Hi everyone,
I thought I was going to be able to get one more show out before the big move, but it doesn’t seem like that is going to happen.
Things here are crazy. The movers are coming on Monday to pack everything up which means that all my mics and what not will also be packed up. We will get out stuff on the 10th and once we have internet and everything is setup at the new place in NYC, I plan on having a welcome to NY special show. Until then…

I feel like I need to offer the reason why the show has been so sporadic. As some of you know, my partner and I started the adoption process and in June, brought out daughter Emily home. That by itself caused the show to kind of stumble because there were feedings and laundry and trying to sneak in sleep and all the other things associated with having a new baby. Everything with the adoption was supposed to go off without a hitch.
Until the birth father showed up. Now, that was not a problem necessarily because the state our daughter was born in is REALLY specific about what a birth father must do to keep his rights from being terminated. He hadn’t done any of that. Ok. No problem. Except that our daughter is part native american and that brings in a whole new set of laws and beginning in September, it looked like we were not going to be able to keep her in the end.
To truly write all the details of this would take thousands and thousands of words and I’m trying to keep it short.
The bottom line is since September, I have been beyond stressed out. On one hand, thinking you might lose your daughter is the worst possible thing I have ever experienced. On the other hand, trying to find thousands of dollars to fight this asshat in court was stressful. The adoption itself was already expensive (as most are), but then adding 3k for this lawyer, oh wait, it’s taking longer, find 5k more etc etc (this happened a couple of times) and I thought for a while that I was going to lose my mind. Add my crappy job on top of the threat of losing our daughter, the ever growing mountain of debt and basically, I just wasn’t feeling it.
In December, the father just sort of disappeared. In early January, he didn’t show up for a deposition and he didn’t show up for a court date in the middle of January. His rights were terminated and the adoption was finalized. Hooray! We get to keep our daughter. Stress factor #1 gone. I also got a new job that I start on 2/11. Stress factor #3 gone. All in all, everything is fine. yes, we still have a mountain of debt, but we have our daughter and that’s what matters. I hope to catch up with submissions and playlists and what not in the coming weeks and get the show back on track now that I’m out of this funk. I just felt like I owed an explanation since I had been feeling a little like a pod fader.

Merry Christmas, Not Xmas- Arrah and the Ferns
Jingle Bells- Lisa Loeb
Xmas Song- Jill Sobule
I’ll Be Home for Christmas- Gloria Reuben
Making Angels- Adrienne Pierce
The First Noel- Allison Crowe
Hapi Holidaze- Mary Timony Band
Christmas in London- Krista Detour
Ham For the Holidays- Lynn Julian aka Cookie Cutter Girl
Santa Will Find You- Mindy Smith
Regifting for the Holidays- The Alice Project
Do You Hear What I Hear- Jill Parr

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There is this thing called google alerts that I have set up so that every time Rubyfruit Radio is mentioned in something that comes up in Google such as a blog or an article or randomly on a website, I get an email about it. It’s kind of interesting to see what people are saying.

This morning I got one that linked to an entry in Livejournal. This person was talking about random podcasts and mentioned Rubyfruit Radio and how it’s hit or miss music wise and how she doesn’t always like the music I play and I just had to laugh because honestly, sometimes I don’t even like the music I play. Now overall, she said to listen to the show which is fine by me, it’s just odd seeing it in writing that the show is hit or miss.

So here are my two cents on this. I know it can be hit or miss. The first issue I face is just getting music that I can legally play. I have to find the music, then ask for permission and go through a lot of hoopla to get music. Entities like Ariel Publicity, Iodalliance and the Podshow Music Network make my life easier as do listeners who let me know about artists they’ve discovered.

The show is much like radio too. I know that if I listen to the radio, there are songs that I like and songs that I don’t like. They can’t please everyone. I try and cover a lot of genres in the show which makes things even more difficult. Some people love the folky type stuff where it’s a girl with a guitar. Other people can’t stand that. Sometimes I play bands like Sleater-Kinney. I happen to love S-K, but know lots of people who don’t. Overall, I try and have a decent mix of stuff, but depending on who has given me permission to play their stuff, it can be hit or miss. I can accept that and from the looks of things, so can a lot of people.

If you know of any aritsts (or if you are an artist) let me know. Maybe together, we can help the show be less hit or miss.

[edit] Ever feel like you shouldn’t write things down unless you’ve had ample amounts of caffeine? Yes. I feel like that often.
I just want to clarify some things about the post in lj I mentioned because sometimes things come across wrong and I didn’t really put the whole context of her post in my post. I just thought it was funny that she talked about how hit or miss it was because I often have conversations about that with my partner. Anyway, the author of the lj post loves the show. That’s pretty evident. Here’s a snippet of the post.

“it’s so awesomely hit-and-miss, i can’t even begin to tell you. by which i mean: i don’t like about half the songs that are played, and the rest are ones that are either good enough to compel me to immediately drop whatever i’m doing and look up the artists, or are already in my computer because i *love* them. no matter what, i’m thrilled by the randomness of it.”

And this is often how I feel too.