Okay, now that I've exposed myself as a hopeless, teary-eyed romantic, I'll leave off the sad weekend bits and tell you the nice part of last week. On Thursday, one of my very favorite people came to town with her husband: Lynn Peril and Johnny Bartlett. I haven't been able to visit with Lynn for several years now, since she lives in San Francisco (and I don't any more, the thought of which has frequently made me cry). She looked faboo, as always, her hair a brilliant shade of ruby which made me long to do mine red again. I nearly didn't recognise Johnny in casual clothes since I've only ever seen him at a performance with his band, the Phantom Surfers, or at his wedding in a tux. We had an amusing time cruising around downtown Nashville, all eight blocks of it, after a late dinner at my fave Southern style restaurant. I ordered fried green tomatos for them (which are excellent but no one believes it until they try them), and they told me about their vacation scoring cool stuff in the flea markets and yard sales of Athens, GA. Unfortunately, they were heading back down to Georgia the next day to attend a music deal in Atlanta, but at least Lynn and I got to catch up in person for a few hours. She's got a book deal now, I've got ... um ... this diary, and we're both way more famous than we used to be. If you want to get a serious case of collector's envy, check out Re/Search's music issues and drool over her great accumulation of vinyl and books.

They thoughtfully left us some goodies from Johnny's record label (Hillsdale) which I appreciated greatly, not being very adventurous about buying CDs these days. I love "Jackie and the Cedrics," although I'd like to know why a surf band from Japan calls themselves the Cedrics. Since the Japanese are fairly eccentric about choosing words in English for their nice sound (for hilarious examples, visit the Japanese Engrish page), I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Those wacky foreigners...

Next week will feature another reunion with one of my friends from San Francisco. I'm bringing Denise Rehse back to Nashville for a rerun of Old Friends, New Shoes. Denise is my Goober Twin, my former running partner (Yes! I used to be somewhat athletic! Hard to believe!), and most importantly, she is my best friend. If she and Lynn ever left San Francisco I wonder if I'd miss it quite as much. I tend to pass over the memory of how ready I was to leave when I did. It's been very difficult to live separated by so much distance from two of my favorite people. All the same, the year before I moved away, I felt as though I were going in circles: a hamster in a very attractive wheel, getting nowhere fast. Life's different now, but the three of us are still really close, and that is so valuable to me that I'll go to great lengths to make sure we don't drift apart through any lack of effort. I'm really fortunate that they feel the same.