Rain

I pulled out of your driveway and down the street. This strange summer day. I had spent the afternoon, sitting in your hollow home. Tile floors and wide doorways. This house was a gift from your family to you and Wes, that someday, when it was all too much for you to bear, when you could no longer do things on your own...you would be provided for. I sat on the couch, Lucy the collie's head in my hand, wrestling for my attention. My eyes were on you. I watched you wavering, walking, fingers in the air, stiff and awkward, your kind face that I'd known all my life settling into a smile.

I've never loved a friend so much as you. I'd slept by your side so many nights of my childhood. We had spent our summer days exploring the never ending avenues of our imagination. We were so fortunate, dearest girl.

Our mothers had met at church and became fast friends, both strangers in a small town, both married to young ambitious professionals, both with small children. And truly, we were sisters from the start. You were always short and dark. I was tall and fair. You were soft spoken. I was loud. When your father became ill and your family moved away, we still saw each other, every holiday, every summer. We traded books and tapes. We wrote each other the longest letters that we possibly could. We talked for hours on the phone. Our lives were completely interwoven an hour and a half apart. My favorite time of every year was your birthday, which usually fell around Columbus Day. My school would be out on that holiday. So I'd go down to Sesser and spend the weekend with you. And on Monday, when you got up to go to school, I went with you. I've no idea what trouble your mother (who was a teacher there at Sesser) went through to make this possible, maybe none at all. But let me say now, that I was always so thankful for it.

It was a chance for me to live one day a year in the dream that you and I would, just like in Saved by the Bell and all the other teen shows I watched every Saturday morning, go to school together, gossip, hang out at our lockers, pass notes in class. You were my best friend. I wanted to spend my youth hanging out on Friday nights and talking about boys. I wanted to spend my days pulling pranks on teachers with you, cutting class, walking home from school together.

I spent my youth on the outside. I was the artistic girl, the non-smelly freak in a small rural school of 100 students, who loved Dinosaur JR and R.E.M., Klimt and Van Gogh, and hung out with her art and band teachers more than her fellow students. I remember walking those ten blocks to school by myself every day, most always very late...walking home was worse, the cars full of laughing, silly students driving right past me as if I was completely invisible...and I was.

I was never invisible to you. You... How can I say this? Huntington's. I knew. I knew when we were young. I knew sitting by your side playing Nintendo. I knew when you drank from a cup, opened a drawer, walked down the sidewalk. I saw all of these traits of your father's disease in so many moments of so many days years before you were diagnosed. We'd lie in bed on those summer nights and talk of the possibility of all of this being true. You said that if it were, you would rather take your own life than live with it. When you finally went in for testing, right after high school, the doctor knew almost instantly. All of these things, all of these quiet terrible things, all of this, this mortality, this life, in a small town, all you'd ever known...I feared so much....

Then you met Wes. He said that he didn't care that you were sick. He loved you. He was your angel. This person given to you as a chance to live the life that you deserved to live, to be loved. The two of you were inseparable. You married in Jamaica in 2001. I, now living in Alabama, received letters full of stories of your adventures. You moved into this house, got another dog. He worked, you stayed at home. Over the years, as you became more ill, the two of you began to fall apart. He stayed out later, you stayed at home. He went out with friends and left you behind for days. Your family tried to help out, make sure you had groceries. But sometimes, you had nothing. Somehow in your disability, he had forgotten about you. The girl he married and treasured and promised to love forever. Or maybe he denied it, trying to save himself from the imminent future. One day, he called your mother. Said that he had left you and for her come get you. You had been left in the house for a fortnight without anything more than some soda and a bag of chips. I cannot even tell you the rage that I felt. I can't even tell you how helpless I felt 500 miles away.

