zirconium

I visited Beale Street three times on my recent trip to Memphis. The first was in broad daylight, around 3 pm on a Thursday afternoon. There was already music blaring, and a drunken boor bellowed "Where ya from?" at me from his sidewalk seat (and then laughed with his friends as if he had said something funny). But there was also the pleasure of winter sunshine on old walls...



...and watching an artist with her paints:



[I'll post about the other two visits some other time. In the meantime, say hi to the Hugs Bison. :-) ]

[Also, I am 8/8 in predicting the WTA quarterfinalists at Indian Wells. I'm going to revel in this moment, since the only sure thing about my ATP bracket is that it's going to be trashed one way or another after tonight.]

The subject line's from the Eurhythmics's "Angel," one of the tracks I listened to on my drive back from Memphis Sunday night. It was a good trip -- met up with girlfriends, watched tennis, wandered around Graceland...

(The wallpaper in the bathroom of Elvis's parents)

...and the botanic garden, which features not only plants, fish, and fowl to admire, but things to hit:

(Tootsie Bell's House of Rock)

I didn't do a lick of work. My friends arrived in time to help with car trouble. It was not the most relaxing vacation ever, but it was still a getaway, and the break did me good.

The docket for March and April: mucho copyediting, mucho marketing, mucho paperwork. Since none of these are topics I am likely to feel like holding forth on, this blog will likely morph into a series of random snapshots (and occasional guest posts, and maybe some haiga) for a while. Let's start with another glimpse of Graceland, this one at the shooting range: