I know you've been waiting for your blog entry. I mean, what does it take to get famous around here anyway? Flowers and Mediterranean dinners and wine country getaways and the sleepy, sincere question, "Don't you think you deserve to be treated well?"

"Inamorata," you wrote one day to me, and I pushed back with all of my female principle and stoicism, still panging from the bitter rebuff of a two-thousand mile romance. I flew from you then, and from everyone, seeking meaning across northern prairie and wood and in small towns where life is notably less complicated. I didn't find what I was looking for when I scoured the countryside for it, but remarkably, it was still there waiting for me when I got home.

"I just want you to be happy," you said, your eyes all shades of blue and gray like dusk on the vineyards behind our room. You propped yourself up on your elbows on the floral patchwork quilt, gazing at me, genuinely. A fuzzy red teddy bear embellished with metallic thread slumbered next to you, and the candid sincerity of your expression dizzied me. I felt like B's rescued shelter cat, who, when offered a cut of steak in the middle of the living room floor hid in the corner and peered at it suspiciously. The cat and I both knew that nothing in life was free, or did we?

"No," you said laughing, leaning over my shoulder, "that's not the only reason." Two pieces of blonde hair fell down over your right eye, absorbing the colors of the piercing lights that flashed in time to the music. We were both red and blue and sparkling white in the darkness, reclining on velvet cushions in the corner of the party. "You're creative and your writing is amazing." I looked down at my shimmery red shoes, Dorothy in the Land of Oz hoping she'd never have to leave and go back to her black and white world of Kansas. Crimson, I couldn't accept the compliment lest I somehow used them all up and they ran out when I needed them the most. I hoarded them instead, admiring them in private when no one else was looking.

Sometimes I just stare because I think I can catch you bluffing it, because that's what people do, but you never are, an unalloyed smile always on your face that starts at the edges of your mouth and rises up through your cheeks until it touches the corners of your eyes. And then there is this minor truth that came to me after a long time, and that is that the best way to make someone else happy is to be happy yourself.

So everyone already knows that I'm back but I feel obligated to write again since people are so annoyed by the song lyrics cop-out posts. I actually thought about taking those lyrics down, since Counting Crows is not typically what I would consider festive holiday music. But if what we're really focusing on here is the hope that next year will be better than this one, then that's a much needed holiday wish that I'm going to let stay.

"Everything happens for a reason," said the Big Cheese.

Another late night in graduate school and we were of course just starting our Flash design projects at Droo's really uncomfortable dining room table. Outside it snowed and snowed and snowed and inside I felt as crummy as the Pittsburgh winter that would never end. Sometime around 3 a.m. Droo completed his project while I still stared listlessly at my screen. He turned his laptop around to show me "A Rainy Day for Jess," a miniature movie starring Shel Silverstein's Missing Piece and the big pie that went around looking for it. "Will Jess ever find her missing piece?" the film questioned. Clicking yes brought the pieces together along with glowing translucent hearts (I was nerdily impressed by the opacity reduction) while clicking no left the missing piece wallowing in its own misery. Simultaneously sad and cute, it reminded me that Droo was now finished with his project and I was not only still single, but still not done with my homework. Life kicks you in the pants like that. I took his project home with me on my laptop and played it over and over again until I finally got ahold of myself and figured out how to tween.

Maybe life is just a bunch of pieces that gradually fall into place over the course of time. Perhaps no amount of coercion is going to make them fall any differently. It's like the easy level on Tetris, where the pieces are falling so slowly that you invariably press the down button, speeding them into place until you finally screw up in your haste and misalign a few. Like before, those usually come back to kick you in the pants because they leave some kind of annoying hole that you can't seem to get rid of for the next twenty-two pieces. If you're really in a rush you'll just keep making mistakes until you're five lines from the top of the screen, sweating profusely with your eyes drying out because you can't afford to blink. Of course you'll think, man, why wasn't I just a little less hasty and a little more careful at the bottom, but everything seems like a good idea in retrospect.

