I am sick, sick I tell you!

How do people survive ailments of import? I had a tough time falling asleep last night just because I had a little head cold! Glarg! Hopefully this shall pass soon. It would be aided, of course, by plenty of sleep, fluids and a modicum of exercise, none of which has been happening for the past several weeks because of all the time I have been spending at The Smith. Don't get me wrong, I am happy to have the stuff to do at The Smith. I just also need time to sleep and such. And of course to spend time with my mom, which is my primary reason for being in Geneva.

It was a two movie day Saturday. At the Smith, I projected Michael Cera in Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus. Overall, I thought it was ok. I am not a huge Cera fan. He is good, not great. The story was sort of rambling and all over the place. As many of the theatre goes said, we weren't sure what the point really was. Still, I am glad I saw it.

The other movie was Moonrise Kingdom. Great movie! I thoroughly enjoyed it. A Wes Anderson movie with lots of high powered actors in it. Very quirky and fun. The two lead kids were very entertaining. I had put it on for mom before I left for the Smith not knowing what her reaction would be. Turns out she loved it! Yay! I am sure she missed a lot of the subtleties. Nevertheless, the fact that she liked it is great!

The NY Banjo Summit went really well! The people who showed up to work for The Smith, Kate, Daniel and Charlie, did an amazing job. Kate did lights, Charlie and Daniel moved equipment and helped with set-up and I supervised excellently (if i must say so myself) (and a lot of other stuff...just sayin'). Mark and Bill from Rosewood Sound got their stuff set up and working and Sound Check was right on time. The show went off without a hitch. The music was great, there was a decent sized audience. Load out was very smooth and I think everyone was happy. Can't beat that.

I had a minor Smith epiphany. There is a crunch in a couple of weekends when we have three events right in a row. Dick Clark, Lone Bellow and then Ballet X. Ballet X is the most demanding technically - especially their need for a dance floor and for a completely different configuration of lighting that the house plot. I was trying how to get all of it done between the end of Lone Bellow and 8 am the next morning when the Ballet is to load-in. I think we can get the marley dance floor down to relax after Lone Bellow leaves. The lighting, we might be able to get away with reconfiguring the lights before lone bellow and just using that set-up (minus the side booms/trees) for both Lone Bellow and Ballet X.

Eating for health

Eating to enhance one's health makes sense to me. Seems sort of common sensical in fact. I swear, though, that some food makes me sick. Not food sickness, sick to my stomach sick, but low grade infection or cold sort of sick. Perhaps it isn't the food itself, but a germ that happens to have piggy-backed on it. But though I believe in germs as a transmission methodology for illness, I also believe in the immune system, mine in particular, that prevents such transmission in most cases. I do know that sometimes I eat food from a fast food place and I feel depressed afterwards. I think that is some sort of psychic transmission - not just the normal depression that comes from doing something that really, we know, not so deep down, that what we did was perhaps not the best, most healthfullyness thing to have done. Anyway. I am sick right now. Not Big Sick, but little sick. A little sore throat, a little stuffed nose. Poo.

I swear that I asked mom if she would like to see a Marx brothers movie. And I swear she said she would like to. So I ordered a set of Marx Borther's movies from Amazon. The other day, I asked if she wanted to watch one. Her response? "I never really liked them." Great. Well, luckily, I recall enjoying them! Yay even!

Learned a lot at the Smith today. Played with the fire curtain. Fun and easy. Way too expensive, but that is the price of safety, apparently. I also spent an hour with people who know things about boilers! Wow! We have a boiler in our house, so I was a leg up from someone who doesn't know about steam heat. Still, it will take some maintaining. Joy.

Still ill

After all these years...no, wait, that is something else. Anyway, I am. Still ill, that is. Not horribly, not horrendously - just enough to be slightly annoying. I am using the illness to find my inner peace with not being perfect. Or finding perfection in being imperfect. Or...

Yesterday was beer day! Yippee! I also mailed Cate 14 copies of Diary of a Plate Addict. I wonder if she will actually be able to sell any. I am not holding my breath. They are signed, which is something. My good friend, Jeff, wrote a review of DPA and posted it on Amazon. How cool is that? I am going to steal it and put it on a couple of pages - the DPA Facebook page and on one of the Renottopress pages! If anyone else wants to write a review, that would be awesome!

I still have lots of things I ought to be doing that I am just not. I realized the other day, that I was behind in posting my monthly "One picture a day" on Facebook. I would like to get that done at some point. I also want to put pictures from the first sales trip to Raleigh on the DPA page. Those are the two biggies at this point. Oh, and studying for Spanish. I didn't really do much yesterday. And the exam is tomorrow. Eeeek.

I would rather not go outside today - but I want to get a Christmas tree. I am thinking I will just wait until Friday after the exam to get one. Maybe it will cheer me up after failing the final. Ok, I probably won't fail it, but I sure won't ace it. I have forgotten so much that we "learned" this semester. Sigh. It is early yet - though I could do with a nap...

