Eyes Wide Shut

What a week. Maybe my body was pissed at me for attempting to travel across the country for a weekend; maybe I just haven't gotten enough sleep. Regardless, I'm kind of falling apart.

First, I pulled my neck while sleeping and had absolutely no range of motion in my head. Needless to say, I didn't teach spinning. The upside is that now I understand what people mean when they say a muscle seized and they can't move it. I always just thought...well, just move it...it can't hurt THAT much. But actually...yeah, it DOES hurt, and your muscle just won't move. It's not a matter of dealing with pain or not; it's just a matter of possibility, and the lack thereof.

Then, I bit my lip. Twice. In the same spot. Hard. And there was lots of blood. And I play the flute and the combination of swollen lip and piece of metal on lip aren't really working hand in hand.

And now? Last night, I used this face wash that I KNEW I was allergic to (why, WHY? did I use it anyway??!), and so this morning my eyes are all red and swollen and I look a little too much a like a pug dog.

And of course this is the Kona Challenge weekend and I look like a mutant with my red eyes and busted lip. Here's to hoping that a hot compress and Advil will work.

I went into the city and saw my old teacher from Cleveland for dinner last night. He was in New York for a series of concerts, and was nice enough to meet me for dinner. It was really great to see him; it reminded me that not everything in Cleveland is bad, and (more importantly) that he's a really awesome person and I was lucky to get to know him for 6 years.

After dinner, I was supposed to go to the beat box flutist's CD opening, but the person I was going to go with ditched at the last minute, and I was too chicken-shit to go by myself. And so I wandered around New York for a couple of hours, bought a really cool race outfit for Philly, and then headed back home via the train. It was a nice evening, actually.

And the miracle of the week? That by some insane coincidence, BOTH of my classes are paper-less for the next week. That's right, I might have to read some boring articles, but for the next week, I will not have to write anything about music or philosophy or theory or anything else where I pretend to be smarter than I actually am.

And so this weekend I take 'field tests' to see if I'm one of the 6 out of 100 people that will be picked for this Kona Challenge thing. I'm excited, a little nervous, and appropriately hopeful. Wish me luck...