Now you will live with your mother. She will come into your childhood room to vacuum every Saturday morning at 7am, as she's done every Saturday morning since we were children. Wasn't that the worst? After we'd spent all night talking and listening to music and watching movies. We'd finally just drifted off to sleep and she would swing open your door, light from the hall flooding into your room, into our faces. We'd curl up, head under covers, pillows over ears, insomnia turning into insanity with a burst of giggles. We'd slowly, sluggishly, crawl out of bed and into our jeans and t-shirts, and wearily take ourselves next door to battle it out with your Grandpa Burt in the playroom. He was a stellar Super Mario Brothers player.

The other night, I was telling Tim about how I tend to have a pen pal. I have one person over a period of time that I write, and when I write them, it's big letters full of thoughts and stories and ideas. Gorjus, E, Stodgey-D, Shaun, Zeek, Stratis...they've all come to know, if not my big left-handed, rolling script, then the paragraphs of type in their inbox. This is because of you. Because I've always had someone there to tell these things. Though I've kept diaries for years, I find that when I write to someone else, tell them about my day, capture the conversations, sights, thoughts...all of the little moments come back to life when I tell them to someone else.

"Why do you stop writing them?" He asked. Some I never do. Some, we write in fits and starts, maybe no longer short novels, but enough to get each other through the days when we need it the most. How familiar does that sound? Sometimes, though, it ends, I finally stop writing because they've stopped, interest is lost. Sometimes, it just can't be explained. Your letters, dear Frannie, continued until the day you could no longer write anymore. I moved here knowing no one and like clockwork, every week I had a friend. The pages and pages of telling of days events, family gossip, health reports. I looked forward to them so.

I sit now and wonder at you, my brave girl. I wonder about your days and your thoughts and your frustrations and your joys. I wonder if your small niece will ever know your dry wit and your laugh like I knew it. I saved all your letters, so that one day she will know as much as they can tell her. As much as I can tell her.

As I pulled out of your driveway and down the street, and Patty Griffin poured her heart into my heart over my car stereo, I stopped suddenly. Turning around, I jumped out of my car at the walk in front of your house and ran back, Patty Griffin's 1000 Kisses in my hand. You smiled as you opened the door, as if almost expecting it, and took the CD and we hugged once more. I don't know how to explain that moment. It was as if everything I was feeling in that moment, pulling away from your house, listening to that music, I just wanted to wrap it all up in that CD case and give it to you, my heart and all. So I did the best that I could do. I gave you the song to listen to.

Tuesday Morning

How do these hours creep and creep and creep away? My intention to sleep was blindsided by nothing more than the grade schooler's want to stay up past bedtime and read. Like a child under the covers with a flashlight, eyes squinty and searching frantically through the dream of a book like Nancy Mitford's.... I looked up and it was 11:30pm. I counted on the fingers of my right hand the hours I would get to sleep last night. I closed my book with a resignated sigh, and turned off the light.

Was it worth the tired eyes this morning, sitting up and listening to Windham Hill's the Impressionists and gobbling up the lovely banter such as this:

Louise was married in the spring. Her wedding dress, of tulle frills and sprays of orange blossom, was short to the knee and had a train, as was the hideous fashion then. Jassy got very worked up about it.

"So unsuitable."
"Why, Jassy?"
"To be buried in, I mean. Women are always buried in their wedding dresses, aren't they? Think of your poor old dead legs sticking out."
"Don't be such a ghoul. I'll wrap them up in my train."
"Not very nice for the undertakers."

-The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford

Um...I heart this book.
Just so you know.
(Thank you Sally!)
************************************************

THIS WEEK IN BIRMINGHAM:

We are all the same age.

I was a 5 year old giantess. Or maybe all of my friends were just really, really short.

*****************************************
For the last two nights, we have gathered around picnic tables at the Bottletree, stone tables at the Garage. We've bought each other rounds and told tales from the last two weeks adventures, in Austin and at home. It had felt so good to be there, to be home in Birmingham. Looking around at my friends, laughing, grinning, eyes bright and shining...I took every moment to heart.

