Near our house, where we’ve lived for almost 3 years, is a Mexican restaurant, nothing revolutionary there. However, this restaurant—Cancun’s, never seems to be open. Leslie and I once tried to go there at a time when most restaurants would normally be open, they weren’t. We’ve often driven by at night and seen crowds of people outside, doing what crowds of people do outside of a Mexican restaurant in the early hours of the night.

We remained puzzled as to how this restaurant stayed in business, and what it was a front for. We figured since we aren’t Mexican, just a Scottish-Hawaiian-mutt and a German-Irish-mutt, we would never be privy to the real world of Cancun, the Mexican restaurant around the corner.

The other day we were chatting with our next-door neighbors, who we’ve become quite fond of. We asked if they had ever been to Cancun’s, the local Mexican restaurant, not the coastal city in Mexico’s easternmost state. They had not.

So deciding that there is strength in numbers, we decided to check out Cancun’s on Friday night with Mike, Kirsten and their daughter Bailey, the neighbors. We discovered that we weren’t the only white people in the place. We also discovered that the food is pretty darn awesome. Oh, and it’s just a Mexican restaurant, not a front of anything, as far as we know. And if it is a front, I don’t want to know about it. I just want to be ignorant and enjoy the grubby Mexican grinds.

So we have another place to add to the small list of restaurants we like in the area. And…they have dancing starting at 8:00pm Friday through Sunday, need a little more prodding to tackle that one though. I’m content to just enjoy the bottomless Coke and Chimichangas.

On a not-so-fun note, our downstairs bathroom is still in process. A week ago last Thursday we discovered a leak in the wall that flooded the bathroom and laundry area. We’ve been letting it dry out, as there was mold in the wall. Yesterday, after over a week of “drying out,” I sprayed the open wall down with bleach and water.

We’re hoping that on Saturday we’ll be able to get the new drywall in place. Mike is going to help us out, we’re very grateful. Especially me, I don’t know much about construction and “DIY” stuff. I’m good with computers and virtual things. But I feel this new found DIY attitude is going to get the better of me and I’m going to want to do more.

Speaking of virtual things, I got my Airport Express back up and running. This time though, I was able to hardwire it into my network with a cat5 cable. This allows me to now stream music from my iMac, upstairs, to the Airport, downstairs. Before it ran just over WiFi, so I was only able to stream to it from my Macbook when I was downstairs, which was cool. But using the hardwire is so much nicer. Now I can have some tunes playing when guests come over without having to have my Macbook out and open for all to see.

Currently Listening: Hillsong United, The I Heart Revolution

Currently Reading: Dean Koontz, By the Light of the Moon

I added a new contact form plugin, still playing with that. Added some links to the bottom. Changed the underlying coding and some of the styling of elements.

After all my changes, I now just need to post more. Finding the time is always hard. I can seem to find time to play Rainbox Six or the guitar but not blog. Sometimes a video game or playing music just seems so much more interesting than blogging. One step at a time.

Now there are upsides and downsides, of course. The upside, you get your book out there for the world to read. The downside, you book is out there for the world to read and nobody knows about it but you. The upside, you receive a higher return on every unit sold. The downside, you probably won’t sell as many units self-publishing as you would with a traditional publisher, but who knows.

The self-publishing route holds a certain fascination for me. I look at it like an indie rock band, instead of signing with a major label who has a huge overhead and marketing division, they instead do it all themselves. They retain more money and control, in exchange for having to promote themselves really hard. It’s kinda the same way with self-publishing. You are the author, editor, marketing department, and publicist, all in one.

Self-publishing doesn’t preclude anyone from selling out and going with a big publisher. In fact, a case could be made that it gets your work out there for more exposure to the big publishers. So it seems like a win all the way around. I can still look for the super-agent to sell my book to the super-publisher while I self-publish and get my work out there to build a fan base.

The update in all of this is that I’m currently working on finalizing my manuscript. I figured being the editor, the only editor, I should probably go over it once again and make sure I like it and it’s presentable, I’m a little paranoid about this kinda thing. Then comes the cover design and layout, then the actual publishing. Hopefully it won’t be too long before I can say, go to Amazon and buy my book or download it to your Kindle.

Well truth be told, life has proven to be quite busy over the past two months, hence no updates, no musings, nothing. December and January were quite busy for Faded Pictures, so busy I haven’t updated FadedPictures.com with December’s portfolio work. It’s on the todo list, trust me.

