Hey everybody,

I just got back from New York Monday night. It was a quick, exhausting trip but absolutely fun as hell!

I jumped off the plane at LaGuardia Sunday and had meetings with two really cool potential managers for the band. I met one of them at Veniero's in the East Village, which was very difficult for me because I have the worst sweet tooth in the world. Yeah, I got a slice of cheesecake and some tiramisu to go. Yeah, I ate it all later. Yeah, I also ate pizza and a sandwich that night.

The next day, I headed over to Stratosphere Sound on the westside. Stratosphere is co-owned by James Iha of the Smashing Pumpkins and Adam Schlessinger, who was in Fountains of Wayne and pretty much wrote the whole soundtrack for one of my favorite movies ever, "Josie & the Pussycats." (Look in the new Rolling Stone for the picture of Dashboard Confessional in the studio - that's where I was). After four months of mixing and emails and phone calls, I finally got to meet the awesome Eli Janney. I picked up the hard drive with our album on it, thanked him profusely for his patience and, well, his patience ,with getting the mixes just right. I walked past walls and walls of Smashing Pumpkins memorabilia, and headed back out for the first of many, many mad-dash walks around Manhattan.

Just another couple blocks!

From there, I headed down to the very edge of the West Village to drop off some music for a few attorneys, labels and publishers (get it in everybody's hands that you can!). The best part was checking out the cobblestone streets in the blocks around Gansevoort and Horatio Streets. I'm a history freak, so any time I'm around old buildings, I'm happy. Then it was back into the craziness of Midtown for more meetings.

The final stop was Masterdisk, where I handed the hard drive off to Howie Weinberg for mastering.

It was nice to feel almost finished with 11 songs that have been a year-and-a-half in the making. I'm excited for everybody to hear the record! Stay tuned for more updates.

Elizabeth