(Were you at this show?  Please introduce yourself!)

Okay – I’m sitting here in an empty coffeehouse before the show. I’m exhausted. Two hours of sleep. A Professional Pests show at the tip of Long Island this morning. Driving back to Woodstock tonight when this is over.

Technically my show starts in 20 minutes. I don’t see any posters around campus. The guy that’s working here just started today. Nobody has come to meet me. Maybe I’ll quietly pack up my stuff and go, and tell them later that I was here.

That’s something we always wanted to do at the circus when we were part of a huge town festival with 100 things going on. We’d just say we were there. The sponsor would call up saying, "Where were you guys?" And we’d say, "We were there! You know – there were people there, grass & balloons. It was great! Everybody came up and told us how much they loved it. Where were you?"

WOW – Okay. The show’s over. It turned out to be good! Even the first hour I was playing there were only two girls there. Melanie Boyadjis kept popping in and out, and was looking for her friends.

It takes a lot of… guts?… I don’t know. It takes a little humility or something to sit there and play when it seems like NOBODY cares.

But... PEOPLE SHOWED UP – and they were cool people too! Turned out to be a worthwhile gig. So - the point is…

As you can tell from the beginnning of this diary day to the end, you can never tell what kind of show it’s going to be until it’s over. Same with relationships? Life?