I've been listening to "Paul's Boutique" for about a week straight now...yesterday, I was walking home (taking pictures of dead things) and I caught a lady staring at me. At first I thought maybe she was concerned about the fact that I was photographing a dead squirrel, but then I realized that it was because I photographing a dead squirrel and mouthing the words to High Plains Drifter, which, if you weren't also listening to High Plains Drifter, I was photographing a dead squirrel and talking to myself rather excitedly.

I've sold 7 books so far (yeah...), get yours here: FAC&P. One thing I've noticed during this whole process...poetry is (maybe) sadly a self sustaining community. Example: People buy the Pingel/Wilkinson chap. That "money" is stored in Paypal where I can either transfer it to a debit card, OR have my own small press purchases deducted from it...which I do. In essence, the transactions become more or less like bartering and trading...books for books, in other words. If I make it into PhD school, I'm going to write a disertation about this.

Speaking of school, I got my rejection from UMass, which was a real close second to Iowa in my point scale (yes, Jon, I did use a point scale to whittle down my MFA list). What took the sting out of it was being able to talk to Jim Galvin a little bit more about the Writer's Workshop. He gave me lots of things to be "happy about," not the least of which was full funding for the two years I'm there. He also told me that I can take book making classes at UI and they will count towards the MFA (I think that counts as the super bonus).

AT made me socks and then made me pose for this picture...she's a totally boss lady.