Bright Dorona Painty Whalen Slugs

We're finished painting. (I'll let you guess how much paint fumage we inhaled getting there; the post title should give you some idea.) Well, finished except for the dabs of white we need to strategically place to cover overenthusiastic roller swipes in apple green, brilliant teal, and firepower orange.

The real painters are finished, too. And for the entire living room and kitchen including ceiling, they took about a tenth of the time it took us to do less square footage. Their stuff looks better, too. That's why they're painting professionals, and we're painting slugs. Painting earthworms. Better than painting ameobae, but hardly at the top of the food chain.

But none of that matters, because we get to live in the house.

In other, utterly unrelated news that is not in fact news, but more a What I Was Thinking On The Drive Home morsel, because I know you've been wondering what I think about during our now-weekly trek across the vast, monotonous sea of carsitting miles oh, wait, we're in Europe kilometers between our old house and our new house: 

<gasps for air> 

Katharine Whalen would have been a good second choice for Gare du Nord 's song "Marvin and Miles." But Dorona Alberti definitely sings its socks off. Turns out Dorona's the daughter of the woman who owns the bed and breakfast in Maastricht that The Hubster and I slept in on our mad, mad weekend away a few months ago.

I first heard Katharine sing on the Squirrel Nut Zippers album The Inevitable. The second track, "Danny Diamond," came on, and I was mesmerized. I thought, "This is the best female voice since Billie Holiday." Opened the CD case, and there was Katharine. I know Katharine. We hung out with the same folks when we were in our late teens in Chapel Hill. Went to the same parties. Did the same drugs. Well, I did some drugs. Don't know about Katharine.

Let Katharine drop your jaw singing the first 30 seconds of Danny Diamond (sorry, folks, I couldn't find a video) (click on the "Play Song" link under the album image)