Oh, back to beer day. I went to Beef and Brew and they hadn't changed the beers. But they did institute a new Augustus policy - that any beer I wanted would be discounted! Wow, I feel special! I don't know how well the place is doing. I hope they last long enough for me to get through all of their beers. Is that a selfish thought? Probably. I had fun there, as usual, despite being a smidge under the weather. Lorraine and Tiffany didn't have anything new and exciting going on in their lives. I met Evan, a server there - who also works at Eddie Bauer out at the outlet mall. If I weren't feeling sick, I would go out there and buy a piar of pants or a shirt or something. I could use either one of those. Not a huge priority...Oh, I also ordered the peking duck from Wing Tai for Christmas Eve! Yippee! The woman was surprised when I spoke Mandarin with her. Sadly, my vocab is so rusty, that I didn't recognize the word for doctor when she said it. Glarg. So, the beers I had were good ones! The first - Naked Dove's Naught and Nice Christmas Ale tasted sort of like a gingerbread man. Very easy to drink. Next was Wild Blue - which is made here in NY. I didn't realize that. Pretty good too, for a blueberry beer. And lastly, Oskar Blue's Old Chub - Scottish Ale. Yum!

For dinner, we had Mexican style food - I made chicken quesadillas, refried beans and rice. Yum city! Are you all envious of my cooking skills yet? :)

Photos from December 14, 2011:

A decoration at the lovely Beef and Brew!

Yay Mexican dinner!

Sniffle, sniffle...

Those are sniffs of stuffiness, not sadness. Thank you for your concern, though!

I thought that perhaps my brush will illness had passed away uncharacteristically. Sadly, it was just lying in wait, waiting to pounce when I least suspected it. Grrr. The way the progression usually works - a three day affair - is sore throat, stuffy nose, sore throat, all better. And none of them too heinous. This time, sore throat - nothing - stuffy nose this morning - and we shall see what happens next. The excitement is almost too much for me!

I dreamt that I published a blog post without proofing it and certainly without labels! Eeeek! That was a nightmare and made me sit right up in bed!

Cindi posted a link to a blog post by Dan - Single Dad Laughing - about loving without judging. What a wonderful world it would be if we all embraced that thought at least part of the time. Sigh.  By the way, until I had seen that link, I had never heard of Single Dad Laughing. I don't know that I will ever read his blog again, but the one post was enjoyable.

Moving on - yesterday I stayed in all day. And I managed to actually study some Spanish. Not a lot, but a little - enough to make me feel like I did some studying. I am sooooo ready for this class to be over. Not because it was horrible, just because I am ready to be a vegetable for a while. Till the Second of January. Then, by golly, I am going to get down to brass tacks and tackle some writing for the future! Posterity, here I come!

Sorry, drifted off topic again. Dinner was left overs with a little pork thrown in. Tonight, different left overs, presented differently. What else about yesterday - oh, made a new connection on Daily Challenge - to another women from Romania! I wonder if that site is popular in that country. Weird if it were...now I am even more excited to learn some Romanian! :)

Ramble, ramble, ramble. Nothing really to say today - just waiting for something exciting. Today, at least, is beer at the Beef and Brew (or somewhere else) day! Yippee! Oh, and I need to mail Cate some copies of Diary of a Plate Addict. And put in an order for our Christmas dinner of Peking Duck!

Speaking of the book - buy copies! Doing so is a good Christmas present for me - and who knows, you might actually enjoy it. I'm just sayin'...

Picture from December 13, 2011:

Chuck is often the wacky one! :)

Slight Snuffles

I have a cold - or had one last night. I guess I still have it, though it is back to feeling more like allergies. I am pretty sure it was a cold, because I was so stuffed up and drippy on the left side of my face - and in a different way from my normal allergy stuffiness. Oh well - this happens now and again - I sometimes have a cold for a day or three - like once a year. Who knows, though, with the different climate I will be facing here this year, what will happen to my health. Probably just a signal from my body that I am not drinking enough water...gotta get on that! Speaking of colds, what is everyone's opinion of flu shots?

It was a high of 50 degrees or something like that yesterday. I didn't even open the front door to get the mail. Poor mom didn't close her windows the night before, so she was really chilly in the morning.

I had another realization - I think it was yesterday or the day before. We have had people in the latter part of their lives here in this house three times to my knowledge. First was my father's first wife. I don't know how long she was bed-ridden here. Then there was Joyce - my mother's step mother. She was here for a few years, when I was a kid. I don't recall exactly how many. Then she went to a nursing home near Boston and my sister looked in on her quite a bit. And lastly there was Helen Heath. Again, not sure how long she was here. Maybe mom will recall. Anyway, I was thinking about of all of them. And now mom. She is spending a lot of time in bed just now - I don't know why - and she seems to have deteriorated quite rapidly. But I could just be feeling that way because she is spending so much time in bed. She just seems like she has given up - even more than usual. And I don't know what to do about it - if anything.

So, we did nothing yesterday, I cooked yummy scrambled eggs, spinach and glop. Other than that, not a whole lot happened. I did watch three episodes of Warehouse 13 and one episode of Glee on Hulu. That means that I get to do a bunch today - do some editing of Diary of a Plate Addict so I can send off a list of things to Heather - work on Spanish and, well, hmm, that might be the extent of it...aside from the regular maintenance sort of stuff...

Pictures from October 1, 2011:

My perpetual calendar with Fred peaking out from behind it.

Saturday night's dinner - the glop in on the left...