So today, I have a short break between projects and i thought I’d catch up with a little post. Things have proven so busy recently, I’ve actually even neglected the querying process — shame, shame on me.

But I’m getting back into the game, jumping back on the horse…thinking of other metaphors…nope, I’m done.

Truth be told, first i wanted to wait out the holiday’s, didn’t want to try querying around Christmas. Then when January arrived, I was pretty busy and I told myself I was waiting for my copyright certificate from the Library of Congress. That showed up two weeks ago in the mail, I’m out of excuses, I must now query again.

I usually first check with the Russians. The site is called MP3Sparks.com and it’s excellent. The site is hosted in Russia and offers music for only a few bucks per album. To use the site you first buy credits, then choose your tunes and pick your format and bit rate. Depending on the quality you choose, the price can be as low as $2 an album. I usually go with the Variable Bit Rate and one of the profiles in the encoding dialog. The nice thing about the music is it’s all DRM free.

Second, if the Russians don’t have what I’m looking for I go to Amazon.com and their new MP3 Download section. Amazon doesn’t quite have the Russian pricing, but they are a bit cheaper than iTunes. The upside to Amazon is that they offer higher quality files than iTunes and they are all DRM free mp3’s.

Usually if an album is new and not widely popular, the Russians won’t have it yet, so I opt for Amazon. If Amazon doesn’t have it that usually means I have to bite the bullet and go with iTunes, but you gotta check the other sites first.

So with the where out of the way, let’s get onto some recommendations. First, Dave Koz did a Christmas album several years back that is a really good Smooth Jazz album called A Smooth Jazz Christmas. It’s got a lot of nice instrumental pieces, Koz is a saxophonist, with a variety of other Smooth Jazz artists like David Benoit, Peter White and Rick Braun. I just picked up this 2001 album when looking at Koz’s new Christmas album, which has a lot of the same songs. A Smooth Jazz Christmas seemed to get better reviews than his new one, so I went with it instead. One thing iTunes is good for, reviews.

Another great Smooth Jazz album is Boney James’ Christmas Present which was released this year. Boney James is also a saxophonist and on Christmas Present he collaborates with the likes of Anthony Hamilton, Angie Stone and Rick Braun. It’s a great, mellow yet festive Christmas album.

Okay, because I can’t resist, here are a few more great Christmas albums. If you like piano with a little soul check out Brian Culbertson’s A Soulful Christmas. An older album, but a great one is from the Rippington’s frontman Russ Freeman and it’s called Holiday.

If you’re not a Smooth Jazz fan, you might like The Brian Setzer Orchestra’s A Boogie Woogie Christmas. Maybe your more of a classic Jazz fan, then Diana Krall’s Christmas Songs album which came out last year is a must have. So too is Steve Tyrell’s This Time of Year, which unfortunately is not available from amazon as a download or the Russians. I believe iTunes has it though.

Hopefully that should be enough tunage to help feed your Christmas musical fix, if not, I have more…don’t get me started.

I know Ave Maria is popular during this time of year, but that’s about the only song I can think of. Are there others I don’t know about?

I’m not saying we need more, please, don’t misunderstand me, just a simple observation.

I mean, aside from Mary in the nativity scene there’s not even a lot of Christmas chotchkies with her depiction, no Santa and Mary, nothing. I’m thinking that Mary Christmas chotchkies could be the next form of Indulgences that the Catholic Church could get behind. See what I did there, Mary Christmas instead of Merry Christmas? This could even be the gold mine the church needs to pay off the abuse lawsuits. Just a thought.

The whole thing started when I said I wanted to go down and check out the Christmas tree at Fashion Island in Newport. We knew that would just make us sad if we didn’t have our tree up already, so Fashion Island got moved to this coming weekend and our tree went up yesterday along side our traditional media fare of Home Alone and The Santa Clause. I have to say, every year I look forward to that little Kevin McCallister foiling Marv and Harry’s plans to burglarize his house. He’s so smart for an eight-year-old.

The Book will be finished this week, we are so close. The excitement is building, we’re trying to figure out how to celebrate. To me a celebration seems premature, even if it is well deserved, it’s still premature. Technically, I don’t have a book yet, I have a manuscript that really, really hopes to grow up and become a book. I’m guessing that the road to bookdom, yes I just made that word up, may be arduous. But it does speak to some accomplishment and for that I should be happy. So maybe we’ll go grab a slice at The Costco, celebrate small, because even the small accomplishments deserve to be celebrated.