Sixteen.

1. Misa tagged me for this exercise; years ago, I met her online through a forum about music, and then took a road trip with her (and a couple other friends from the same forum) from one midwestern city to another.

2. I sing fairly well. (I'm not really a flashy kind of soloist though, as I get unnerved; though I did sing plenty of musical theatre solos and such. I just enjoy it, and sound pretty good. I love harmony and choral singing.)

3. When I stayed with my musician brother on a long long road trip during which I toured the country in a big U, I was too anxious and shy to make recordings with him. Sad about that.

4. This same brother and I dream of making children's music and doing a family band tour.

5. I play a mean slinky. Seriously.

6. I adore musical theatre, and did a boatload of it growing up and then in college.

7. College was way fun, and I made some of my dearest lifetime friends, but the experience of studying theatre and being so sensitive sort of deflated and took the joy of actually *doing* theatre and music to a low level. (Sensitivity is a rash over simplification of a whole slew of stuff. The bottom line is that the love and joy and passion I had for something kind of died out.) I hope the bobber floats up some day.

8. I go through phases of loving and not so much caring about music in a very conscious way.

9. I met my husband because of the first Paul Burch record, which he put out on Checkered Past in Chicago.

10. Misa lived in Chicago when I first met her.

11. And I lived there in he early 90s along with several of the folks I went to college with.

12. I saw my first and only Grateful Dead show at Soldier Field -- I got miracled, and had a blast.

13. My son, at 3, is nearly as fond of Working Man's Dead as I am.

14. He, my son, is snuggled up in my lap on this cold cold morning out on the sunporch as I type this.

15. He will be taller than his tall father, perhaps as tall as my father, raised on plenty of sleep, exercise, and good food that tastes like love.

3. I make a wickedly good pot of chicken and dumplings; my husband says they are his favorite food in the world and are the literal glue to our marriage.