So Joi, Krysztof and I drove up to Omaha yesterday and met up with my mother's cousin Joe and his wife Cindy at LA BUVETTE, my favorite wine bar. Joe and Cindy drove in from Des Moines to see us -- and now I'm dying to go to Des Moines not to mention the famous IOWA STATE FAIR -- and I hadn't seen Joe since I was 16 and went to my great grandmother's funeral in Alabama and, before that, when I was maybe 6 or 7 and Joe came to see us for a few days in Illinois and my mama, sister and I left him off at some prairie-lined highway where he was going to hitchhike to his next destination. This seemed awfulllllly romantical to us. Anyway, it was totally lovely to see them and then my friend Alice joined us -- Alice, the glamorous NYC fashionista who up and left her life two years ago to buy a princess house and open a high-end accesory store in the Midwestern city of her dreams -- and we all whisked off to dinner and it was a gorgeous eve, and then Joe and Cindy left and Alice, Krysztof, Joi and I got some vino and went back to Alice's to sit in front of the fire and watch some tv. It is very hard to leave a cozy, wondrous princess mansion once one steps foot in.

But today we shall try, and my artist friend Wanda is on her way over and this afternoon we shall all get wine and my friend the genius novelist TIMOTHY SCHAEFFERT shall come and then tonight is my reading, where I shall see my old friend KELLY whom I haven't seen for maybe 16 years, and we shall go to Timothy's house as well as to bars with CHAMPAGNE ON TAP. Both sweet and dry.

THE END.