Quick Home Again

November 9, 2009 at 1:10 pm (Uncategorized)

I’m listening to the furnace cycle on and off every minute.  Something’s amiss there.  At least the heat still works, and by next week the pellet stove will be in.

We got in from Oswego in mid afternoon; though it was 4:00 by the time I got to my own house, I went for a walk first thing.  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d just taken a walk, and all the hours in the car had me feeling additionally cramped and lazy.  It was gorgeous, warm and gentle.  I found a straight road through some farmland where the sun was slanting golden, a molten copper disc singing its end of day song over the fields.  There were a lot of beautiful, old houses along that road, too.

Just noticed something funny – I’ve been hearing an odd tone in my left ear lately, a note that shifts a half step and back over and over again, irregularly.  I thought I was getting tinnitis.  But I just realized that it stops when the furnace cycles off.  The furnace is creating an overtone that I can hear only in my left ear.  I thought that was the more discerning one – I hear bass better on that side, too.

I had dinner with the family last night, and Karl showed me how to grout the stove platform.  It looks pretty good, I must say, for a first tiling effort.  Tonight I want to sand the floor in front of the hearth, and tomorrow I hope to get a first coat of varnish on it before I leave.  It’ll be stinky.  But then K. can put the second coat on while I’m in Texas, and we can get that sweet little black darlin’ of a stove in right when I get back.  It’s so pretty.  I can’t wait to see the flames in the little pot inside!

I have decided to investigate foods that reduce inflammation.  I’ve got too much inflammation going on in my body right now.  The eczema, the joints.  General swelling, too.  I have probably been eating too much salt.  So cutting back on that is one thing, but I wonder if there are foods that could encourage… outflammation.

********

The Oswego gig was good, well attended and happy.  I blew a lot of little stuff, some of it noticeable.  I was a bit underrehearsed.  But the stuff I did well, I did well, and we were welcomed back to this place we hadn’t played for four years.  Our hosts were spectacular and I had a GREAT mattress (very important).  I came home with a check.  All in all, a successful trip.

We strategized in the car (five hours each way – enough time for several band meetings) about albums.  Happily, we figured out that we have just about enough material for two new CDs – one comprising all our funny stuff which we never seem to be able to record in the studio, and the other one of new or revised songs.  We even came up with a title already.  That helps.  We took out a few candidates that don’t go with the theme, and we still have to work up a few things that are new or in progress.  Come December, we’ll hunker down and spend some long weekends recording.  Chris is trying to come up with a portable recording setup that isn’t too pesky, and we envision inventing two or three nights someplace where we can do live recordings.  They’ll be free and we’ll invite everyone we can and hope to get some good audience response on the recording.  It’ll be “Mad Agnes Funny Song Night.”

Carol forgot her dress, and had only the jeans she’d been wearing for days.  She was dismayed, but I’ve been wanting to dress back down a little anyway – it saves so much space in packing – so I took off my good black pants and put my jeans back on so she wouldn’t feel underdressed.  I retained my fancy-ish camisole and overshirt, and still wore my black gig shoes.  It felt good.  Since she and I have so little that still fits us at this time, we said we’d go shopping together once the TX tour is over.  She has Macy’s coupons.  Girl trip.

I am trying to think of myself as “more full figured” instead of “too fat to fit into my best gig clothes.”  I know I’m not exactly FFFattt, and Rose wants to whack me with a rolled-up newspaper when she hears me complaining about it, but come on.  What’s with me that I can’t lay off the cookies now?

I might set up the total gym in my bedroom upstairs.  Aesthetically I don’t really want it in that room, and it means hauling all 95 pounds of it up the stairs, but there isn’t another place right now and I do need the exercise.  And I certainly won’t use it if it isn’t set up, will I?

Time to get cracking and get out of here for work.