First of all, thank you to everyone who’s been reading lately.  The stats are booming and there are visitors from as far as Indonesia and Australia (allo!).  It warms my heart that people care enough to take the time to sign on and read the things that are important to me.  I will be writing more as this Arias trial unfolds about some causes I champion in my own small way related to death penalty trials and victims’ rights/interests.  I hope it sparks some change somewhere even if it’s just some lightbulbs going off in regular people’s heads like you and me.  Sometime’s that’s the best you can do and sometimes that’s exactly what it takes.

This morning I head back up to beautiful Sedona to teach a dance class tonite.  I expect around 50 people to show up!  I’m excited.  I just teach this once or twice a year to my professional community and I dearly love this opportunity so this is a big deal for me.

I had a beautiful, absolutely stellar evening out last night with one of my best friends, Amy.  She also writes a blog here.  We celebrated our birthdays early with going to a really fun and enriching event held a few times a year called Lit Lounge.  Our good friend Kim Porter was one of the readers and she is ALWAYS amazing at everything she does.  I would pay to see her read me the phone book, she’s just that good and starlike.

We then headed to our favorite restaurant FnB where we had an abundance of gourmet vegetables from a Thai style eggplant to chargrilled Okra with this lime lebne sauce to falafel to this beautiful squash which I managed to leave behind in the doggie box .

We shared a half chicken and had two Negronis and opened gifts and talked and talked and talked.  It was just such an evening filled with love, laughter, thought provoking conversation, great food and friendship.  I’m so lucky.

John and my Dad tonite head to a “Salon” concert the Chorus is presenting as a fundraiser for the upcoming season.  He’s doing really really really REALLY well and this community is definitely turning out to be everything I’d hoped for for him.  And more.  A sense of belonging, friendship, fun, camaraderie, normalcy. 

He is doing very very well with the singing part also and isn’t even nervous about performing!  Next week we may start the business about getting him a tux.  Yes, my brother will be owning his own tuxedo.  WOW.  Who would have thought?

Now that I’ve made the commitment to head back to Edmonds for 4 weeks in Jan/Feb to write my book, so many ideas are coming to me.  It won’t be easy but it’s time.  Our family has so much tragedy but we have so much shining success as well.  I think we can be an inspiration to many.

Happy Weekend everyone!

One final parting shot.  Got a Halloween manicure yesterday at my favorite salon–yes that spider web and ghost do glow in the dark in case you were wondering.  😉