Pictures from the weekend

************************************************************

"Hey baby sing to me to sleep
Let the shoes fall off my feet
Let this phone ring out into nowhere
Let this phone ring out into nowhere"

This is unexpected. This newfound love for Chad VanGaalen. I keep listening to one particular track on Skelliconnection and even when I'm not at my computer or in my car or in my room, when I'm walking down the hallway at work, down the aisle at the supermarket, sitting at a bar and staring off into the distance, it keeps coming back to me, all of these tender and drowning guitar fingerings, his somber yet pleading voice....

"Take this lonesome brain and wash it down the drain
Push it through pipes into the sewer where it came from
Take this lonesome brain and wash it down the drain
Push it through pipes into the sewer where it came from

Hey baby sing us a song
Tell us how it all went wrong
Sing about our evil ways
And what's hidden in our DNA

Take this lonesome brain and wash it down the drain
Push it through pipes into the sewer where it came from
Take this lonesome brain and wash it down the drain
Push it through pipes into the sewer where it came from

Sing me 2 sleep
Sing me 2 sleep"

http://www.myspace.com/chadvangaalen

SXSW ate my brain.

How do I start this? I'm a little overwhelmed to be sitting here in a fold up chair at my computer in the Bucket office, eating a mishmash of salad bar and listening to the Vulture Whale Boys practicing in the next room ...it's hard to believe that just this morning I returned to work. At 7am (7:15), I walked through those automatic doors to the ER with my cup of tea, I sat at my desk. I was not sleeping heavily on Will's couch, or sitting and waiting forever for the Austin Transit, or racing down the street, pushing through the crowds, holding on to Amber's hand as we scan the sides of buildings, looking for the venue to the next show.

I love my friends. I'm sure I told them ten thousand times this week how happy I was to be making this journey with them.










*****************************************************

LISTS:

TUESDAY:
Team Hydration Departs -
We met up with The Bucket Mobile (Travis and the Twins)
and The TTS Party Van a couple of times on our journey.



Once at a honky-tonk truck stop. Then again at the Dairy Palace in Canton, Texas....home of Freedom Toast.




WEDNESDAY:
Lots of Panels
Not enough caffeine
I love the Shinerbock

THROUGH THE SPARKS DAY!!!!

(some pics from the show)









FOOD:
Will took Amber and I to the Whole Foods Flagship Store. THREE floors of underground parking. And the food was amazing.

BANDS:
Through the Sparks
Tally Hall
Slaraffenland (Hometapes Showcase)
Pattern is Movement (with Scott Solter - Hometapes Showcase)

Thursday-

College and Community Radio Panel (really Awesome) (Birmingham is so missing out)
I think I forgot to eat

BANDS:
Dark Meat (Team Clermont Day Party)
Kaki King (Convention Center Stage)
Tally Hall (Found Party)
Cloud Cult(Emo's JR)
Shout Out Out Out Out Out Out(Beauty Bar Patio)
Matt & Kim (Beauty Bar Patio)
Vashti Bunyan (First Presbytarian


Friday-
PANELS:

SXSW Interview: Booker T Jones
Interviewers: Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot
Very awesome indeed. I was sad to learn from Sweetdog as we walked out of this panel that I had missed Booker T play with Jason Isbell the night before.

The Relevance of Retail
What Makes a Successful Tour? Marsha Vlasic from MVO was a trip.

BANDS:
Some Reggae Band (High Times Party)
Jessie Sykes (No Depression Day Party)
Casa De Chihuahua (on the side of 6th Street)
The Paybacks (Pop Culture Press Party)
The Hoodoo Gurus (Pop Culture Press Party)
Clem Snide (Buffalo Billiards)
Adem (A patio somewhere)
The Cape May (Lambert's - Flemish Eye/White Whale Showcase)
Chad VanGaalen (Okay, well a video of Chad VanGaalen)
Immaculate Machine (Lambert's - Flemish Eye/White Whale Showcase)
Dennis Coffey (Ponderosa Stomp - Opal Divines)
Archie Bell (Ponderosa Stomp - Opal Divines)
Wiley and the Checkmates (Ponderosa Stomp - Opal Divines)
Bobby Patterson (Ponderosa Stomp - Opal Divines)
Harvey Scales (Ponderosa Stomp - Opal Divines)


Saturday-
Slept in.
Forgot to eat again.
Damn you, Southern Comfort.

