I Wasn't Even Supposed To Be Here Today
2006-03-07, 16:26

My wife has become a con artist. She played me like an accordion last week. I mean, there I was, fretting about how I come within a hair's breath of dying every time I fall asleep, and she asks whether I'd want to do something for a talent show/fund raiser coming up at the end of the month, try outs for which were on Saturday. I was all, 'no way, Jose, I got too much rattling in my brain to deal with singing a ditty right now.' So she resigns herself to looking for a solo number.

As H is an alto, there's basically nothing to sing, at least in its original key. Everything's written for soprano. Same problem with being a bass - you've got Leonard Cohen, Crash Test Dummies, or you get relegated to being backup. Eventually she found herself a site that would let you find and transpose a song to print out for a nominal fee (as if any fee is nominal for us these days). It was a song we both know, 'Runaway' by the Corrs. It's one of those songs we sing together in the car, me doing harmony. The arrangement they had was pretty atrocious as far as the piano accompaniment went, so I says to the man, "Man," I says, "the song is pretty simple, I could always play guitar instead." I wasn't thinking about it; I was sick; something. Anyway, I went from not participating at all, to singing harmony and playing guitar, while H sang the melody and played her fiddle in the appropriate places. We patched the song together on Friday night and 'tried out' (a.k.a. volunteered - the try out was mainly just for weeding out the awful ones or ones with inappropriate acts) the next morning. For some reason, they thought we sounded good, even as we tried to play amidst a thirteen- and eight-year old chasing a toddler back and forth across the stage. If one of us had been juggling (especially the baby), it would have been perfect. It was the picture of 'wacky family'. Which we are, there's no denying it.

The rest of Saturday was pretty sedate, as - did I mention? - we were both sick. H took a nap. I got the baby to sleep for a while and dozed on the couch myself, <geek>at least until I got a few sweet, precious minutes with the PS2. As it is with most forms of entertainment, I'm lagging behind in the list of games to play, so I'm currently making my way through Jak and Daxter. So new, so current, so cutting edge. It's pretty easy, but fun. I'm already about half way through it. It's too similar to Spyro to be hard</geek>.

Sunday was, of course, Oscar night, which to me means one important thing - Chinese food. Don't ask me how I got started, but ever since I started living on my own, I got Chinese for Oscar night. The first time I remember - I'd just moved into an apartment the day previous and all there was in the living room (my roommate was to move in a couple of days later with the rest of the d�cor) was my big black chair, an end table and the TV on a milk crate. So I ordered some sweet and sour chicken and enjoyed an evening of decadent bachelorhood. And because I moved three times again in the next four years, that time of year was usually transient for me and take out was appropriate, rather than keep the dishes unpacked that much longer. And so, I've done it most every Oscar night since. Naturally, I'm trying to impose what little tradition I have from my meager existence on my family, so Happy Garden it was. And happy tummy.

-- End Transmission --