosene." This song will always remind me of a certain someone I lost my virginity to in a trailer park in the San Joaquin Valley. (Y'know, I'm not proud of that... but at least I can say, "I lost my virginity in a trailer park in the San Joaquin Valley.") Merle Haggard, eat your heart out!

-------------------------------------------------
Ever see that damn thing, that burned out shell
For a little while that trailer must'a seemed like hell

If kerosene works why not gasoline
If kerosene works why not gasoline

Kids wore rags, he never worked too much
Who's the judge to decide how this world can punish

If kerosene works why not gasoline
If kerosene works why not gasoline

Now the welfare check won't pay for the electricty
Wonder who the jury was decided they were all guilty

If kerosene works why not gasoline
If kerosene works why not gasoline

Fire started 'bout 3am you know none of 'em would survive
They hated that goddamn trailer so it burnt 'em up alive

If kerosene works why not gasoline
If kerosene works why not gasoline

In a pure'n perfect world that tells no lies,
Burn you down, ya try to...improvise

If kerosene works why not gasoline
If kerosene works why not gasoline
-------------------------------------------------

So let me tell you about last week's ickiness at the Urgent Care. It's Wendesday. Really awful day at work. H and I are just about at each other's throats. My heart has been pounding funny all day. Finally, I threw H's invoices back at her and said, "You do 'em! I'm going to the doctor!"



At the Urgent Care, they took my blood pressure (not too bad... 133/63), hooked me up and took an EKG, took about a gallon of blood (from the backs of my hands and wrists, since I have "rolling veins" in my arm, also didn't help that I was a tad dehydrated), and kept watch over me for about 4 hours on the heart monitor. Every time my heart did one of the strange, uncomfortable "lub-dumps" that it had been doing all day, it showed up on the monitor as a sickly looking hill among the healthier, spikier mountains of my regular heartbeats.

At least I wasn't so bad off I couldn't crack wise with the nurses, and take pictures of myself with my cell phone.

The prognosis: Nothing to worry about. Lay off the caffeine and quit gobbling up so many leftover Halloween Reeses cups. Oh, and try and lay off some of the stress in my life. Ha! Laughable.

I left there feeling about as terrible as I did when I went in, and my heart continued to "lub-dump" for the next two days. So basically I spent the evening in Urgent Care and will pay 20 percent of a doctor's bill solely for the knowledge that I wasn't going to die. Worth every penny! (No seriously.... worth it!) I can lub-dump in peace now.

Okay. Back to working on the magazine. Goes to press Wednesday, so just a few more days, sweetie! Hang in there! Oh, and it's official. You are a guitar player. You played for so long yesterday that you got your first blister. Daddy put your guitar away until you get all healed up, but this morning you broke into daddy's closet and snuck away with his BC Rich. Anyone who plays that ugly-ass thing deserves blisters, so I wrestled it away from you and put it back. Love you, sleep tight!