A few weeks ago, my friend Tracy, copy editing supervisor from Mathematical Reviews, contacted me, asking whether I'd be interested in moving back to Michigan for the summer to help my former colleagues copy edit their way through a bit of a backlog. After much thought, discussion with Bev, excited chair-dancing, and weaseling out of my Maine AIRS duties, my answer was an enthusiastic "Yes, please get me out of Maine!" So come June 23, I'll be digging out my old "Copy editors do it till your participles are no longer dangling" novelty T-shirt and reliving my glory days at my all-time favorite job for two months, with all my much-missed Math Reviews friends! And I hope to be able to get in lots of visiting with Adrienne, Tim, Jess, Steve Knowlton, whichever independent record stores still exist around there and, time permitting, my family.

My ambitious plan is to pack my car only with the essential toiletries, clothing, and my musical instruments and recording equipment. Not allowing myself the distractions of cable TV or Internet, the theory goes, will force me to direct my energy into recording, which I've unconscionably neglected since I finished The Airbag's Lipstick Kiss five years ago. I have a lot of half-songs and snippets recorded, but I'm hoping to be able to bang out a full new album over the two months in Michigan.

However, this necessitated finding a private, one-bedroom or studio apartment in Ann Arbor (i.e., not merely a room in a larger suite or house). For one thing, even if I weren't planning on becoming a studio recluse, I would not feel comfortable sharing an apartment with a stranger for any length of time, let alone being the 28-year-old weirdo in a house full of undergrads. But on top of that, a shared living space would both make me feel self-conscious about singing into my computer and be kind of inconsiderate to a roommate who may just want some peace and quiet. Not that I'm necessarily planning to fill the night air with Yamatsuka Eye-esque squealing, but my clumsy attempts at playing even a quiet guitar riff 80 times in a row until I get it right all the way through could quickly become annoying to anyone in close proximity. But mostly, I just need my own personal space to feel at ease. Not unlike Francis from Stripes.

Luckily, long after I'd resigned myself to complete failure and a summer of huddling for warmth in some dank, overlooked corner of the Borders parking deck because a couple renters hadn't acknowledged my responses to their Craigslist ads, Bev found a charming little efficiency that was up for grabs (and, more importantly, that had been posted only 15 minutes earlier, so I had a good shot at calling dibs), and encouraged me to try for it. "What the hell. E-mail's free and I won't have access to it while I'm homeless," I thought, and fired off a "please house me" e-mail. A couple hours later, I got a phone call from a friendly girl named Marianne who agreed to sublet the place to me! I think I'll make her a mix CD as a thank-you. My recall of Ann Arbor's geography has faded, so I can't quite picture the intersection where my new place is located, but Adrienne tells me, "It's right in the student district, but since there aren't any students, it will be great."

I called T-Bone to tell him, and as we spoke, we each pulled up the Google street view of the building. We giggled at some guy on the sidewalk who happened to be caught by the Google cameras in the middle of a particularly unflattering, John Cleese-esque silly walk. T-Bone told me about the street view of some Chicago locale where some kid is pulling a gat on some other kid in the picture. Then T-Bone sent me this clip of a sloshed Mike Ilitch at the Red Wings' Stanley Cup victory parade: "I don't want somebody to forget. I don't want North America, I don't want Canada, America, South America, Europe, the whole world to recognize, because there was a little bit of this and that going on, we are the Hockeytown! BLARGGH!" T-Bone is an excellent Internet resource.

(Also, while I'm on this tack, Jess sent me this great clip of some old New Testament epic, featuring an unsmiling, aloof-looking Jesus, that has been hilariously redubbed, What's Up, Tiger Lily?-style, to depict a savior who is alternately completely petty and completely exasperated with everyone He has to deal with. The best line, as Jesus is running down a list of everything His disciples have done wrong lately: "John, you drank too much wine the other night. Not way too much; just enough to make me angry.")

So yeah, actual news from here, amid a flurry of activity! I'm going to miss Bev, the birds, and Cora mightily, but I'm predicting a fun and productive couple of months, which I don't often do!

CURRENT MUSIC: Skylarking by XTC and Velocifero by Ladytron. One old favorite, one brand-new favorite.
CURRENT MOOD: Excited.
CURRENT MYSTERY ODOR: Something around here smells like a Reese's NutRageous bar.