This is the “after” picture I took 24 hours later… and we’re supposed to get 8 more inches.

This is a “before” picture, I took this at noon yesterday.

I’m in a familiar place. I’m writing again, I have a thousand and one things I want to say, but I’m not sure how to make it fit. I’m afraid of not writing a good song. It’s strange because I don’t believe in writer’s block, but I often fall victim to something very similar, and that’s where I am right now. I have a system when it comes to writing, I also have a lot of bad habits, one of them being that after writing a verse I’ll decide I hate the song and I’ll toss it before it ever has a fighting chance to prove me wrong. I know I can write good songs, I think songs like Bigger Than Love and What Are You Waiting For are amazing songs, and I wrote them, so why am I so scared that I won’t be able to do it again? I sat down at the piano tonight and came up with ten different ideas and I found something wrong with all of them. I’m either going to have to learn to be patient, or learn some discipline. Billy Joel says he only writes when he has something to say, but then again some of the best songwriters in the world write habitually every day. The best thing in the world is when a song sneaks up on you and everything works on the first try. For example, I wrote the lyrics to Bittersweet Life in 15 minutes, I wrote What Are You Waiting For in it’s entirety in about 10 minutes. On the other hand songs like Steel City and Entertain The Pain took me 2-3 years to finish. I’m not looking for encouragement, I know I have it in me, I just need to kick my ass into gear and be honest with myself. John Mayer is my favorite songwriter, I recently watched his VH1 Storytellers in which he says, “Sometimes I get tapped on the shoulder by pure break-through ideas, but most of the time I listen to a song and I go ‘I want one of those’, and it’s how I’m not able to make one of those, it’s how I’m not as good as to be able to make one of those, it’s my failure to sound like my heroes, that has allowed me to sound like myself.” I feel like that is the story of my life, as a musician I listen to a great song and instantly think how awesome it would be if I had a song just like it that I could sing, but you can’t think like that, you have to write for yourself and nobody else. Okay, great pep talk, I’m glad we did this.

Many of you may have noticed that we’ve been drinking what may look like bottles of Vodka on stage… well, it’s not Vodka, it’s Fred! Fred is water, he’s a good friend of ours, and we happen to find him extremely refreshing and satisfying. Fred is the only water that I will drink now and you can buy him at Sunoco and Sheetz gas stations and select Whole Foods stores. Try him out for yourself, Fred is the greatest.

For more info on Fred go to his website www.lovefred.com.

The island is a spaceship. I’m almost positive.

I’m so excited… in exactly one hour and twenty four minutes I will be watching the season premiere of my favorite show ever. Who else is excited?

I finally went against everything that I believe and got a Formspring, I feel like such a hypocrite and I know I’m going to regret this, but… formspring.me/iamdavidcook. I’m not going to answer every question, so be creative.

This was my favorite Grammy performance, I love this song.

I’m really just annoyed at this point.

I’m not going to watch the Grammys this year, and I didn’t watch them last year… but that’s because last year we were in LA at EMI’s Grammy party and we were far too busy stalking Nicole Kidman and drinking some kind of blue liquor that tasted like lemonade. I know that Kings Of Leon, John Mayer, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Black Eyed Peas, Rascal Flatts, Keith Urban, and Taylor Swift are all going to win something, so I’ll just watch the re-caps. The lame thing about the Grammys is that there are all of these subcategories that never get televised and people who are nobodies can be nominated for the awards. There are little Grammy panels, or people who are a part of the Recording Academy, all over the USA, anybody can register, you pay some fee and then you can submit artists to be nominated for awards. I know people who have joined and then they submit themselves and go around telling people that they’re up for a Grammy… now that’s just silly.