It’s been some time since I’ve put up a set for Friday Random Ten, but I feel a little tug to do so today. For those of you who haven’t seen it before, the rules are simple. Just set your iPod or other digital music player a’shufflin’ and report back the first ten songs it spits out. The Random Friday gods can be fickle, so to ensure that you stay on their good side, make sure you don’t skip, omit, alter or in any other way shirk the pre-ordained order of the songs.

1. Sam Hall, Johnny Cash (American IV: The Man Comes Around)
2. Mary Magdelena, Raina Rose (Scratchwork 2006)
3. The Levee’s Gonna Break, Bob Dylan (Modern Times)
4. One by One, Billy Bragg & Wilco (Mermaid Avenue)
5. No Better, Jonatha Brooke & The Story (Plumb)
6. Kozmic Blues, Janis Joplin (18 Essential Songs)
7. Black Annis, Antje Duvekot (Little Peppermints)
8. Opened Once, Jeff Buckley (Sketches for my Sweetheart the Drunk)
9. Intro/The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil, Jefferson Airplane (Live at the Fillmore East)
10. Julia, The Beatles (The White Album)

Favorite Song: Julia by The Beatles. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I was a bit of a Beatles freak from the ages of 9 to about 13. Hearing their music is deeply nostalgic for me.

Favorite Album: Janis Joplin’s 18 Essential Songs. Nothing fits those moments are in equal parts longing and angry like Janis.

Seen Live: Antje Duvekot, Jonatha Brooke and my talented sister Raina Rose. This track is actually from her new album (which went to get mastered today), The Prophet, The Panhandler and The Moon. There’ll be an limited issue released on January 9th, with a larger production run to follow.

I dropped Ingrid off at the airport at 6:15 am this morning, came home and crawled back into bed.  Last night, I had a tickle in the back of my throat, and by the time the alarm rang to wake her at 5:15 am it had bloomed into the beginnings of a nice little cold.  I’ve done nothing today, in the hopes that I’ll be able to avoid a full scale sick.  I’ve spritzed Cold-EEZE, drunk much Emergen-C and taken Olive Leaf Extract every four hours.  I’m heading to bed soon and am hoping to wake up feeling must better tomorrow.

Each year, as my mom and I shop for Christmas gifts for my dad, we carefully ration the gifts, giving him only half of the booty on December 25th. The reserved portion is wrapped in non-holiday paper and put out for his birthday a short eight days later. Most years I head back to Philly before January 2nd and so we often have a small celebration a day or two before I leave. This year was no exception, we gathered family and friends back to the house on December 27th for pizza, salad and pinch pie.

He’s always bemoaned this halving of his yearly gift allotment, but there’s nothing we can do about the day he was born, and the idea of going out after the holidays and doing more shopping is more than we can handle. So we shop for events at once and ignore the inevitable protests. This year I brought an unopen bottle of booze (I’m not remembering what exactly it was this time, brandy maybe) filched from my grandparents’ seemingly inexhaustable liquor cabinet and bought a tennis racket while I was home. According to my mom, they are sitting on the couch, waiting for him to arrive home from a performance at a peace service at a local Unitarian church. I’m a little bit curious how she wrapped the racket.

I called earlier in the day to wish him a happy birthday and my mom answered. She was on the second floor of the house while he was in the basement, and after talking to me for a few minutes she said that I would have to call him back on his cell phone, because she wasn’t feeling like going two flights down to get him on the phone. I did just that, and after 45 seconds on the phone, he said hurriedly, “I can’t talk now, I’m in the middle of a pile of work.”

So. I made the special family birthday dessert. I left offerings of sports equipment and aged liquor. I called and now I’ve blogged. I believe my job here is done.

I got back into Philadelphia early Friday morning. After a day of unpacking, buying groceries and reorienting to east coast time, I picked Ingrid up at the airport. She had some airport drama but thankfully the travel gods knew that it was important for her to get here and so delivered her safe and with luggage intact. Up until last May Ingrid had been living in Philly, when she decided to move back to her home state of Texas. I miss her the way I miss my family, not every moment of every day, but frequently and with the occasional pang the leaves me breathing extra deep.

It has been WONDERFUL to see her. In many ways it feels like she never left, because it has been so comfortable and easy to fall back into step and conversation. Saturday night we had a fondue party at my apartment for the extended cluster of friends who all wanted to see Ingrid while she was in town. It was a enormously fun evening (cheese, chocolate and a round of “Celebrity” never fail to delight) and made up for the decidedly lackluster New Year’s Eve we ended up having. We went to the same party we had gone to last year, but several people were absent (Cindy, Andrea and Una were particularly missed), as well as some essential party energy.

The best part of the evening was the moment while walking up 10th Street when we discovered that we could see the Penn’s Landing fireworks perfectly from the corner of 10th and Fitzwater.

I write all this to say that I’ve been busy since I got back into town, which is my half-hearted excuse for not blogging more regularly. If you’re longing for more interesting things, you should wander on over to Fork You, where Scott has put up our latest episode, Booze for the Holidays (or post holidays). The gloog was very (VERY) good. Even slashfood thinks we’re fun to view.