Hmm. I'm having second thoughts about buying Scott Stapp's new album. I just remembered that artists that go solo after their bands break up tend to not so much thrill me.

Artists that do a solo album while their bands are still together, on the other hand, I often like. Rob Thomas from Matchbox Twenty, for instance. And Gwen Stefani of No Doubt. And I adore Jon Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory" album...

Today's word count: 2600 exactly
Total word count: 38,992

Scott Stapp is releasing a solo album! Scott Stapp is releasing a solo album! Scott Stapp is releasing a solo album! Wooooooooooohooooooooo!

As you can tell, I've mostly forgiven him (and the other guys, who went and formed a new band called Alter Bridge) for the breakup of Creed. I think. I'm listening to clips of Scott's new songs at his website, and they're pretty groovy. But not as good as Creed--at least, not the ones I've heard so far. Which I expected, because half of what I love about Creed is Scott's voice and lyrics. The other half is Mark Tremonti's music and guitar abilities. But I'll probably get Scott's cd ("The Great Divide") eventually anyway...

Oh yeah, got 3,049 words in on the novel yesterday, and 2,807 tonight...

I'm not terribly sorry to watch 2004 make its exit. It hasn't been a great year. In fact, in many ways, it's been a crap year. Really horrid things happened to me. My Grandma H. died. My dog Westley died. My second-favorite tv show, Angel, got cancelled. My favorite band, Creed, broke up. Cowboy didn't get into the Foreign Service.

But lots of good stuff happened in 2004 too. Banana and the Rescue Ranger got married. My parents celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary. I got a story accepted for publication in a magazine. We got Banana to watch the first Lord of the Rings movie and she liked it enough to want to see the following two! We got to watch all three LotR movies, the extended editions, back to back to back for the first time! I got addicted to the Harry Potter books. I found The Man from Snowy River on dvd for like $5! I posted lots of fanfic and got reinterested in my blog. I got the Chameleon to love Combat! And oh yeah...Combat! started getting released on dvd!!!

So it wasn't an entirely crap year after all. Just had more than the usual amount of sadness.

Well, after an absence of...I don't want to think how long it's been since I blogged. I actually didn't think this thing would still be around. But my friend MB set up her own online journal recently (http://maribel.easyjournal.com), and suddenly I've gotten the urge to resume blogging.

I have three sad things to say.

My darling dog Westley is dead.
They canceled Angel.
Creed has disbanded.

It has been kind of a depressing year, now and then. Other than the above 3 horrid occurances, life has been good though. We're in WI now, not MN. We live near my Cowboy's family, so that's kinda cool, we get to hang with them a lot. Good thing we all get along fairly well, eh?

I have a lot more to say, and I hope I'll get around to saying it. Oh, I named my new camera 'Marlowe' after Raymond Chandler's gumshoe Philip Marlowe. That's really old news, but it fits with the last post I left oh so long ago...

Oh, I'm a bad, bad girl (to paraphrase Wesley Wyndham Price from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Earshot" where Buffy can hear everyone's thoughts). I haven't blogged in days! The Creed concert ROCKED!!!! We had floor tickets, and we got there early enough that we were only 15-20 feet from the stage! We could see everything! It was just amazing. We were close enough that we could feel the heat from the pyrotechnics! And I mean, instantly feel it. As soon as they'd light the torches or start the sparks we'd feel it. Of course, it was really really really crowded there, so between all the people and the pyrotechnics it got pretty warm. MB says she almost passed out at one point. I didn't notice the warmness so much once Creed came on though (Stereo Fuse and Default opened). ED says she liked Default as well as Creed, but not me. The weirdest thing about being that close was how the bass affected us. It's like our chests became speakers or something. We could feel the bass reverberating in our chests and throats (and at one point in my sinuses, which sucked because I got a headache later). It felt like someone was knocking the wind out of me in time to the music. That was mostly with the opening acts though. They had their bass cranked way up. Creed affected me much less, or else I was just used to it by then. Wanna know the coolest thing about the Creed concert? We were so close that Scott Stapp actually heard my voice! Mine and mine alone! During a quick lull between songs, I screamed "SCOTT!!!!" as loud as I could with what voice I had left. He whipped his head around to look in my direction and grinned!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How awesome is that? I made Scott Stapp smile! Of course, he's made me smile a lot more than just once...