The 2.5-year-old is on the verge of out-lawyering me. Didn’t want to take her medicine. Two nights in a row I pulled the ‘big girl’ card (“Can you drink your medicine like a big girl?”) and it worked. Tried it again last night. She said no, pitched a fit, and just for good measure said, “When you are a little girl, you can drink the medicine.”
Home of Michael Perry – Author, Humorist, Singer/Songwriter, Amateur Pig Farmer
Archive for December, 2009
Tonight Show for Authors
I don’t recall if I ever posted this. Last spring during book tour in Seattle I was invited to sit down with Nancy Pearl, the librarian who has her own action figure. If you are an author, going on Nancy Pearl’s show (“Book Lust”) is like having an audience with the Pope, being on the Tonight Show, and meeting Elvis – all rolled into one. As of this typing, I haven’t seen the whole interview, but I did watch enough to come up with a question of my own: Did I even answer her first question?
It’s fun to joke, but long before I met Nancy Pearl, long before I sat down to do this interview, she made couple of mentions of my books on National Public Radio, and those mentions had a very direct effect on the continued life of those books. So I am grateful, and if you think I look like I’m sitting for this interview in the manner of an eager first grader on his best behavior as he recites his spelling words for Teacher, well, so it was.
I Give It 3 1/2 ZZZ’s…
On a long drive with 2 y.o. daughter, listening to one of my favorite musical artists. “I want to listen to Daddy‘s music!” says the little one (a nearly-finished version of the next Long Beds album is also in the CD player). I admit I am smiling inside as I punch over to my album.
By the second track, she is sound asleep.
Customer Service Hypertension
Trying to set up a business credit card. Strictly for convenience and to make tax-time simpler. After we went through the whole blankety-blank application process I have just now got off the phone with a certain large credit card company saying they can’t issue a card unless I open a business bank account (that I don’t NEED…already have a business checking account that has worked for over a decade now but apparently it’s not with the right institution), wait 30 days, then send them the letterhead of the bank verifying that I have an account that I don’t need.
This rant is incomplete, lacks coherence, is unoriginal and will stop now. I have a list of things to do. Open an empty bank account is not one of them.
“Rattafratz!” as Grandpa would say.
UPDATE: Thanks to the help of one of the Sneezing Cow crew members, this issue has been resolved. Turns out the customer service person I was talking to didn’t have a clue (at least it wasn’t just me). I was ready to just rant and move on, but the Sneezing Cow crew member (we are a vast conglomerate) went to a higher level of management and voila – satisfaction.
Canada Fishing Trip
Got a cranky little message from my computer saying my email mailbox was too full. So I’m trimming things out. Coming across some misplaced memories. These photos were taken in Canada on a fishing trip I took with my friend and former ambulance partner Bill and his father Don, who very graciously shared their boats and cabin. Don just couldn’t get over my obsession with catching Northerns.
What a fun trip. Time stamp says 2003. Man, time goes screamin’ past.
Chip Taylor
I remember back when I first heard Chip Taylor…found him through No Depression magazine. He’s a walking trivia bonanza – wrote “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning,” is Jon Voight’s brother and Angelina Jolie’s uncle, brother to one of the world’s leading volcano experts – but I stumbled on to him for his Americana-style songwriting on albums like The Living Room Tapes and Seven Days in May and Last Chance.
Anyway. Here he is popping up in the New York Times.
Like I Said…
With Family
And grateful for it.
You Freak, I’ll Geek
Up the road from here is Chippewa Falls, home of many fine things including Leinenkugel’s beer (which I have never tasted but can spell) and the Freaks & Geeks blog, which very kindly reviewed the show we did recently with QuinnElizabeth. I’m happy to say the post includes video footage of both QuinnElizabeth and us Long Beds (for the Long Beds clip, look for the highlighted text…the QE video is right up front). QuinnElizabeth consists of three sisters, and one of the highlights of the evening for me was getting to sign a book for their Dad!
Tony Villanueva and Terry Jones
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After we played a benefit show in Mike’s hometown of New Auburn, a sweet lady told us we sounded, “Just like Gordon Lightfoot…only zippier!” We figured that was about perfect.