Holy crap. A REAL author has visited my blog.

You may or may not know my ultimate dream is to write and publish a book. Preferably a New York Times bestseller, but I'm not going to be picky. Part of the reason for this blog is to exercise my "creative writing" skills, because the last four years of strictly writing television news has left me kind of rusty.

That being said, a few days ago I wrote about an author, Tiffanie DeBartolo, and how I ravenously read her books before finding out she was born and raised in Youngstown. Thinking that was the coolest thing in the world, I emailed her telling her how much I loved her writing (hopefully without a stalkerish tone to it).

Well, Ms. DeBartolo never received my email, but this is even cooler:

My blog about her showed up on her Google Alert, so she visited my blog, and read it!! (Or at least skimmed the post I wrote about her...which is fine with me.)

It gets even better. If you go back and read the comments on that post, you'll see that she left me a comment. AND told me how to contact her on myspace.

I read it, immediately BlackBerry Messaged Katie Ferri (she's a huge fan of God-Shaped Hole, too), and started sweating. I got incredibly excited. SWEATING!!

I might be a dork for this, but it made my friggin week.

And I love it even more that THIS blog post will probably show up on her Google Alert, too...hopefuly steering her here once again.

Tiffanie, if you're ever back in the YO, and want to go out for pizza, I'll treat ya. Whether it's Wedgewood, Elmton, Belleria, Inner Circle, Avalon Gardens...you name it, I'll buy it.

Moving on, and hoping I didn't just sound like a TOTAL freak:

Felix, Talia, and I are off to Pennsylvania for the day to visit my dad for Father's Day. I made him a cd of all the songs that remind me of him, and I had to laugh because some of the artists included in the mix were: Marilyn Manson, Eminem, Breaking Benjamin, and Rage Against the Machine (Also had some old school stuff like Talking Heads and Big Audio Dynamite). Gotta love my family and our skewed view of family values. But- I wouldn't have it any other way.

And since I don't like to post without some sort of picture, how about this:

Felix bought me an actual PLANT of Gerbera daisies for our two year anniversary on May 25th (How cute, I know). They ALL died approximately two days later, despite my best efforts to keep them going. After a few days, this blossom bloomed and has been going strong ever since. I love it.