Melly had a cute little baby.

I see the Archdiocese of Atlanta, at #230, currently has Feral Living (in place#232) beat in a yahoo search for shoe rubbing stories. This post should fix that. Take that, Archdiocese of Atlanta.

Holiday gift-shopping primer from Michele.

Attention all poets. The First Annual Feral Living Valentine’s Day Limerick Contest has just opened. Leave your entries (original limericks) in the comments. No extra points for using the word “urologist”.

Winners to be announced on the 14th.

Feh.

The musicians among you will confirm this: forget notes and all that crap – the secret to playing a musical instrument is moving like the musicians do! Yes! I just figured that out yesterday.

Beta was at the music school Sunday practicing on the concert harp they have there (I have a key to get in on the weekend, that is so cool, wandering around an empty school like that, except of course the music school wasn’t entirely empty even on a Sunday, the hard-core musicians were there practicing) and since I bugged her sitting around listening to her, she sent me into another room to play my flute. And I sat there, going through some slow airs, and tried something new: moving the way I’ve seen flute players move – you know, sort of doing that kelp-like back-and-forth thing with your upper body, in time to the music, and wagging the flute around a little – and I sounded much better.

Fascinating! I got home and tried the same thing with the cello – and it worked! Doing that eye-closing thing, and the little swoops with the shoulders etc – no more strangled warthogs! All the time I’ve wasted sitting there stiff as a board. It’s great!