The St. Pete Times is running a vote for the best local bands (Rebekah Pulley) as part of the the tbt "Ultimate Local Music Guide". You can vote (for Rebekah Pulley) once a day between now and May 10th with your phones by texting your choice (TBT5) to 78247. You'll get a "half off entry" to see the Showcase at Skipper's message back.

If you don't already have a favorite (Rebekah Pulley), now is a good opportunity to familiarize yourself with the scene.

I have seven Toluu invites. Contact me somewhere with your email address if you want one.

What is Toluu?

Toluu is a utility that makes it easy to discover the feeds your friends read and find your new favorite feed. You import your feeds and then your friends can easily see what you actually read. You can also find others who have similar tastes in feeds as you do and discover feeds you may find interesting. It is quite simple.

So far I'm not impressed, for three reasons: I'm only matching with one person, probably because of the overall lack of members. Secondly, it emails me updates from people who have contacted me, but who I have not contacted back. The only way to get rid of this appears to also get rid of the updates from the people you have contacted back. And lastly having to manually import every time I add a feed is a drag and I'm not much of a bookmarklet person. I'm assuming the first two will improve over time, and the third might be less of an issue for most people whose feeds remain fairly static.

I guess I might also be less impressed because I already share articles from feeds I like, and that I think my friends will like via Google Reader, which is further aggregated to FriendFeed and from there to Facebook. So, mostly I'm just wanting to use Toluu to find new feeds, but no joy... yet.

I twittered that my MT upgrade actually went through without a hitch, which was true, and it wasn't. I didn't realize until posting yesterday that I had a bug. I could still post, but I was getting an error -- something about being date_based and unblessed. So, feeling insulted, I searched for a fix.

Luckily, Dan has the answer. So if you're slow to the upgrade party but have been an MT person for a while, you may get this bug, but it's extremely painless to solve thanks to people smarter than I am.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled monthly updates....

We had a really long, nice day out yesterday, and made some great finds:

Fortunato's Italian Market, Central Ave., downtown St. Petersburg has the best pizza I've found yet in Tampa Bay. Mario's in Clearwater is good, as is Azzuro's in Largo, and Gino's in Palm Harbor. But Fortunato's? I was in heaven.

Schakolad, just a block away from Fortunato's, has some amazing chocolates. Their white chocolate pretzels are perfect. I was less impressed with the chocolate peanut butter cups, but I've yet to really love those had out -- my great aunt's version spoiled me. There's a Schakolad in SoHo Tampa if you're on that side of the pond.

Prime Outlets Ellenton is not much father south than going over the Sunshine Skyway, and just off the highway. We went to get Shawn some new sandals, and for me to check out the Lane Bryant Outlet. No joy on one, much on the other. I found a lovely bra that fits me perfectly for $9, and a pair of sleep shorts for the same. There were tons of great deals, and I happened to walk in on an extra 10% off day. It's very worth the trip if you generally like LB clothes. We also stopped at Kilwin's -- I hadn't seen a Kilwin's in two years! Not since Lin, Shawn, and I went to the art fair in Downtown Melbourne. I love, love their lemonade. Their chocolates not so much. I will have to try their fudge at some point, though. It's fun enough watching them make it to be tempting.

Our last point of interest was far in the other direction -- the Jo-Ann Etc. at Citrus Park up Veteran's in Tampa. It seemed like a sewer's heaven to me, and the scrapbook section did seem a bit larger than ours in Dunedin (or the St. Petersburg store), but the knit & crochet section seemed just the same -- much larger in space, but that was because everything was more spread out, not because there was necessarily more variety in the yarn or needle selection. They're all much bigger than the pitiful University location (on Fowler), though. I did find some Moda Dea superwash wool that I haven't noticed at Dunedin, but it could be I don't specifically look for yarn there anymore. Hopefully I'm not so disappointed by the AC Moore in Tampa Palms when it opens.

Also, Crazy Buffet is crazy expensive. Shawn seemed to really love his food, though. (I don't do Chinese, so I just knitted and watched.)

The waves off the Sunshine Skyway were gorgeous, and the sound of the Grand Prix in St. Pete was just disorienting. Tampa Bay? Is amazing.

I've felt a little bit of wandering for a while now. We're not doing fertility treatments. Freelancing has come to a standstill. We've been focused on house-hunting the past few months, but the house we fell in love with fell through, so we're signing another 7 month lease.

So I've been thinking about "what next?" a bit. I pondered signing up with a temp agency and seeing what popped up, that way I could just take day jobs and not worry about missing days off with Shawn. There's transportation issues, though, and it's not really necessary, or what I really want. It'd just be a job. Yarn money and paying of credit cards. I still might do it at some point. But for right now, I'm doing this instead:

I was going full time when we moved. I filled out a bunch of transfer forms to go to SPC way back then, but I figured out the amount it was going to cost me to apply and send all my transcripts, I could pay for a class or two, so I never went through with it. Then I was going to do virtual classes with BCC and just drive over there for whatever tests came up over the semester when we got a car. Well, that was a year and a half ago, and I kept stalling over the "what about the public speaking requirement?" issue, and finally this week I've just decided I'd put that last and figure that out when I came to it.

Seems a good use of a tax return, eh? Only a gazillion credit hours away from my MLIS.

I'm not one to usually get disappointed over not getting something or not being able to afford something I want. But when I found out Wicked was coming to Orlando but was sold out, I was really bummed. I missed it when they came to Tampa last year, and was disappointed then, so this was a double dose of it. But, in the end, I did my sulking and moved on, per usual.

Shawn kept checking Ticketmaster, though, and when they opened up a matinée show on the day after opening night... we got tickets. Way in the back, but still -- Wicked tickets!

That was more or less all of our grocery money for the week (almost $30 in fees), but, really, Wicked > food. I've already started singing Popular around the house when no one else is home.

It was amazing. Sets, costumes, music, story, were all amazing. It was so worth it. Even Shawn enjoyed it.

There were parts of the story that annoyed me, especially from a feminist standpoint (and especially when people tout it as having a "girl power" theme). Also, there was a bit of cognitive dissonance having read the book - that is so very, very different, in every important way. But I was still in awe, enchanted, and amazed. I got teary twice. And I was buzzing after.

And I really, really want to see it again.