Catching Up While Lying Down

I guess I never did tell you about non-music-related stuff that had been happening in the past week, and now it's been a week since I promised you it would be less than a week. Consider that further evidence of how hectic things are around here.

Here are the main(e) pieces of news I wanted to relate. Alison flew to Maine for a couple of days to assist on a photo shoot. While there, she ate very poorly because all the food they came across was apparently deep fried and topped with butter and/or meat. On the way back, the flight from Boston to Halifax was delayed, so she had to have dinner in the Boston airport (worst laid-out airport I've ever been in, by the way, and it seems to always be undergoing some kind of major reconstruction — what's up with that?). One of the only items that wasn't meat of some kind was a bowl of clam chowder, so she opted for that. When it arrived, it had bacon on top of it!

Meanwhile, I was back here attending our yoga class alone, wherein our teacher announced that she will be moving back to Japan in the summer. As she's pretty much the best yoga teacher in the world and her classes are super cheap, I'm not sure what we're going to do. I was very bummed out and couldn't concentrate through the rest of the class. My "Warrior III" turned into something more like "Warrior on Pogo Stick".

I was also going to tell you about The Street, a really good BBC series we rented. Every episode is about a particular household on a working class street in northern England, and the different stories intersect in different ways. They're all quite sad, but they also all reach some kind of redemptive conclusion. The writing is quite good, and there are some fine British actors from the Mike Leigh stable and elsewhere.

And finally, Pingu! Meg loaned us an eight-episode tape of this super-cute Swiss claymation program for kids, and we both got hooked on it. There's no dialogue besides some vaguely morphemic sounds, and nothing much happens in the course of each five-minute episode, but they all manage to convey life as seen through the eyes of a child, and teach some sort of lesson thereof. Meg apparently has another tape of this stuff, so I'm hoping to borrow that soon.

As for this week, I'm not really sure what happened. I know I played another show with Al on Wednesday night and stayed up too late, then ate too much Thai food which we ordered in on Thursday night and was kept awake all night with heartburn. Since then I've felt terrible and haven't been able to eat anything beyond cream of mushroom soup or do anything beyond sit up and read. I guess I must have gotten some kind of stomach flu. There's been something like that going around at work. This means not only that I had to bow out of a couple of shows with Al this weekend (ECMA weekend with all its attendant hype), but that I've now been sick twice so far this year, and it's only February. Cf. last year, when I don't think I was sick once.

Oh yes, and the most important thing, which I almost forgot: Alison finished the hat she's been knitting! It's pretty cool, I have to say. Now she's starting on one for me in yellow, my favourite colour. I'm gonna be the man in the yellow hat. I can't wait.

- Andrew