I'm pretty sure that Chip thinks this is our new house now!!

My co-pilot on the way to Middlebury, VT. Totally useless.

Look at what Chip and I found today!!

A Grand Central dinner!

Chris Cubeta & The Liars Club.

My friend, Josh Grabert's playing a great show!! Later on my friends Chris and Sam are each playing. Yay for NYC!

Reason #1 to have an office dog...he'll get rid of bugs!

Yummmm....

Glenn Roth is up and everyone is loving him!!

Brian Dolzani is playing and sounds great!!!

The stage is all set!!

PJ is singing his set. Sounds great!!

New CD and good food!

I'm getting so excited!! I've been spending a few days in the studio as I'm working on a new mini-EP, and I can't wait for you to hear it!

I had a photo shoot on Sunday to get ready for posters & flyers for this upcoming tour, the new CD *should* be in hand by then (we can't rush it!), and bookings are coming along.

I know it's bad to wish time away, but I can't wait to get on the road again. I love it so much!

Now...onto another topic. Gaby and I have been cooking at night lately (really, who has time to do stuff during the day? And by the time I get home at 9 or 10 at night (later when I have a show) why would I ever want to cook for an hour before having to eat? So usually I don't. I order something, or eat something packaged and gross...so...our new plan has been to cook things the night before, but after we've had a chance to eat dinner first, of course.

And it has been awesome!

So I have a recipe for you - that you may enjoy. It has lots of veggies - and it's delicious when served cold, so it's good for the upcoming season!

Anyway - buen provecho!

Let me know what you thought of it when you have a chance to try it! I'm so excited, I just know you're going to love it.

Happy eating,

Kristen

Couscous Confetti Salad Makes about 8 1-cup servings Couscous is pasta from northern Africa that cooks almost instantly and makes a beautiful and flavorful salad. Whole-wheat couscous is sold in natural food stores and some supermarkets. 1 1/2 cups dry whole-wheat couscous 2 cups boiling water 3 - 4 green onions, finely chopped, including tops 1 red bell pepper, seeded and finely diced 1 carrot, grated 1 - 2 cup finely shredded red cabbage 1/2 cup finely chopped fresh parsley 1/2 cup golden raisins or chopped dried apricots 1 juice of 1 lemon 1/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 teaspoon curry powder 1 1/2 teaspoons salt In a large bowl, combine couscous and boiling water. Stir to mix, then cover and let stand until all the water has been absorbed, 5 to 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork. Add green onions, bell pepper, carrot, cabbage, parsley, and raisins or apricots. In a small bowl mix lemon juice, vinegar, oil, curry powder, and salt. Add to salad and toss to mix. Serve at room temperature or chilled. Per 1-cup serving Calories: 194 Fat: 2.1 g Saturated Fat: 0.3 g Calories from Fat: 9.8% Cholesterol: 0 mg Protein: 5.2 g Carbohydrates: 40.2 g Sugar: 10 g Fiber: 4.2 g Sodium: 283 mg Calcium: 33 mg Iron: 1.1 mg Vitamin C: 40.9 mg Beta Carotene: 1157 mcg Vitamin E: 0.7 mg

Stone 'The Studio Stud' finds my new songs relaxing. I find him cute!

Tonight is the night of Bryan's huge Simply Smiles fund-raiser!! Chip wanted to show his support (and cover his stitches).

Why I need to be more like my dog…even though he eats pieces of string for breakfast.

Ok, so Chip had to go to the vet yesterday - for what we thought was some kind of stomach virus. He had been sick for a few days, and we figured that he had caught some kind of bacteria while hiking, since he likes to spend a lot of his hiking time in the streams eating muddy leaves and such.

First, let me begin with the fact that this dog LOVES the vet. As soon as we pull in - his ears perk up, his tail wags, and he is dragging us through the door to get to anyone in the clinic. He loves them all. Doesn't matter if the worker is taking his temperature or not (you know how they do that, right?) he has kisses for all of them.

So, the vet believed us, but not really, that he was sick yesterday. Her only words were 'he doesn't look sick'. Which led her to believe that his issues were something else…which led to a little X-ray, which led to finding a piece of metal in his stomach.

After watching it, and observing him, she said that the only way to get it out was to cut it out…so little Chip had a little surgery.

I learned a couple of things about my dog yesterday:

1. He has super dog strength. After having his stomach cut open and stapled back up (14 of them if you're counting) the vet called right as he was waking up from his surgery because she had "never seen anything like it". Instantly, he bounced up and was ready to play. She had to sedate him so that he wouldn't hurt himself. I was kind of annoyed that he was being so frisky, but also kind of excited that surgery didn't even phase him!

