excuses and high lights

OK, an hour ago I still had the excuse of long-overdue catching up with a friend. Now it’s just the sneezing and the achy throat keeping me up.

Significant bright sides, both from tonight and from the past weekend: conversation over ginger lemon tea and a hummus plate at Diesel right up until they closed. Coming back home and preserving lemons brought to me by erstwhile Croatian visitors. Tasting the resulting lemon-juice-and-much-salt concoction, which won’t actually be ready for 5-6 weeks, but hey, I was curious; and experiencing a unique taste sensation that is oddly compelling. Listening to Ottmar Liebert, one of my favorite guitarists, whose album “In the Arms of Love” I’ve come to associate with the calm of late evenings.

Last Friday, seeing Mischief in the Machine, incredibly satisfying not least because the musicians have been practicing in my living room for the past several months, and some of the other performers are friends and acquaintances, and oh, also because it was an excellent show.

Food shopping with two friends and a kid, and helping the two-year-old through a comparative critique of two fairly complex cheeses.

Dinner (involving sushi), dessert (involving cherries and really actually unfortunate bacon chocolate) and conversation (involving three of my favorite peeps) underneath the Templet.

Helping a friend move – not under the best of circumstances for him, but satisfying both in a physical sense and in that I was able to participate. I’ve been on a bit of a streak reacting to what I see as empty pronouncements of love and sunshiny feelings towards the world – the only meaningful way I’ve found to counteract that is to invest of myself in my world, in practical ways that benefit it (them) and therefore myself. Hey, it’s not the best of motivations, but whatever gets me up and running, no?

Speaking of up and running, weightlifting is still having a profound effect on my life. Have I mentioned that? Yeah, like, every other post. Well, it’s true. Soon, if Molly and I succeed at mutually motivating, I’ll go check out BU’s gym facilities.

Going from strenuous move to the best picnic “brunch” yet this season. Quotation marks because it lasted most of the day. Molly and Rosa really know how to make a girl happy with food.

And then quiet and important conversation with Mark, one of the aforementioned favorite people; feeding my haptic interface; and an opportunity to start organizing my life – and snail-mail – and other paperwork – that seems to have been just the push I needed to start digging myself out of the piles-of-paper-everywhere hole I seem to get into at least a couple of times a year.

On balance, things aren’t bad. Except, of course, for the things that are. But, as I’ve written for the past several months, that’s largely out of my control.

Aki is sitting guard by my side. Time to go cuddle the cat – if he deigns to assent. Here’s hoping that the echinacea and goldenseal capsules counterbalance the lack of sleep, where my immune system is concerned.


Comments are closed.