Potpourri No. 26

A few days ago, I started writing a post and never finished it. I tried working on it again the next day, and it just didn’t go anywhere. I think it’s partially because I’m under the weather. And so, having wanted to post but not having it in me to write much about anything, I’m falling back on doing yet another potpourri post.

Sick & Tired
Over the weekend, I came down with a cold. I’m still feeling rather blah, but it fluctuates quite a bit throughout the day. Truth be told, I’m glad I haven’t felt worse. The illness hit me on Thursday afternoon. At noon, I was feeling a little bit sick, and by 5 p.m., I was feeling like crap. In my own experience, this was quite strange. Often when you’re getting sick, you might feel it creeping in throughout the day, so that by the time you go to bed, you feel slightly yucky, but then you wake up feeling horrible. It was weird to me to take such a nosedive over the course of a few afternoon hours. I was really worried I’d wake up on Friday morning feeling sicker than I have in years, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I expected. Still, it’s been enough that I have little momentum and quickly run out of whatever momentum I’ve got. It’s perfect timing, in some respects, as I’m actually fairly caught up on everything I need to be doing for school. I have a paper due a week from today, but I have nothing between now and then to stand in my way. Not even basic class readings, which I’ve already done for this week. Nice. But, despite it all, I’m staying home from my afternoon class today. If memory serves me correctly, this is the first time I will have missed a class since becoming a grad student over three years ago—not counting the several that I missed after getting in a car accident, which I guess was plenty, but they weren’t nearly so voluntary.

Happy Anniversary … You Know, Last Week
Last week, Melanie and I celebrated our four-year wedding anniversary. I probably should have acknowledged it by now, but I was worried I’d end up saying the same exact stuff I said last year—that I can’t believe we haven’t been married much, much longer than that. Four years sounds so insignificant for being such a significant part of my life! But anyway, we kept celebrations to a minimum. We’re hoping someday in the near future to go out on an actual date, just the two of us, but we’ve yet to arrange it. For now, we settled on having a really nice dinner at home—which was quite generous on Melanie’s part, because she orchestrated the whole thing. She made homemade manicotti, with fresh spinach and fresh garlic among the stuffing ingredients, and an extremely delicious spinach salad with strawberries, pecans, and a yummy poppy seed vinaigrette. It was fantastic. I’ve really been blessed to be married to a woman that is so fond of stretching her culinary muscles. I’ve been the lucky recipient of many delicious forays into what is, for us at least, uncharted gastronomical territory. It’s the slightest touches that make me feel so incredibly pampered—fresh parsley in the chicken fettuccine alfredo, fresh basil on the homemade pizza, etc. These things not only kick everything up a notch, they make me feel spoiled rotten. In fact, it gives me new perspective on that old saying, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” I fell in love with Melanie long before I tasted anything she had made, but maybe the point of that saying is not that you can make a man fall in love with you by feeding him well (although that probably has some merit), but that you can make him feel loved by feeding him well. In my case, that has certainly been true. Thanks, darling!

Getting Punk’d
Somehow or another, I’ve ended up on a punk rock kick lately. It’s always refreshing to change musical gears a little bit, and this has been particularly revitalizing for me. It’s made me eager to play more guitar and do more songwriting. I’ve even found myself writing music in my head with a frequency I haven’t done in years. Time and time again, I have admitted that one of my greatest fears in life is not doing more with music and then regretting it. It’s not like I want to be a touring musician, but surely I could play guitar and write songs regularly, right? Anyway, it’s been a lot of fun to listen to some of the old bands I already had some decent exposure to (such as Dag Nasty, Descendents, and SNFU) and to discover some of those bands whom I had heard of but, outside of maybe a song or two, not really heard. I’ve found a couple that I’m extremely excited about—Mission of Burma and Hüsker Dü. I’ve been able to listen to a lot of their material online, and I’m loving it. The guitarist for the latter band, Bob Mould, continues to make awesome (non-punk from what I’ve heard) music as a solo artist. I’m practically ready to add his name to my list of favorite musicians based on what I’ve heard of his work, solo or otherwise. It’s pretty darn exciting when you think to yourself, “I’ve got to buy this album” after hearing five seconds of one song by somebody. That’s exactly how I felt upon hearing the first five seconds of “I’m Sorry, Baby, But You Can’t Stand in My Light Any More” on Bob Mould’s MySpace page, and I’m not exaggerating. Awesome stuff. On the downside, by discovering all these bands, I’ve now added several dozen albums to my already extensive to-buy list. I can’t wait until I make the big bucks as a professional philosopher!