The Verdict: U2 Rocks Some Serious Shit. Oh, man. The U2 concert last night in Atlanta was so cool. Celeste and I had a great time. Bono is amazing; he holds the crowd in the palm of his hand. What a great band. I can't believe it was the first time either Celeste or I saw them in concert, but I'm so glad we finally made it. Check out some pictures (they're not mine, but they are from last night), and a review.

I'm on a quick weekend jaunt to Georgia. U2 was the main event, and now Celeste and I are having a nice visit. I arrived yesterday morning and Celeste met me at the airport. Before the concert we drove up to Perimeter Mall in Atlanta to go to the Sanrio store and have lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. (Yum.)

After the concert last night we saw my sister for a few minutes. She was at the show too, but not sitting with us. The we drove to Celeste's place in Fort Valley, Georgia. We got in about 2 AM. Driving so late was no problem -- we were so wired from seeing Bono and The Edge at long last. U2 is Celeste's all-time favorite band. When we met in 1986, she had already loved them for several years.

Of course, today we're recovering from all the standing and shouting last night. Going to a concert at age 32 sure is different from going at 22. Owwww.

I'm headed back to Connecticut tomorrow night. Then back to work Monday morning. A quick trip, but so much fun. I sure do love U2.

Those of you who have been reading Raspberry World for awhile will remember my former URL, wildflower.simplenet.com. I got www.raspberryworld.com last year and wildflower has been sitting around empty for quite awhile since then. If someone landed there from an old bookmark or a search engine, they'd get a "Raspberry World has moved!" message and be directed over here. It seemed like it was just going to hang around forever.

Two days ago it finally disappeared. Maria wrote to alert me. Now if you go there you just get this. It's kind of crazy, but I was a little sad to see it go. I got that web space in the summer of 1998, and I did a lot of growing and changing there. Of course I've moved all those files to raspberryworld.com, but still, it's like my former self has drifted a little farther away somehow.

Incidentally, up until the domain went offline I was still getting a bunch of hits there daily. Mostly from search engines, mostly people looking for specific recipes. Over the last six months I have tried and tried to get the search engines to change my URLs, but with the exception of Google they have been very slow to do so. I guess now they'll just have to find me for themselves.

By the way, is everyone already using Google? It's the best search engine around.

More on U2's show last night, from Jam!

Bono, in particular, took to the catwalk like a regular supermodel, posing, preening and even running laps at times when he wasn't reaching out towards the audience members or just outright falling right into the crowd and making a run for it -- like he did right before the encore.

Coolest of the Cool

U2 kicked off their Elevation tour last night in Miami. During "Until the End of the World" Bono fell off the edge of the stage. There's a video of it here.

I am seeing them in Atlanta this Friday night (3/30). I am so excited I can hardly wait.

What's tiny, pink, cute, and wants to suck your brain for satanic rituals? Find out in my latest journal entry. (Oh yeah, and it spins, too.)

Everybody's Doing It

Here's a list of the last several searches that brought people to Raspberry World. I have the feeling that many, many of them were disappointed when they got here.

raver phat pants
photos of orgy on my birthday party
raspberry
world of backgrounds scary photos
gee your hair smells terrific shampoo
getting harriet carter catalog
hello kitty vibrator auction
Body on Tap shampoo
raspberry images
gee your hair smells terrific shampoo shopping
analyzing Dylan songs
nude china painter
kogepan
californication fonts
mutant raspberry
sanrio san-x
+raspberry +burst +conga
how to repair bathtub leak through ceiling
dan aquilante review of john frusciante

I'm a big fan of JustinSpace, and I was happy to find that there's a new series up there now: the Star Wars Designer Edition. Great fun!

Tapestry is a new-ish personal site by Lucy, a woman who lives in Mississippi. She has good taste in books and TV, and a lovely sense of design and interesting things to say. What more could you want?

I recently finished reading The King Must Die by Mary Renault. This novel tells the story of the early years of the mythical hero Theseus. In the story he travels to Crete as a slave to become a bull dancer.



So far I have read 4 of Mary Renault's novels, and I have loved them all: Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy (both of these are about Alexander the Great), The Mask of Apollo (about a fictional Greek actor), and The King Must Die. I also started reading her biography of Alexander, The Nature of Alexander, but have not yet finished it.

