Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

How brown do you let tomato catsup turn before you start to worry about safety rather than just aesthetics? (I'm thinking about those leftover fast-food catsup packets that I occasionally pull out of my fridge, never being sure what colour I'll find inside until I open one.)

I specify tomato catsup because the only other kind of catsup I have any experience with is mushroom, and the mushroom catsup was already brown when I first saw it and I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be that colour. Which suggests a follow-up question: how many of you have eaten non-tomato catsups?

I had a thoroughly wretched day. Woke up coughing badly and spent the rest of the morning that way, then crashed again, woke up just before the HCB gig in the evening, still at home, un-showered, and in so much pain it hurt even to push the buttons on my phone. So, a missed performance, womdigious pain ... but one encouraging sign: no coughing from about 20:00 to 23:30! A little tickle now, but down in the "maybe I can squash this with albuterol and menthol" range. Now if I can convince my body to get back to sleep again in time to wake up early enough to throw instruments in the car and head up to Darkover for the Playford dance in the morning, maybe the next twenty hours won't such as much as the last forty.

Still not really sure about playing woodwinds -- will have to see just how well I'm breathing tomorrow -- but if other melody instruments make it, I can stick to guitar and bass.

If I'm not coughing in the morning then I'm probably also not contagious, right?

Dvorak: "I'll keep an eye on things here."

Qwerty: "Unless you get distracted by a new idea or something shiny."

Dvorak: "New ideas are shiny. That's why they're so hard to resist."

-- from Freefall by Mark Stanley, 2007-01-03

I am feeling extremely whiny, near trantrum-ish, definitely ready to sulk, today. ( But you probably don't need to hear me whine as much as I need to get it off my chest )

I hate missing out on the fun of performing -- and in front of a bunch of friends, at that. I hate feeling like I've let my bandmates down. I hate feeling like I've let the audience down. (Oh, the band can get by without me and put on a good show, but having any of us absent diminishes the effect, and this was already a less-than-the-full-band gig.) All of that is a bigger deal, emotionally, than the physical pain and illness that are keeping me home. I thought I could cover those feelings with enough reminders that illness is illness and there's just not much I can do differently right now, but it's not working. I'm frustrated and miserable and want to scream at the universe that it''s all JUST NOT FAIR and I deserve a do-over because I'm special and realities like illness aren't allowed to take away my Darkover weekend.

I'm not especially worried about the Regency ball because I have a pretty good idea who'll be there for it, and that bunch doesn't need much leading -- I get the word out and get sheet music to people, and when the dance starts I usually mostly just blend into the rythm section -- so as long as enough people brought last year's music with them, that should go okay. I still feel like I really ought to be there though.

I had a lot of 'maybe's for the Playford dance -- somebody please tell me that enough musicians showed up for that and it went smoothly?