there's more to life than this

It's been a long time, d-land. In addition to celebrating my birthday and getting the hell outta Dodge, I managed to get sick again. Not sick enuff to be staying home from work, mind you -- but with sore throat and persistent, annoying, non-expectorating cough. It doesn't make for a restful night, I tells ya.

But, I did finally get outta town, which was really good. SF was a lot of fun -- I met and reaquainted myself with some fine folks. I saw arty things. I saw and met some of my teen idols . I bought 7 CDs for 60 bucks at Ameoba, and was then also gifted with several more -- including a generous collection of field recordings from a friend who turned out (unexpectedly) to be the brother of my host (the world, she is so very small). I took tons of pictures, but as I have yet to buy a digital camera of my own, we will have to wait patiently until the pics are developed, old-school stylee.

I went to many fine bookstores, and bought a kite (my current drug of choice) in Chinatown. I crawled over the drum bridge in the Japanese tea garden at Golden Gate park and realized that I had been there many eons ago as a wee lass on a school field trip. I shlepped gear around for two live performances and indulged in some birthday cocktails.

I arrrrr-ived home in time to dress up as a pirate for a work function.

Above all, I did my best to avoid news of the war, because I'm finding it too painful to talk about. My war-time state can best be described as shock.

But I am back to work now, and busying myself with wading thru the 400+ emails I received in the interim. The girl is happy that I'm back and has been freed from her self-imposed exile under the bed.

It's early, it's light, and I should be in the shower by now.