Next on my Mary Renault reading list is The Bull from the Sea, which continues the story of Theseus. After that, I plan to reread the 2 Alexander novels I've already read, and then read Funeral Games, which I think is the third part of the trilogy (although I am not sure that Alexander actually appears in the book).

I just love these books.

Check it out: Wild Ties. Hee hee.

Greetings from Georgia...

We are in the middle of a week-long trip to south Georgia to visit our families. Today we are at my mother's house; tonight we will be at my father's. I woke up this morning to the roar of rain on a tin roof. We're having powerful storms here today.

So far we've had a great trip. I have taken a bunch of pictures that I hope to put on the web when I get home.

We'll be back home next week. I plan to go back to more regular updating then.

The Gustafson Girls Abroad is an absolutely fascinating page featuring letters from two sisters who have traveled the world teaching and learning. Abby is a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania who stayed on as a PC administrator after her tour was up. Her sister, Jordana, is a college student who studied in Vietnam for awhile.

Their parents have posted all the letters, postcards, and e-mails from their girls on this web page and it's very up-to-date. I have been devouring Abby's letters from Tanzania and they are amazing.

Let me ask you -- if you're running a 103 degree temperature and have bacterial dysentery, would you rather: (a) have no toilet paper; (b) have a completely clogged toilet; (c) have 30 guests; (d) all of the above? If you chose either a, b, or c, then you clearly are not living in Tanzania.

April, 1999

My favorite Buffy . . .

Tonight at 8 pm on the WB one of my favorite Buffy, the Vampire Slayer episodes is being rerun: Family. Great Willow/Tara stuff. Great Spike stuff.

This episode is just from earlier this season, but boy have things changed in Sunnydale since then.

Today was an honest-to-goodness snow day. I called into work and got a message that the company was closed today. Woo-hoo! Marty worked from home on his laptop (his company was open, but it's a long drive and the roads were bad).

It is strange to think that this time next week we will be in a place where the dogwoods are already blooming.

Read it and laugh, folks: James Lileks' Interior Desecrators.

Snow day!



They closed my company at 1:30 pm today. Marty was home when I got here at 2. So we lit a fire in the fireplace, Marty did some work on his laptop, and I spent a couple of hours browsing the Hamilton Book catalog (the paper one, which has different and more stuff than the online one).

We have had every kind of winter weather today. Freezing cold wind, gray cloudy skies, rain, freezing rain, sleet (yes, there is a difference between those), and snow. I am hoping that this is winter's swan song.

I am so ready for spring!

For the Judy Blume fans: I read an interesting interview with this writer from HomeArts. I especially liked reading her picks for great must-read children's books.

I would like to (either) find my old Judy Blume books or get new copies. I had a bunch of them when I was growing up. My favorites were Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and Blubber (which made me very sad and scared).

Friday night is always BIG excitement chez Ziggy. Tonight Marty and I are eating dip, drinking Yuengling Lager, watching Star Trek reruns, and waiting for the pizza to come (it is taking a really long time). I am contemplating watching a video later on. Maybe Say Anything. Maybe Strictly Ballroom. We have a fire in the fireplace. Friday night fun!

Good morning, and welcome to March. I am very glad February is done, even if I didn't get most of my "to do" items done last month. I just hate February. It's so short, and yet so long. The only thing I like in February, pretty much, is Valentine's Day. But now it is MARCH! And March is the month I am going on vacation. So I am very happy to turn the calendar over today.

My journal is updated as of last night, with an entry that starts off about one thing and becomes about something very, very different. Also, there are some pictures I took in Massachusetts a few weeks ago. Over on the right here is another one from that day, of a church in Cambridge. We were walking around Harvard Square on what must have been one of the coldest days of the year. The sun was shining like a sonofabitch and the temperature was around 20 degrees Fahrenheit. I felt like my ears and nose were going to chip off. My friend was very patient while I kept pulling out my camera and stopping to take pictures. I was just so happy to see the sun after all those months.

Also updated today is my music log. Actually, I sometimes update that without saying so here. So it's worthwhile to check over there once a week or so.

Yay for March!