2. He does not let pain get in the way of what he's doing. After opening him up and finding the baseball sized tangle of string and plastic that had gotten caught around the wire that he ate a few weeks ago - the vet said that this should have taken him down a lot earlier, and that he must have been in a lot of pain. Apparently no one told him that!

3. He stays focused. Even though, he was consuming a toy that we gave him in January bit by bit, (late Christmas present - as if he knew the difference) we never noticed. But every morning for the past few months, he has worked diligently on chewing a huge string ball that weighs about as much as he does. Little did we know, that each day he's actually been getting closer and closer to his goal, of consuming the entire thing.

He got lucky and we bailed him out. And we'll obviously be focusing our training on not eating 'non-food objects' for the next few weeks between his bouts of being a conehead! It's been an annoying lesson, but one that we'll all be learning from!

And in the end, I like to think that he knows we had his back. (I have to think of him as tiny little puppy from time to time - it helps me not want to be mad at him!) Here's to being open to learning from all types of teachers!

Haha. Conehead.

Chip is gonna be fine! Lots of painkillers, a wire, a baseball size worth of thread & assorted eatings, and 14 staples. Thanks for thinking about him!

Working on booking in Denver today!! Think summer!!

Why tour so much?

I get this question a lot, along with; do you get tired? do you get sick of driving? don't you miss Bryan? (really - you're going to ask me that - isn't that obvious?)

Anyway, there are plenty of negatives that you could focus on about touring; it's super exhausting sometimes, you can get a little sick of driving, you miss your own bed and pillow, and of course, you miss your family. But there are trade-offs with anything you do. So - here are some of the things that tip the scale in the other direction.

You get to connect with friends! I recently got to sing at a wedding for two friends of mine. I was so happy for them, I got to pick out all of the music, and even write a little bit just for them - and I wouldn't get to do that if I weren't a musician! Also, when I arrived at All Asia in Boston, guess who surprised me at the show? It turned out that the newlyweds were on their honeymoon in Boston. I got to 're-celebrate' with them, thank them for having me, and got to congratulate them again so soon after the wedding. It was really great.

With the DiPrato's!

You get to try new things. When I'm in new towns, I'll often do a landmark search in my GPS and explore places that I think are interesting. Last summer for example, I got to go to the Louisville Slugger museum and factory - I would not usually think of going there, but I really enjoyed it. So this trip, on my way up to Burlington, Vermont (way in the north) I got to stop at one of the Ben & Jerry's factories and take a tour. It was really cool. I don't even eat ice cream usually, but it was really interesting to watch all the different machines.

And, I got to meet a real, live taste-tester, which is just cool.

Umm...does my tour bus make me look fat?

You get to take a break. When I have a 30 minute break and I'm home, I usually check my e-mail, work on a press release for an upcoming show, design a flyer, etc. Not a lot of minutes are wasted - and not a lot of those minutes are remembered. When I'm in a new town and a new place and I have an extra 30 minutes before I need to go in for a sound check, I get to do something fun! I take a walk around a new town, I go into a fun store, I strike up a conversation with people having coffee, whatever, it usually turns into something memorable.

When I had time up in Burlington, I took a walk by Lake Champlain, and it was beautiful! I also took a bunch of photos with my new iPhone and played around with different filter apps to make the photos come out impressive-like. Here they are with their 'artsy titles', maybe that will be my next career path!

Train tracks to nowhere.

Wide bridge.

Lampost.

You learn what you're made of. Seriously. My show at St. Michael's in Northern Vermont was OUTSIDE. And it was 41 degrees, windy, and I couldn't exactly wear gloves and play the guitar. That's not for wimps. That's for a Wisconsin-type thick skin. Did I know ahead of time that I could play a full set of songs with my teeth chattering or without feeling in my fingers? Nope. And now, I know! It might not be my first choice though - next time I might ask for a concert date in May - or maybe even August.

I had to tape my set list and my new songs to the stage!

And of course, I get to meet new people. As I say a lot, part of what I love about traveling is meeting new people. I got to meet people in Boston, northern Vermont and Brookfield, CT. All different ages, all different stories, and you know me - I can talk to a rock! So I love meeting new friends, learning about them, and making plans to see them again in the future!

That's why I do what I do.

Hope it makes sense!

Lots of love,

Pencil-Sketch Kristen (courtesy of playing around!)