Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"I've never liked the term 'computer science.' The main reason I don't like it is that there's no such thing. Computer science is a grab bag of tenuously related areas thrown together by an accident of history, like Yugoslavia. -- Paul Graham, in "Hackers and Painters"

(It's Paul Graham week in my Quote-of-the-Day file.)

I'm still in a lot of pain but I'm feeling much better than yesterday or the day before. Thanks in large part to anniemal's ministrations (and her nagging me not to use my right arm).

Despite the fact that I've been looking forward to it for two or three years and had been really counting on going, I don't think I'm going to be able to go to ConCertino this weekend in Massachusetts. I know that there are people I'd told I would be there, month ago when I expected to be able to manage it, but my money situation is even worse than usual. I can't afford a hotel room, I can't afford a membership, I can't afford to pay my share of gas and tolls to get up there and back, and what financial help might be coming my way in the next few days really has to go to overdue bills and prescription drugs if it happens at all. I am seriously bummed about this. There are people I wanted to see, whom I see far too seldom. I wanted to catch Urban Tapestry. There are people I do see once in a while but don't get to play music with often enough. And it's just been too long since I've really sat down and immersed myself in the world of filk music. So I am sad. And frustrated, and annoyed, but mostly sad. It would upset me less if I hadn't been assuming I'd be able to go for so long.

I did not in fact make it to 3LF rehearsal last night. I was in too much pain to play guitar or recorder, as well as being exhausted. Anniemal did eventually drag me to the grocery store late last night (which reminds me -- I still need to figure out why my car's taillights don't work), and the motion of the car greatly upset my right shoulder. So we figured I probably should've worn a sling. In the store, I tucked my wrist through my camera strap for a makeshift sling. It helped. No, I don't have any idea how I wrecked my shoulder. As far as I can tell, it's "just the fibromyalgia". *grumble* It hurts. Most of the time there is no comfortable position I can put it in; when there is a comfortable position, eventually the rest of my body gets tired and wants to move, and then my shoulder hurts again.

So with the shoulder pain, HCB rehearsal tonight is going to be ... challenging. (That was the other reason for skipping 3LF -- knowing that tonight's HCB rehearsal is important, and wanting to give myself the best possible odds of being able to deal with it.) We're running through the proposed sets for our second CD, and recording them so we can listen later and figure out what changes we want to make to the arrangements before we record them for real. So it's important that we all be there to play our parts, and it won't be good for me to do a half-assed job on mine. The really good news is that at least it's a wee step beyond mere conversation towards actually making the damned album. We really should've started working on it about six months after we started selling the first one.

Now to try to get some of the things done that I haven't managed to do for the past several days, before I have to run off to rehearsal (and the nail salon -- one of the acrylic bits on my strumming hand came off Sunday evening), without making myself too tired to play decently at rehearsal or hurting my arm. I'll probably post another journal entry sometime this afternoon or tonight; I've got one that's been in the works a while. And I need to tell people how to send me money to help with upkeep of the cat.

Uh oh. I'm getting overdue notices for bills that I thought I'd already paid last month. (Looks like my mistakes, not theirs.) [expletive].

For reasons I haven't comprehended, "Two of Us" by The Beatles has been playing in my head intermittently for the past six or seven days.