FLATSTOCK!
Amber and I wandered the stalls for hours. She bought herself and Will some really cool stuff.
I bought an awesome M Ward poster.
I called Tim while wandering through the room. "Who's your favorite band?" "Um? Uh."
It wasn't a fair question to be sure. It's really the worst questioned to be asked.He hesitated. And searched and stammered. Tim works at a record store and loves music. ALOT. So I bought him a t-shirt of a hot dog eating a hot dog.

FADER PARTY!
After wandering through what looked like a Levi's Store and then a maze of empty rooms and couches and doors with signs that said DO NOT ENTER or teased us with ADULT SWIM STAFF ONLY, I followed some arrows to the bathroom and instead found myself in a courtyard with a massive amount of drunk hipsters talking and talking and talking. I followed Travis through the crowd and found Wes, Jake, John, and Dr. Drew standing and smiling, and watching the end of No Age's set.



During the 501 Happy Hour, there was a "Who looks the most like Jesus contest.
I wanted to enter Travis:



But instead, this guy won...or was it that guy?



BANDS:
No Age (Fader Party)
Ladyhawk (Fader Party)
VietNam (Fader Party)
Redman (Fader Party)
Aziz Azinari (Human Giant Showcase @ Friends with Patton Oswalt & Eugene Mirman)
TimandEric.com (Friends)
The Teeth (Park the Van Showcase @ Habana Calle 6)
The High Strung (Park the Van Showcase @ Habana Calle 6)
The Friends of Dean Martinez (Park the Van Showcase @ Habana Calle 6)

Followed by a late night trip to IHOP with the Flemish Eye boys.

Thoughts I was thinking at Lunch - Highlights:

Matt and Kim - Saw them at the Beauty Bar Patio. With the energy they exude on stage, no matter how technically talented they are, it made for an incredible show. Rebecca and I COULD NOT STOP SMILING. Even when the drunk irish guy behind me kept trying to slam dance everyone. I elbowed him in the ribs. Really hard. And then I smiled some more.







The High Strung @ Habana Calle 6 (Park the Van Showcase) Right before they started, Derek (drummer) pulled the plug for the string of lights circling the small stage. Chad Stoker pulled off his glasses and pulled on his Rock goggles. And he needed them. Indeed. That man is crazy.








Pattern is Movement - Hometapes Showcase - Mohawks
Andrew and Chris were joined by Scott Solter (producer of their last two releases and owner of Tiny telephones - homecamp of John Vanderslice awesomeness). Chris Ward (drums) sits up front and to watch him play is a delight. The disjointed, turning, scaling vocals by Andrew Thiboldeaux seem like movements of the classical type...and I guess they are, just pulled forth by the distortion of rock'n'roll.








*******************************************************************

for more pictures and commentary form SXSW, which apparently will be added daily until all of the freaking pictures are off my phone and I find all of my notes, visit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/saraleah

Friday & Chad VanGaalen - IHOP French Crepes

Friday was Richard Swift's Birthday.
I gave him two drink tickets at the No Depression party and fought the urge to give him a birthday hug. Or maybe I did give him a birthday hug. I can't remember. I just know that I was glad to see him and even happier when I ran into him at the Clem Snide show later that night. Okay, by that point, it could have been in part from the during dinner drinks....but as we talked of the growing music scene in Birmingham, the changes in my life since we first met and his own transitions over this last year...I guess I knew then that Friday night would be an incredible night. I broke away from him as Eef Barzelay dreamed up another chorus. I broke away smiling with my hands clutching the strap of my black bag. I squeezed my way through the crowd to Travis's
side. Travis turned to me, grinning, and motioned to his left side. Adam Fitz, a friend of mine from Chicago, the guitarist for Ralph "Soul" Jackson's bands, stood gazing at the stage. He moved his eyes, glassy and heartful in my direction and returned my joyful expression. We three stood motionless in a bustling crowd and just listened.