I've been erasing some of my lines recently, a big mess down at the bottom that I thought I'd never get rid of. Either the pieces I needed would never seem to materialize or I'd just try to slam the pieces I did get into place as fast as possible. Other people's pieces are falling into place around me too. Maybe they were before but I just couldn't see it because I was too busy fixating on my own ever growing problems near the top. Now that I've made the holy disaster a bit more manageable, I've had more time to look around me and see that it's smoothing out not just for me, but for her and him and all those people I think about everyday but usually see less often than I would like.

In the coming year, it's time for me to think more about the pieces and less about the lines.

Drivin' down a dark road
Can't see my hand in front of my face
I'm just spinnin' my wheels again
Stuck in this same old place
Oh, the bridge is out up ahead
And the river's on the rise
I'm too far gone to turn around
I need a heart with 4 wheel drive

I can't get no traction
When I look into your eyes
When you kiss me tenderly
My wheels get paralyzed
Somewhere down the highway
I'm gonna find that exit sign
But I can't get these wheels turnin'
I need a heart with 4 wheel drive

- Paul Thorn, Heart with 4 Wheel Drive

I am back from the Canadian wilderness, and I didn't manage to meet any eligible lumberjacks, mounties, or hockey players along the way. Or at least, not any that I could legally take home with me. I received some e-mails upon my return, several of which asked simply, "What did you do on your trip?" Let's see, I'm writing a three-hundred page book about last month, which I've been writing for six weeks now, and you spent all of twelve seconds typing up that e-mail. I think I'll give you the appropriate response -- "I went to Canada."

I apologize for the big blog gap, but I've been channeling all my efforts into the book project recently and it's been draining my literary energies like the Skeksis drained the life essence from the Gelflings in the Dark Crystal. (Just throwing in a little gratuitous 80s pop culture for your enjoyment. If you don't get it, you weren't meant to.)

I've discovered that the best way to drink for free (both coffee and booze) across Canada and down into the U.S. is to tell people that you're trying to write a book. Sunday night I stopped by a coffee shop in Redwood City to write and avoid my internet temptation, and after asking the guy behind the counter where I could find a power outlet, he asked me my purpose.

"I'm writing a book."

"No way, that is like, my lifelong dream! I want to write a book before I die."

And that is how I got my hot chocolate with whipped cream on the house. I'll admit I probably haven't written nearly enough words to deserve all these freebies, but it sure helps to keep a person motivated. Writing is like the surefire creative artist card you can play everywhere. Your next excuse for tardiness, your next bar pickup line, your next cocktail party opener -- you're writing a book.

After Canada I plan to touch on "Why can't I meet someone without 30,000 pounds of emotional baggage?"

I bet you can't wait.

Thanks everyone for coming to my bon voyage dinner and driving so far. You can be consoled knowing that in the next month, you won't be driving as far as me, and at least you'll get some photos from cool places you can view from the comfort of your laptops instead of from the wintry arctic vantage point from which they were taken.

Thanks also for all the cool surprise gifts! The AAA membership will of course be useful for getting a ride after I burn my rental car in Halifax with Hendrix blasting in the background, while I can use the journal to document the big smoke and fire, and the little navigator stuffed teddy I save from the wreckage will be invaluable for smuggling all that aspirin-codeine across the border. You people have thought of everything.

I'd like to also remind you that if I call you from a Canadian prison, the exchange rate is still pretty good so you have no excuse not to bail me out, other than the fact that maybe one time I didn't come to one of your parties and then in that case you have to at least give me a chance to redeem myself.

Onward, to the land of hockey and maple syrup and guys who ride horses. I'll write!

I felt more alone that week than any. Sometimes I'd feel a body lying next to me like an amputee feels a phantom limb. All I did was think about...all the decades of people I had known. The more I thought, the more I felt like crying. Life seemed so sweet and so sad, and so hard to let go of in the end. But hey, man, every day is a brand new deal, right? Just keep on working and something's bound to turn up.

- American Splendor