Dogless

That's what I am until Sunday evening. I'm heading to Wichita tomorrow morning with a co-worker for a friend's wedding, and we're staying overnight Saturday, so Buster is staying in a "cabin" at his vet's for the weekend. I can go pick him up Sunday evening, so depending on what time we get back, Sunday will be a quiet day.

Tonight, I'll have something to distract me for awhile. I'm heading into town to see Vanessa Peters and one of her bandmates perform at the local brewpub. I've been bored with commercial radio, and got tired of hearing the same old stuff on my iPod, so I started searching for different music. I checked out the Web sites of the local venues one day, and found she was coming here, listened to stuff on her MySpace page, and kinda got hooked. And then I thought it might be fun to write about some of the music going on around here and pitched the idea to my boss. He was less than enthusiastic about it, but I went ahead and did an article on Peters anyway for our arts page this week. I'd like to do more, especially on the local acts. We'll see how it works out time-wise with all the other crap that gets heaped on me at work now. I'm kind of hoping to maybe branch out into some freelance writing with some of this, too.

On my way to the show, I need to drop off Hope, my support group's giant pink Serta sheep mascot, at the home of one of the members so she can ride on the Homecoming parade float tomorrow. I'm kind of sorry I'll be missing that, because it's always a great experience. I've done it twice now, and each time, got a little choked up when people stand and applaud us as we go by. All we did was survive. It was all the scientists, doctors, nurses and caretakers who made that possible. They're really the ones who deserve the applause. So if you're involved at all in cancer research, oncologoy or are helping a loved one through treatment, know that applause is really for YOU.