I've been offline for the past, oh, week, I guess, and it's joyful and stupendous to have technology once again at my fingertips.

Strawberry was great. I heard Paul Thorn, with his band Thursday night, and alone with a guitar Friday morning. I'd never heard of him before, and caught his set almost by accident. He was great: a cocky Missisippi boy with a yarn for every song and a song for every heartbreak. Plus, he has a song called "Joanie the Jehovah's Witness Stripper," and you just can't get better than that. I bought four CDs. Sigh. Total bad boy cutie pie, too.

I also did a lot of jamming (my fingers were sore for a couple days), and at night I slept well, surprisingly. Yay for earplugs and grandmas who invite newly alert four-year old twins into their tent at 7 am to read stories so that the twins' parents and auntie can keep sleeping. Plus, it was nice just to have my mom around because she's my mom and she's fun to hang out with.

We got back to Santa Cruz around 11 Monday night, and yesterday I spent the day finishing getting my classroom ready and getting my hair cut, and today was the first day of school. Luckily I still had some clean laundry left from before Strawberry. :) It was a good day. It's going to be a great year (not a good year, but a great year, for those of you who will recognize the reference -- in fact, I think that's my new motto).

Anyway, I'm completely fried and exhausted, not, I think, so much from it being the first day of school and wrangling adolescents (although that's certainly a contributing factor), as from staying up a little bit too late last night and waking up way too early. Sigh. There's a remote chance that Jessie & Stewart will be hosting a jam tonight at their house, and I'd really like to go if it's happening, but I think I'd only be able to go for about half an hour. It would probably be worth it.

For now, though, I'm just happy to be able to check email and catch up on my friends' blogs.