Lucy sent me her new book and I pretty much inhaled it. I’ve been reading her so long it feels like second nature. I wrote something about it, but it’s not so much a review as a kind of thank-you note.

Donna’s been in town fixing up her building to sell and she relented and let me tape a talk with her. We cover her restaurants—Leo’s Lunchroom, Bite Cafe, and Feed. All had a significant impact on my life. She claims the stories are boring but I disagree.

Been drawing K at her new place. Tomás sat for this one as well. He’s jealous of the attention she pays me when I’m over, ignores her when I’m not there. In other words, he’s a cat.

There’s a band we both like that’s blown up lately. They announced a presale for shows in November and we signed up to be notified to try to score some tickets. At the appointed time I wasted precious minutes because Ticketmaster made me change my login password. By the time I hit the virtual queue, there were 80,000+ ahead of me. I kept the window open just for laughs, but, miraculously, forty minutes later I got through. Then I looked at the seating chart. Standing-room only with a capacity over three thousand. I texted K and asked whether she was up for standing around in a mass of humanity for two hours for maybe forty minutes of novelty noodling and she gave me an emphatic thumbs-down. So I closed the window and gave up my chance to be wedged in with the cool kids in the former salt factory. I felt alright about it. I was happy to get through but also to let the chance go.

It felt like catch-and-release.

My old friend Jason was in town that night with his band. I was kind of worn out after a bookstore shift as I pedaled north to the Burlington. Then he texted me that I was on the guestlist. That was extra motivation to keep going.

The last time I was at the Burlington, I had to help the bartender count out the drawer at the end of the night because he was too trashed to see the bills clearly. Then I drove him home in my cab.

The band had been dormant for a bunch of years but you wouldn’t know it from this night’s set. They made a fierce racket and I would have been sorry had I missed it. There may only have been thirty or forty people there but I bet they’ll remember it better than the sardines in the crowd next November.