Sounds: Good

I can hear again. It was an interesting thing, having diminshed hearing for so long - very educational, encouraged empathy for the hearing-impaired, inspired me to brush up on my ASL, etc. - but I'm glad it's over. Yay, antibiotics. Yay, my doctor, who saw fit to prescribe them. I'm as worried about the overprescription of antibiotics as the next over-anxious person, but if there were ever a reason to prescribe them, it was this. Plus, my sore throat is gone and my hair looks great. (I don't know that that can be contributed to antibiotics, but, hey. Know your assets.)

So! What have I been doing with my restored hearing? This, that, the other. Nothing terribly monumental, but generally keeping busy enough to ignore the encroaching darkness. (People tell me that I always seem happy, upbeat, friendly, energetic, all that good stuff. I try to tell them that it hides a core of depression and malaise, but I don't think they quite believe me.) Working, getting a couple of shows together, spending time with my friends, generally trying not to sit around my room. The usual strategy.

Scenes from my exciting Hollywood life:

Last Wednesday, I went to the Cat & Fiddle for a meetup that never quite happened. (Which was fine. I had a notebook and got some writing done.) I thought I saw Shane MacGowan, but it could have been just some random Irish guy with bad teeth and an air of drunken indestructibility.

This past Saturday, I saw my friends the Tiny Bandeleros at Acme, which was followed by an excursion to The Abbey. Ah, the Abbey. What can one say about the Abbey? The male clientele are interested in each other, the female clientele are mostly interested in the guys who don't usually go there (and sometimes in each other - some out of genuine interest, some out of a "When in Rome" thing), and the bartenders are pretty much the only straight guys in the place. Jenny P., who seems to know someone everywhere we go, has a hot bartender friend who brought us free drinks. Now, was drinking while taking antibiotics the smartest thing I've ever done? Probably not. Is it fun to get free chocolately drinks from a hot bartender? Yes. Said H.B. is expected at the Bandeleros show next week. As luck would have it, I was kind of looking for an excuse to not go to another show that night, so there you go. Not that I'm obligated to give a reason for skipping a show I've seen before which features someone with whom I'm completely fed up, but I do get kind of neurotic about that sort of thing. It's part of my, um, charm.

I've been making a lot of cat-ear hats. If any of those people who say they'd pay for them actually buy them, great. If not, I'm covered for presents.

The only not-fringe journalists who seem to be keeping an eye on the recount issues are Keith Olbermann at MSNBC and Kim Zetter at Wired News. The current crop of studies seems to indicate that there were problems in Florida, but it might have just been electronic issues with the touch-screen systems -- probably not enough of a problem to switch the state results, but worth investigating nonetheless. Ohio... is just a mess. The chances that Kerry might actually end up winning it are still small, but they've become large enough that Constitutional scholars are hot gets for the news shows. Every discipline does, eventually, have its day. And it looks like that day will be coming around every four years for a good long while.

Give me a vov! Give me a yud! What does that spell? OY!