On Brazil and Christmas and the Album You Haven't Been Waiting For

Groot says, "Happy holidays!" Groot also feels that this would be an ideal time of year for you to buy my new double album, I'll Live.

Groot made me take seven photos before finally being happy with one

Christmas isn't usually the happiest time of year for me, but family and friends help me stumble my way through it. Thanks in advance. I've written two songs, "Christmas Lonely" and "The Discontent of My Winter," about feeling cold and abandoned during the holidays... and they're both available on I'll Live, which you can purchase from iTunes or Google Play or CD Baby. Yes, that was a shameless self-promotion. I may have released the album due to my own creative urges, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to sell some copies and to have other people hear it. If you're interested in a CD copy, I've got a bunch, so let me know!

I recently spent three weeks in Brazil, and I have to say I had a blast, and I'm so, so glad I got to see and spend time with family on both my mom's and my dad's sides. Despite mom breaking her foot after we'd only been there a week (true story), she was only slowed down, not stopped; of course, she ended up staying in Curitiba and not coming to Rio for two days with me as planned... but I did enough walking and eating and drinking (and getting sunburned) for the two of us. I even made it to the top of Corcovado, though visibility was poor and so was my timing; I ended up just missing my flight back to Curitiba!

I was not ready to head back to the States after twenty days. My aunts and uncle and cousins and everyone were so good to us, in Curitiba and in Ponta Grossa, and there were still so many more I didn't get to see... and more caipirinhas to drink! But I suspect it won't take another 15 years for me to go back again, and while I probably won't get to stay as long next time, I can hopefully see some places I didn't get to see this time around.

Speaking of seeing, the pictures from Brazil are all uploaded to the Gallery... of Death! and there are a lot of them! (Sorry, Facebook, but I'm just not going to post all my pics with you.) OK, I've fallen behind on actually captioning the Gallery pics... but they start with the one of the Universidade do Paraná, captioned "Curitiba, Paraná, Brasil." Take a look!

Happy New Year, and Hello, 2012!

I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's Eve!  Laura and I had a fun time at a small get-together at Jon and Karin's last night, and finally got to meet baby Lydia.

December started with a stinging hurt: less than a week after bringing the chinchillas to Lyndhurst, we woke one Saturday morning to find Prissy had passed away.  She'd seemed seriously ill earlier in the week, but had apparently rebounded the following morning, and then slowly declined again.  Laura and I were both incredibly saddened by the loss, and buried Priscilla in one of the town's parks.  Fortunately, Meguilla is doing fine, and we've been showering our chinchild with love.

I got to take Laura out for Sunday brunch in New York, and we saw some of the Christmasy sights before taking in Cyndi Lauper's Home for the Holidays concert, which was a real blast.  We picked out a real Christmas tree, over five feet tall, perfect for the apartment; not only did we use some of her decorations and some of mine (and I got some mistletoe, one of my best purchases of the year), we made one of our own!  Using Sculpey polymer clay, we each fashioned a little penguin, then put them together on a base of 'snow' and attached a loop for hanging.  We had a lot of fun making the ornament and plan to create a new one every year.  :-)

Laura accompanied me to Microwize's holiday party and Christmas dinner at my parents', too, where she met most of my colleagues and the rest of my New Jersey-based relatives, respectively.  We still need to figure out when we're seeing her mom again, but it should be soon.

Resolutions?  Well, I was resolutely planning not to have any this year...  But I do intend to be healthier this year, which includes going for a physical, something I haven't done since... well, the Bush administration.  No, not Dubya, his dad.  I'm also going to do something perhaps even more shocking; today I started the South Beach diet with Laura.  I don't know that I'll stick with it long-term, or that I need to, but I 'd like to at least get through phase one with her, and hopefully spend some time on phase two as well.  No, I'm not particularly overweight (151.4 lbs. as per this morning's weigh-in), but I'm also not as fit as I could be.  Helping with that goal is the Up by Jawbone that Laura got me for Christmas; it's equal parts health-conscious and geeky, an electronic wristband that monitors my sleep and my walking and other things and makes it a little easier to get a better picture of how active I am, how certain foods affect me, etc.

Other than that, I plan on getting more serious about my music.  I'd really like to get my second album completed this year, and I can do it if I put the time into it.  There are songs I need to write and ideas I need to explore.  2012 will be the year that happens.

I hope this year will be one of joy and peace and prosperity for everyone.  Joy in the New Year!