Happy New Year!

I know, I know. Divine has been on extended hiatus, but I'm back for 2007!

It's not that I haven't been living or writing, it's just that I've been leaving evidence of my whereabouts and goings on elsewhere.

Things such as getting drunk and ringing in the new year with a front-porch dance party in Ann Arbor with my buds,


turning 30!, getting drunk, putting up my Chri-muss tree and dancing in a new personal decade at home with my buds (and in style),


fun with power tools! and reconfiguring reclaimed furniture,


visiting my old haunts and buddies out East; loving and getting loved back by Philly, as always, and reclaiming Boston--

--seeing it for what it is and what I couldn't see while mired in graduate school and the sinking ship that was my love life at the time. (You know, I friggin' like that place and the people I know there and I could easily see myself living there again, even though I feel much more at home in Philly--and having nothing to do with HB, just as I had nothing to do with him this time around. Funny how the trip was utterly delightful without inviting him into the experience or even telling him I was in town. Note to self: remember how life can be smooth yet filled with passion when one chooses to step out of chaos's path.)

In addition to such highlights, I've spent a heap of time doing much less photogenic things such as teaching classes; attending meetings; writing papers, chapters, reviews, Chri-muss cards; grading papers; spending hours every day at the gym. Not that it's done anything but kept me from piling on holiday cheer in the form of many, many pounds. Meaning: I have lost no weight, simply maintained. And that's fine by me. Next weekend I'll train to become a spinning instructor. Me: officially becoming a gym rat. It suits me, especially now that they've redone the women's locker room so that it clearly resembles a spa. Ain't no effort I won't make when I know I can spend 20 minutes in the steam room afterwards. I've also discovered the finest masseur in the history of ever--and ya'll know I know massage; I got rubbed every chance I could by anybody willing last summer all over the Eastern Block. But in the 'zoo? Two. Hour. Massage. $65. Magic hands. Biggest, most beautiful queen north of the Mason Dixon. Enough said.

This is the year. I'm saying it now. My year of transformation has begun. 28 was about reclamation. 29 was about clarity. 30 is about transformation.

Watch me now, y'all!

And happy, happy days to us all! What's 2007 about for you?