my first time...

...and there is a lot of pressure.

It took me forever just to sign up for at blog. I couldn't get past what to name it. Or the address to pick. I protested for the longest time about picking a user name. What do you mean that my name can't be Nora? A name with four letters is not good enough? I've got plenty of letters in my last name...Don't need so many in my first.

Naming the blog was a challenge. I felt like I was choosing my identity for life. I am many things, and PEZ dispenser collector is one of them. And that is not the nerdiest. Trust me.

I have a great job that I love as the director of volunteers for a food rescue, job training and hunger relief agency in Indianapolis. I write an observational column about music for the Broad Ripple Gazette, a twice a month newspaper. I occasionally write music previews for NUVO, the weekly arts and entertainment paper in Indianapolis. If that is not enough, I work most Saturday nights at the Red Key Tavern, an Indianapolis institution. The Red Key is a great bar frequented by neighborhood folks, politicians , musicians, writers and cool kids. The owner is eighty-eight (and a half), curmudgeonly as hell, a WW ll POW and one of my favorite people.

I am very active in my neighborhood. I managed a group of coffeehouses and a bakery for eight years. I became president of my fairly powerful neighborhood association (one of the first non-attorney ones and the only one who *gasp* rents her house).

I'm a old punk-rocker that now listens to angst-ridden singer-songwriters

As you can surmise from the above, I'm single and have no children.

I'm sure this blog will be about my many jobs (I didn't mention Marigold yet--it gets a little embarrassing to tell folks that you have three jobs), music stuff that does not fit in to the paper, my neighborhood and the challenges of being forty-something and dating. Or wishing for a date.

Phew, not that that is over I can move on. Or at least start writing my column that is due...um...now.