I literally had to dust off my fiddle today. That�s how long it�s been since I picked the thing up. This does not, perhaps, bode well for Saturday�s open mike. The guitarist was swamped this week, so we scratched the idea of the Springsteen covers for the time being and we�re going to try to throw together a set on one rehearsal that will probably include him doing a couple of songs with me noodling along in the background and a couple of Irish tunes. But the Irish tunes aren�t coming back to me as rapidly as I would like. I�m definitely feeling rusty. Maybe I just need to drink some beer and hang out with some heavy smokers to get me in the proper mood. Or maybe some kick-ass shoes.

I�ve been very flighty today. Mostly it�s due to my sense of complete demoralization by the diss. This is what happens, they tell me, as you�re finishing: the wild careenings from the highest peaks to the depths of despair. Knowing this doesn�t make it better. Crawling under a rock is sounding pretty good right now. And so it is with a mixture of relief and dread that I face AJ�s return to summer camp tomorrow. Hooray! I get time to work! Except, oh no! I must face the diss.

I also owe two people (you know who you are) the benefit of my editorial skills and I am way behind on that as well. The acceleration of tasks I cannot seem to complete in a timely fashion is adding to my rock subversion tendencies. Apparently I can hide but I can�t run.

Besides excessive self-pity, the other reason for my failure to complete any tasks today is my concern for resident feline Mrs. Stein, who will be undergoing general anesthesia tomorrow while the vet attempts to extract her remaining teeth. I�m glad they made me book the surgery when I took her in the other day, because Mrs. Stein on kitty morphine is a very happy cat. She doesn�t look like she needs much help at this point. But I�m fairly certain that as soon as the drugs run out we�ll be returning to her unhappy place. So I will take her to the vet tomorrow at 7:30. AJ is going to want to go along. At our last visit, our fabulous new vet let him listen to Mrs. Stein�s heartbeat through his stethoscope. He had just been reading about how smaller animals have faster heartbeats and he wanted to hear for himself.

AJ�s ongoing pursuit of scientific knowledge has, however, taken him over into the realm of physics this week. He has been learning about momentum and its relation to mass and velocity. As with most things he is reading about, he likes to try to explain them to other people. Hence this conversation with The Girl Next Door, who probably wasn�t expecting to talk about physics when she came over yesterday:

AJ: Do you know what momentum is?
TGND: Momentum? What�s that?
AJ: Well, first you have to be moving.
TGND: (who is sitting on the floor and starts waving her arms in the air) Like this?
AJ: Yes, well, no. You have to be moving TO somewhere.
TGND: (who does not wish to get up) Oh. Well, it�s okay that I don�t have momentum.
AJ: Um, yeah.

Perhaps a discussion about inertia would have gone over better.

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