It's 10:00 as I write this, and I'm listening to 103.5 FM, the community-operated radio station here in Carrboro, NC. This is important only because my next-door neighbor will be DJ-ing his first music show on the air at 11 this evening. I've gotta say, though, if he continues to play the banjo-pickin', fiddle-strummin' music that the station has been using for "filler" for the last half hour, I'm going to go absolutely nuts. Since moving to North Carolina in 2000, I had never in my life heard so much bluegrassroots...and I can't say that deficiency is one I really regretted.

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Depending on the way things go with Steffi's two on-campus interviews next week, I may be getting extra doses of "overly-white people's music." (Honestly, I can enjoy and tolerate small quantities of bluegrass, but if I've got to listen to it all night or all my life...) In any event, Steffi will be traveling to both Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, and Kansas State University (in Manhattan -- yes, you read that right -- KS) next week to do her German song 'n dance for the two institute's respective faculties. She'll be in Virginia from the 25th to the 28th and then hopping a plane to Kansas on the 31st. (According to her flight schedule, it'll take her 8 hours to fly the 1162 miles to KSU. This is, of course, counting the 3 or 4 hours of layovers she'll face.) So, we're hoping, of course, that one of these schools will offer her a position, even if it meant we'd be subjected to yet more "Deliverance Music."

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One of the things I wanted to do this year was to send out a few feelers regarding new art projects. Well, I haven't been quite as motivated as I was at the beginning of the year, but I did actually swap some correspondence with Marty Halpern of Golden Gryphon Press about future book jacket art. Funny, because a few days after I mentioned my intent to contact people, Marty contacted me to find out the whereabouts of my homeless homepage so he could update my link on the GGP website. We exchanged an email or two, and he wrote the following in one of his responses:

Actually, I had a project in mind for you but I would have had to convince the author because *he* had another artist in mind -- but alas, Gary ended up doing the book with this author and just went with the author's request.

But you're still in my mind should I find the right project, but still feel free to contact Gary because he works on his books typically independent of me.

This is good news, definitely, and there's no way that I could take offense at an author's preference for a particular cover artist. Strangely, I think that's how I got my first cover assignment.

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And here's a blast from my journaling past: Last year I started work on an online newsletter called Ozone, which was supposed to be a monthly publication of OASIS, the group for which I work. Well, after -- and I still can't believe this -- six months of delays, it's *supposed* to come out sometime soon. I'm no longer holding my breath (as I did in September, October, November...) but my head's still shaking. My design for the site has been ready to go since July, practically, and I can only shake my head at some of the editorial snafus, incompetencies, and other roadblocks that arose from -- well, hell, I won't do any more finger-pointing at others. Regardless, it's frustrating, especially since all of that initial enthusiasm for the project is sitting around, twiddling its thumbs back on September 1, 2004.

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I think that'll have to do for now. It's approaching a quarter til 11:00, and I need to get my computer up and running so that I can digitally record my neighbor's set. Looking forward to hearing Joel's voice coming across the airwaves -- unless he starts us all off with a track from the "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack.