Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

The entirety of an entry by badmagic, 2005-08-30:

I still think "Please disable the user" and "Please disable the user's account" are entirely different instructions.

And I want my hammer back.

Who is in charge of traffic? Is it Asphaltia, or does she only rule parking lots? Whoever it is, I seem to have ticked them off ... not to the same degree as Odysseus did Poseidon, fortunately, but in a similar vein. Traffic was nasty and slow and annoying and in my way every direction I went today. All the more so when I opted to use a different route than the one that had been ickissimo earlier so as to improve my odds. I wound up stuck in traffic in Georgetown, taking an exit I didn't want because the warning that my lane was turn-only wasn't posted early enough for me to do anything about it, tangled up in the not-a-thru-street portion of the underworld (including many-blocks-long decoys on which perhaps the lack of proper cross streets should have been a clue, but if so I failed to grasp it). I'm glad I'd allowed more time than the trip out should have taken because I arrived half an hour later than I was supposed to be there but still half an hour before we went on stage.

The gig went well despite how wobbly I felt -- having spent most of my spoons just getting there. Not our most enthusiastic audience, but they stuck around and seemed to enjoy us and some came up afterwards to say nice things and buy CDs. (This was a street fair in SE DC.) By the way, as of today the official (as opposed to "pre-release") copies of the second CD, Home, are available. Shrink-wrapped and everything. (Remember that the pre-release copies some of you already bought will be collector's items because of the mistake in the track list on the back!) It's not up on our web site (nor on CD Baby) yet, but will be very soon.

I decided to head back to anniemal's by going around the city instead of through. I had trouble getting out of DC to the east (including having to detour around a different street fair), then ran into major Beltway upfuckedness in PG County, which WTOP told me extended well into Montgomery County, so I decided to strike out cross-county on lesser streets ... some of which turned out to be similarly suckitude-stricken. Fine, that path took me near a store I seldom get to, so I figured I'd take a break and pick up an obscure beverage I like ("soo jeong gwa", or sweet cinnamon punch). And I got stuck in a cash register situation that looked eerily similar to the outer loop of the Beltway a little earlier.

Then I wrestled with an air hose that didn't really want to fit the valve stem of my tire, a balky pressure guage, and -- you guessed it -- more ooky traffic, though fortunately moving a lot faster this time if still crowded and annoying and filled with people who did not receive my telepathic broadcasts telling them to please move out of the way and let me have the open chunk of pavement ahead of their formation because I needed to blow off steam by opening up the throttle a bit. (Why oh why is "can read Glenn's mind" still not a part of the Maryland driving test?)

I am in Arlington. I am extremely tired. I am more than a little cranky. And various parts of me hurt rather a lot.

Other than playing a gig, the good parts of today were: that the band after us was also good, and had a surprisingly full, rich sound for a duo (drummer/singer, and guitarist); and that caught (by accident) part of a Neil Gaiman interview and I got to listen to part of "Hot Jazz Saturday Night" in the car, a show I pretty much never manage to catch. Teagarden, Goodman, etc. ... a couple of catchy songs from the 1920s, a decade I'm not all that familiar with ... yay [whatIcall]real jazz. (Actually, what I consider "real jazz" covers a fair bit of ground, it just omits "lite jazz", "cool jazz", "lukewarm jazz" ...)

3LF has a gig tomorrow in PA. It's in my PDA with a question mark and no time, so I hope that means I'm not signed up for it (I'm guessing that the date (today versus tomorrow) was decided while I was missing practices) because I'm a wreck right now and I've not been to rehearsal since just after Pennsic. Managing Hastings the day after Anne Arundel (next weekend) is going to be hard enough, and that's a lot closer. Apparently anniemal and syntonic_comma have plans to go to the Maryland Renaissance Festival tomorrow, and I'm invited -- I'd really like to go, but I do not expect to be in any shape to do so by morning, nor do I expect to be able to stay active long enough tomorrow to make a trip out there worthwhile (and I'd hate to slow down folks who are properly up to enjoying the festival right).

Here's hoping I recover enough by Tuesday to get to both rehearsals this week. Any with any luck, maybe manage to see Serenity before I lose track of who posted journal entries with spoiler-cuts lately that I want to go back and read after I see it. fidhle said there's a line that he thinks I'm going to find especially wonderful, but he doesn't want to spoil it for me.

And here's hoping that sometime soon I have the energy to sit down and think out the entries I've been meaning to write that are something other than "here's how my day went" and "here's how I'm feeling". Sheesh.

If only this cinnamon punch came in something other than these teeny tiny cans (238 ml) ...

One thing about spending so much of my day in traffic (several times the amount of time I spent on stage) was that I saw a few cute bumper stickers:

• Frodo Failed. Bush has the Ring.
• red circle (well, oval) with a slash through it, over the letters GOP
• A Closed Mind is a wonderful thing to lose.