A bit of an update

Tonight I made tomatillo salsa: oven-roasted tomatillos and jalapenos, sauteed garlic, onions and jalapenos, all blended together with some salt, pepper and lime juice. Fry up some eggs and refried beans, and you've got a plate of huevos rancheros - a Ken classic and one of my favorites. It was so good I just made another plate now! So that's 7 eggs, most of a can of refried beans, and about a cup of salsa. I'm always glad when I want to and am able to eat a bunch of hearty food like that.

The idea and ingredients for the salsa came from the Strip District, where Mom, Melanie and I went yesterday. Mel spent the day with us, which was cool. We had a great lunch at a swanky "Island cuisine" place at the strip, and for dinner we had wine, crazy cheeses, fruits and baguette. Really good stuff. Not the way I expected to spend my day off, but not a loss by any means.

I've got a story for you: Back in the day we had this tape labeled "Songs and Sounds of the Sea," and we boys would listen to it and drink in the hearty vocals and tight harmonies, all exuding the mystique of the old whaling sailing days. I tried to find a copy of that album about a month ago, but my google search showed that it was a National Geographic Society record made in the 70's, and never re-released. After a couple emails I contacted a "John Roberts" from a seafaring music website, and he said he had a CD copy of the record that he'd made. A week later, I got a package in the mail, and there it was! Turns out John Roberts is one of the artists on the album, too! So I've been eating it up, and it has fueled my taste for genuine, folk-type music. If anybody's interested, I'd be happy to hook you up with a copy of the CD. As far as I'm concerned, it is fanTAStic music and well worth investing in. There's a spark in that album that just.. ah man. I dunno :-)

Today I had some swelling poking down from the top of my mouth, back by my throat. ARG. The classic beginning sign of a cold. Dude, I've just spent the last MONTH being sick. M O N T H. First regular flu killed about 2 weeks. Then I was over it and up to Akron for a weekend, but my stomach started giving me problems, and I got dizzy a few times, and slept a bunch, and when I got home Monday I had full-blown stomach flu for 2 days. Then Thursday, when I was all better, I tried eating normally, and had a reaction to something that caused my gut to empty itself over the course of a couple hours. Like, empty. Not a good time. So I took it even slower with foods after that, and at last the next Tuesday I was back to normal. Then, a couple hours after lunch at work, the exact same rumblings started down in my gut. In a second my mind made the connection: My vitamins! I take a multivitamin, glucosamine for my crappy joints, and "chorella," which is like a concentrated green vegetable supplement. I think it's the chorella that racked me out. Anyway, I cried to God in desperation and dismay, and by His mercy (and a lot of concentrating and laying motionless in the hot end locker room), I made it out with just one puke. No more vitamins for now! :-/
So yeah - I really don't want to be sick again. We'll see. I slept a lot today. Ugh. Another day off basically wasted -- waiting for the time to pass.. drifting semi-aimlessly, sleeping if I feel tired, potsing about on the exercise bike, grabbing a guitar for a few minutes, changing the membrane on our water filter system, watching TV for a couple hours... a day almost utterly wasted. This is killing me at this moment: it's like I have no vision, but really I have no drive. No drive to buckle down and read a bunch of the Bible, or do a study, or try to fix my recording interface again, or get my butt outside and rake the leaves, or SOMETHING! People who accomplish stuff don't waste time, and I'm sitting here at the end of one of many days that I have basically wasted.

I don't think things will stay this way indefinitely, but it still kills me. It kills me not so much that I wasted the day, but that I'm not the kind of person who uses their time with purpose and drive and diligence. You don't accomplish things like writing books or recording albums or gaining experiences or moving upward in any area or profession if you don't live that way.

We'll see what God has for me to do. For now, I've gotta get up at 4:30am tomorrow and go to work.