Well, last year I had my life's best Easter. And this year it looks like I had my most enjoyable Valentine's Day.

I didn't spend it with Gloria. Not Valentine's Day itself, that is. She had to go away to one of her conferences. We celebrated the weekend before. And that was great too. Presents, a long day in China town, getting invited behind a store counter to look at porn VCDs, turning around to then say "Honey, do you have $20 I can borrow, blowing $300 on toys at a sex shop... With Gloria, it's not so much the polyamoury thing I enjoy, but the fact that she's far from being an insecure prude. Maybe, just maybe, it has a little something to do with the fact that she's my first girlfriend in -- damn, I have no idea how long -- that wasn't raised Catholic.

Anyway, V-day itself: that's when I drove 100 miles to Toad's Place in New Haven to see Living Colour. They had a reunion show a year or two ago, and now they're recording a new album. AMAZING show. They didn't get on until 11:30, but they played for 2 1/2 hours. I was standing pretty close to the center, about 10 feet back from the stage.

Last time I saw them was 10 years ago at the Orpheum. Still 4 incredibly talented musicians, still writing better and better songs. And, as I usually get to do with all these favorite bands of mine, I got to meet them. Really great guys. I told Vernon Reid I drove 100 miles to see them, and he opened his arms to hug me. (Though admittedly, he seemed like he'd been drinking a few!)

Oddly enough, I saw a concert a year ago from that night. Last year it was Judas Priest at the Orpheum. I had 2 friends who bailed out on me, despite knowing about the show months in advance. One guy had been in never-never land, and the other said at the last minute "Sorry dude, I have to do the V-day thing with the wife." Fuck them. I must say, it was cool having an empty seat on either side of me. That gave me a lot of nice personal space in that tiny-seat theatre full of sweaty deformed headbangers. But after that night, I vowed to never buy tickets for other friends again without seeing the money upfront. I'm sick of buying more than one ticket for a concert hall show and being screwed like that.

So the LC show was a start of a 4 day weekend. One vacation day, and then suddenly a day canceled due to the snow. I had to shovel my car out of a surrounding 3-ft tall wall, but it wasn't a waste of time, because I finally got to get out of the house.