Yesterday I wrote a check for what I dearly hope will be my last New York City parking ticket. I mean, we had that rental car for less than 24 hours! Oh, well. Thanks, Gotham!

Now I am sitting with my laptop at Esparks Coffee for what is probably the last time. Our apartment is empty, the truck having trundled away about an hour ago. It took five guys only about two and a half hours to load everything, owing mostly to Laura's fabulous packing job. Tomorrow morning we pick up a rental SUV and book for Chicago. With luck, we will overtake the movers, because they can't get in our new apartment Sunday morning without us.

Last night as New Yorkers! Thanks again, Gotham! It really has been unbelievable. Thanks to everyone here who helped make it that way.

And Chicago, we can't wait. It will be great.

Okay, not a sale, really. A giveaway!

I'm cleaning out my desk here at the office, preparatory to the big Chicago move, and I find I have a handful of extra recent CDMOM mix discs.

To the first person who emails his or her street address to me at feedback at [mylastname] dot net, I will send three mixes: From Gotham to the Windy City, Children of the Beatles, and The Bestiary.

To the next three people who email me, I will send The Bestiary. (Yes, I have four copies of that one to unload in all.)

Hurry! These won't last! (I hope.)

You've probably seen this already, but I finally got a chance to watch it...

Here's most of the CDMOM gang:

We're not exactly in even rows, but if we start at the bright orange shirt and go left from there we have Nuno, Brenda, Robyn, Eric, Alan, Ben, and Francis (half-hidden). Then if we start from Eric's beer and go left, we have Brooklyn Brown Ale, Lisa, Ali, and Ken. And then if we start at the shocking pink cleavage and go left we have Carrie, Joy, me, and Cindy. What a handsome crew!

And here's CDMOM mom Lisa's official account of the evening.

My main contribution to last night's June CD Mix of the Month Club (for which I'm still importing discs into the database) was From Gotham to the Windy City, a fantasia in which a girl and boy console themselves upon leaving town.

Since this was my last CDMOM mixer as a New Yorker, almost the whole gang turned out. It was a fun and gratifying evening, despite the fact that our first-choice bar was so packed that we had to move the festivities to an alternate location. I was dubious about any bar on that once-sordid-but-now-tourist-friendly stretch of St. Mark's Place between Second and Third Avenues, but Grassroots turned out to be a perfect dive bar for our purposes, not too crowded and not too loud. The gang surprised me with a card and a Morton's of Chicago gift certificate, Lisa brought homemade chocolate chip cookies, Ali brought cupcakes from Billy's (though sadly her bellydancing plan did not come to fruition), and people kept pouring me drinks. Everyone tried to egg poor Nuno on into giving me a lap dance, but to his immense relief they let him off the hook.

I will miss this crew, though maybe a few of them will move to Chicago themselves someday! If so, maybe there will be a Chicago chapter of CDMOM waiting for them to join.

But the story isn't done yet. As Alan and Ali and I, the last ones standing, were leaving the bar, I apparently started telling a story I had already told. This should have been a clue to me. By the time my cab had crossed the Queensborough Bridge, I was feeling decidedly sick. Now, I don't think I had that much to drink, so I'm blaming the combination of cupcakes and cookies and stirfry with far too salty soy sauce for dinner, but it wasn't long after I arrived home (and only a moment after Laura arrived home in a different cab, having gotten a last-minute ticket to see Romeo & Juliet in Central Park) that I was praying to the porcelain god. This, seriously, is only the second time in my life that ralphing has followed drinking. The first time was right after my 30th birthday party at Mooney's Pub on Flatbush in Brooklyn. Boy, was that a party.

Oh, I almost forgot. As my going-away present to the gang, I brought as a bonus mix a replica of the first and only mix disc I made for crabwalk's original CDMOM, complete with full-size jewel case and back cover lay-in card: Children of the Beatles a collection of songs that, for whatever reason, seem to my ears to contain Beatlesesque elements. Since that disc was the ticket that earned me a place at the inception of the New York CDMOM club, it seemed a fitting farewell gesture.

(The story so far.)

People spend so much time and effort agonizing over things that are imaginary. Yes, it happens with Star Wars and the Marvel universe too, not just with religious topics, but at least Star Wars fans know Star Wars is made up. I think.

Man, what if all the brainpower we waste on this stuff were devoted to world peace instead, or to developing clean, renewable fuels. Too bad we didn't evolve to agonize over questions like those until they're solved.

Via Laura:

To follow up on the Thomas Ravenel story...

Greg Ryberg has Star Trek technology.

South Carolina state treasurer Thomas Ravenel has been indicted on federal charges for cocaine distribution.

Buried at the bottom of that article, you'll see that Ravenel is the South Carolina state chairman for Giuliani's presidental campaign.

Is it coincidence that Mayor Bloomberg, only a short time later, announces that he is leaving the Republican party?

This is for my compatriots from Marvin's Blue Heaven breakfast table:

I finally made it back home yesterday to my lovely wife and fuzzy dog after eight days away at the Blue Heaven workshop. I'm delighted to be home but nostalgic for the workshop. It was an extraordinarily helpful, intense, and fun week, maybe even moreso than last year. I don't want to be a namedropper, so I'm not going list all the terrific skiffy writers who attended. Suffice it to say that the week was professionally and personally rewarding, filled with learning, insight, humor, collegiality, friendship, food, beer, free Stormclouds, animal heads, turkey vultures, TNT explosions, Totally Outrageous Behavior, quips that can never be repeated without someone choking almost to death, and Old Gregg. My novel Silvertide was critiqued by two sharp readers who restored my confidence in it, and I hope I served as useful a function to the three embarrassingly talented scribes whose novels I critiqued in full (or nearly so).

Too many good times to recount them all, or even to pick a handful. I leave you with my entry in the Blue Heaven 2007 Raunchy Limerick Challenge, posed by a fellow workshopper who shall remain nameless, for reasons that will remain unstated. The challenge was to compose a limerick employing the words pump, rump, and Cockney.

Down at the Village Pump

A barmaid of bonny sweet rump
Set empty beers down with a thump.
    "Don' just sit and watch me,"
    Said this comely Cockney.
"You want some, get back 'ere and pump."