CLEM SNIDE





ADEM



Beautiful half of a set. So moving that the soundman standing beside me asked if he was doing this performer justice. I told him yes. He asked me, sheepishly, for a suggestion of which album to start on, because he had never heard of him before. I wrote on the back of my card "Adem - Homesongs", turned, and fled out into the night.... to catch a rickshaw with Crazy Victor.



"Are you ready for a wild ride?" said the seat of his rickshaw.

We weaved through traffic, in and out, between the crossing crowds, around cars, through intersections.

I made it to Lambert's for the Flemish Eye Showcase alive. But barely.

THE CAPE MAY



Beautiful. Sad. Awesome.



Amber agrees.




CHAD VANGAALEN
never made it cross the border.
So he sent a 5 minute video of himself, playing two songs in his kitchen.




The venue projected it on the bare white wall by the stage. It was awesome to see the crowd chuckling to themselves, hiding their smiles in their hands as he wailed through each song. The sound was actually pretty great.



IMMACULATE MACHINE



They took Chad VanGaalen's place. Friends of White Whale and Flemish Eye and fellow Canadians. -
www.immaculatemachine.com/
(Mint Records)

************************************************************


"I'm sorry I stuck my finger in your orange juice." Ian blurted out sheepishly, wiping his hand with his napkin. We were at IHOP, a latenight ramble with the boys from the Cape May and their label wrangler. I searched my satchel for my checkcard and pulled out t-shirts, a hat, a pair of drumsticks, twenty five thousand cds, and twice as many fliers, some for the Bucket, most handed to me on the street that day. I handed Clinton the SoCo hat I'd received at the Fader party. He yelled something that I'm sure was obligatory and shoved the cap on his head.

FRIDAY NIGHT - TRON AND NACHOS

"I think I'm going to the zZz. At 1 am, I'm going to the zZz. Do you want to go with me?"

"Um. No? What? You're going to sleep?"

The guy, holding the guitar case, grinned and scratched his head with his free hand. "No. I'm going to see the zZz. They're playing over on 6th Street. Somewhere. I don't have my schedule with me. Or. We should rent Tron and eat nachos."

Rebecca and I were standing on the corner by Lamberts with the guy who runs White Whale and one of his bands. We'd just left the White Whale/FlemishEye Showcase. I was actually scanning my map to find the location of the Ponderosa Stomp Showcase. I was on a roll. It was Friday night and just that day I'd already seen Booker T, the Paybacks (from Detroit), The Hoodoo Gurus, Casa De Chihuahua, Clem Snide, Adem, The Cape May, a video of Chad VanGaalen (he'd been stopped at the border and couldn't get into the U.S. for the show, so he played two songs form his kitchen) and a really great three piece I've yet to get the name of who took Chad's spot for the evening. Now I was on my way to see 5 more acts before the night was over. (Ponderosa Stomp Showcase: Dennis Coffey, Archie Bell, Wiley and the Checkmates, Harvey Scales, and Bobby Patterson) (I was a very busy girl)


I smiled at Tron-boy and Gave my extra copy of the town map and show schedule to White Whale guy and darted up the street.

Over the next few days, I'll be writing about our adventures in Austin and uploading all of the pictures. Amber and Rebecca and I drove all night last night to get home, and I'm still a bit exhausted, but I've thrown some of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday's pictures up on FLICKR. More to come, so keep checking back.

Now. To bedness.

Austin Bound

Dear Ones,

In 6 and a half hours I will step off of the diving board and plunge deep into the waters of Music Awesomeness.

If you recieve random indecipherable text messages over the next week featuring lots of exclaimation points....well. I'll just apologize in advance. I'll most probably be at a show, wishing to god that you could be there, sharing that moment with me.

I would give you a short list of everyone I plan to see, but my brain has melted from going through all of my notes.

So instead, I'll give you a picture of Chachi packing my suitcase.




