So this morning it snowed here in Pennsylvania, big fat snowflakes drifting down right on the green grass and dead leaves. I do love me an autumn snow. It melted within an hour or two, but look how lovely it was!

So I have been working working working, trying to finish up noirs and trying to figure out books about mermaids, plus doing photography classes and accordion lessons and letting my personal trainer attempt murder on me three times a week. Last weekend I was in New York to meet Joi's new love , who is completely charming and debonair, and I took 500000000000 photos of them posing and frolicking gorgeously in Central Park and other locales but I haven't developed them yet and if they don't turn out I'll cry.

I spent yesterday out in the boondocks with Heather trying to make her look like Leda right after the swan's left:





Also, this is where I drive half an hour and over a mountain to to take my accordion lessons:



I don't really see how anyone could take lessons anywhere else. My teacher Clarice is awesome and rides motorcycles and works with power tools and has 4 kids and is 35 and has played accordion since she was a kid. She'd sit on a swing under a tree and serenade all the neighborhood kids, she said.

If you look closely you can see my byooootiful accordion not to mention highly stylish purse by the door.

Also, here is Heather playing my accordion, which is obviously more fashionable than any Birkin bag:



And here is me being attacked by a feather.



The end.

Here is a photo of me being totally kick ass.

After watching the debate last night, I now have a newfound appreciation for the glories of the word COCKAMAMIE.

COCKAMAMIE.

I could say it all day long!

So I am in DC now; I came down here on Saturday with Barb to stay with her friends Kim and Omar and to see Nick Cave last night at the 9:30 Club. It was, of course, amazing. Plus we ate at a bunch of good restaurants, including this lodge-style place filled with portraits of dogs, deer heads, and taxidermied animals, and this sushi place where I had sea urchin -- like eating ocean! -- and some weird egg thing for the first time. I took many photos of Barb next to a taxidermied fox and Kim and Omar under the dog portrait -- I'm sure they will be the classiest photos ever, once I develop them -- but my film camera was roodly confiscated at the Nick Cave show. Apparently they let you keep your crappy digital cameras but take away any good ones! Regardless, Kim and Omar were the best hosts ever and showed us Grey Gardens and photos by Julia Margaret Cameron and Lewis Carroll, oh and my new favorite show Californication, and played us a bunch of new music and made Bloody Marys with capers and olives and cheese poking out of them, and in general were wondrous.

But anyway, Nick Cave. Look:









It was a great show, as always, and Nick Cave was more personable and funny than I've ever seen him. It does make me feel very old though since I have loved this man for over 20 years and think he has been quite influential on my point of view.

And here are Kim, Barb, and Omar.



In other news, last weekend in New York was good as well, though half an hour before my reading with Daphne Gottlieb I had a small romantic mishap with a terrible Brit to which I dramatically and garboesquely responded by bursting into tears, which made my puffy-eyed reading -- during which I stopped weeping for 15 minutes, but then resumed right after -- even more glamorous. But Daphne of course read and spoke beautifully, as did Diana Cage, who was quite hilarious and charming.

Here are Joi, me and Daphne:



The next afternoon I had, among other things, a 50000 hour long brunch with my friend Valerie in a Tribeca place with tin ceilings, polka dotted walls, and glass cabinets full of cupcakes, and Monday I spent with Tink and Aoife -- look at them!!



-- and my sister, and by Tuesday I was back in Pennsylvania in time to have a lovely romantic interlude with a beautiful Bulgarian violinist who tells stories about Tchaikovsky and Puccini. I have demanded that no matter what happens with this romanza he must pose for photos for me, once I figure out how to take a very extraordinary one.

Other than that I have been writing and continuing accordion lessons and continuing personal training and continuing dark room classes and I'm meeting now with an Italian tutor/physicist and the galleys for Godmother are in and look quite lovely.

I am also dying to see that cheesy movie with Diane Lane.

The end.