I will update as much as I can while I'm gone. With Rebecca, Amber, Travis, and the Bucket crew in tow, we're bound to get into some trouble. I can't wait.

Tracy and Leah from Red Blondehead and the boys from Through the Sparks will be blogging together about their adventures in Austin. You can check out their SXSW blog:


http://blog.al.com/sxsw

Thursday - yadsruhT

She turned to me, swathed in white blanket, her greyish-white, tossled, sleepy-haired head tilted to the side with a questioning glance. She looked up at Shannon. His brown eyes gazed down in a smile. "Don't you worry 'bout her, Ma'm. Sara's just been misbehaving today. That's why she's back here. Now you come along with me." He pulled her into the next room, out of my line of sight. She sighed a worried sound, one corner of her mouth turned up, the other down, as her gurney disappeared through the doorway. I pulled my warm, sterile blanket up around my chin, then up to my ears, inhaled and closed my eyes. When I opened them, I was staring at the ceiling, the florescent lights shaded by in intricate grate I'd not expected in this ancient department of the hospital. One row of big circles one row of small, one of big, one of small, and so forth, creating this beautiful, dizzying, dim pattern. The MRI tech pulled me into the next room. He helped me off of my stretcher and onto the little pallet. He handed me a pair of earplugs. I slowly laid back as he fasted the frame around my head and tucked the blanket around my feet. As the pallet sowly moved backward, my eyes followed the two lines of light above my head, in front of my face. Light blue, restful. My right hand, tense and apprehensive, finally calm. I closed my eyes as the familiar clicks began. I couldn't help but think, drifting in and out of the harsh sounds of the MRI, thebuzzbuzzbuzz, clickclick, buzzbuzzbuzzbuzz, how these uneven rhythms had a place somewhere, in a distortion art noise project by Lance, in the back corner of a Vanderslice song, in rolling of my everyday...everything.

They would find nothing. No new lesions, all clear. The pain would be ruled a muscle strain.



Tonight we will all sleep soundly. I will dream with a curling happy brow. I know now that all I need is rest. All I can think of now, beyond everything else, beyond any pain or discomfort is that in truth, I'm okay. Three years in remission and many more to come.

On Tuesday, the girls and I will pack up Ella, my Honda, and depart on our greatest adventure. SXSW. I can't even begin to tell you how ecstatic I am at this moment.

I'm really happy right now.

Amber and Will. Thanks for the chocolate milk and the cadbury eggs you brought to the ER. They made this little victory that much sweeter.

Today's Undertaking

There have been other songs
From out these strings
But they came out wrong
Don't be mistaken

But this one comes from
High above

Yeah this one is dedicated to you
- M. Ward

I sit up straight in my chair, straighter than I ever have before. One inch to the right, one slight lean and the day grows a little darker with the pain in my side. Some girl is singing the 551st version of "Stars Fell On Alabama" on the internet radio station. The automatic door in front of my desk slides back and forth. The breeze of mid-day weird-winter-of-the-south flows up and around me. I close my eyes.

You were there. Walking beside me on an Autumn night. We kicked the stones to the side of the road, the seperated asphalt, the tumbled limbs, the leaves colored with warmth and brittle darkness. You turned a bit away, hands deep in the pockets of your coat and swung your face back toward me, long curls of your hair spilling over your face and your smile. It was time for us to turn this way, the friends we had become. We sauntered lane to lane talking of nothing in particular. It was just this aged Fall evening of my youth, framed by the quiet chords in my head.

"Miss?" I look up from my desk. A man stands there, holding a vase full of crimson tulips in his hands. His eyes crinkle half stars into the corners of his forehead. "That's what I'm looking for. A smile. I knew you had one in there somewhere. The lady upstairs didn't want these, so I brought 'em to you. Long as you keep smiling." He sits the square glass vase up on the granite countertop, winks, and walks his slow, weathered gait back to the flower delivery van. Just before he wrestles himself in the driver's side door, he tilts his grey head at me and waves.

Dearest Tuscaloosa

Thank you for a pretty awesome weekend.
I like your beer.
And the rock of Egan's.

Vulture Whale played there on Friday night.


Wes the McDonald

John Snowden's MOOOSTACHE (Kradackledack)

The NUBY

Dutch, my brother, fresh off the boat.


Tim Ros seriously hearts the Robots

Seriously.

Pictures of Ham Bagby's amazing Balloon Balancing Act:


Ham Bagby is Amazing



Ham Bagby is Tall



All the Balloons love Ham Bagby

Saturday:
Dutch stayed comatose all day (which is understandable, I'd want to spend 24 hours in a state of slumber too if I'd just spent 20 days swabbing decks). I did laundry, went grocery shopping, explored his house. All of my furniture, including my piano, are stored there for the time being. I've missed my stuff. It's funny, though, to see that my brother and I decorate the same. We have a mutual love for vintage pictures and fixtures and antique furniture. In his little house in Northport, he's even gone so far as to restore and install vintage appliances in his kitchen. The Frigidaire is positively lovely. That's an odd thing to say, but so so true.

I met Tim at around 9 for drinks at the Downtown Pub. He had promised beer and bad music. He delivered.

My friend Dan stopped by the booth where we were sitting. Dan played drums for Ralph Jackson at the Birmingham Sound show last August. As I was trying to explain Ralph to Tim, the story of Ralph and the Black Kat 45, Dan stopped me midway and said, "let me put it to you this way, if there hadn't been James Brown, there would have been Ralph 'Soul' Jackson." I smiled. At that moment I wanted to show Tim the Birmingham Sound DVD, I wanted him to see Ralph and his soul scream so he could know that Dan was telling the truth. Dan pulled out his cell phone and played a track for me from a band he discovered while on tour in England. He said that he could hear Ralph in their music. He could hear Ralph singing something like that. He fumbled with his phone and motioned to it and said that it was basically so awesome that he could strap himself to it and it would take him to the moon.

Sitting across from Tim in the booth, listening to Stroke 9 and Tal Bachman, watching the level of the beer in our pitcher fall and magically be renewed, I lost myself for a bit in the midst of conversation. We talked about school and music and family and working in record stores. All of the sudden, the lights went bright and I realized it was almost 2am.

Sunday:

In a dirty parking lot, within your fair city's limits, lies a treasure trove of musicness.

I bought a new CD organizer.
And I dropped it somewhere whilst running errands with Dutch.

So if you've been fiending some of Eddie Hinton's Southern Soul or have always wanted to own a copy of Will Johnston of Centro-matic's solo album, be on the lookout for a small burgundy nylon case. It should be glowing from the beauty of it's contents. (Check: Walmart, Target, Full Moon Barbecue, OZ Music)

All the best,

Sara Leah

Summer Dress

"summer dress makes you more beautiful than the rest
lovliest girl that i know, and the sweetest...."
- Mark Kozelek



When I think about Sunni, I always hear this song on the jukebox in my head. It's a sad tempo-ed little serenade, but the lyrics are beautiful and the guitar earthy and pretty, just like her.



Her head back and laughing, her slender arms gesturing, I looked up from the phone. Sunni was sitting in the armchair just to the right of me, her white peasant skirt wrapped wrapped around her long legs. Keelan stood by the sliding glass doors, one eyebrow cocked, grinning from ear to ear.



Today was their wedding day.

"summer dress separates you from the rest..."



Sunni & Amber

Les & Amber

It was the lovliest wedding reception I'd ever attended. When I arrived, I handed the groom a case of Amberbock. To the bride, I gave an embroidered linen handkerchief I'd found at the antique bazaar at Brookwood Mall. She loved it. Maid of honor (Amberoo) got a box of Tagalongs which were promptly consumed by all. Les Nuby stopped in soon after. We listened to music, looked at the pictures taken earlier in the day at the courthouse. We drank sparkling grape juice, played with the dogs. Keelan tried to master the wonderment of my camera phone. We couldn't stop laughing.





Congratulations, my lovely friends.