The Incredible Ingrid in Concert…

Maybe I should ask Santa for a time-turner *wonders* Until he will give one to me for christmas I should go on and use the few idle minutes I have left of this afternoon to write about the Ingrid Michaelson concert. I am sooooo happy I found out about that on time, even though I failed to notice the show announcement on Ingrid’s myspace site. But on twitter she talked about being in Germany and I checked her site again and only an hour later I had bought the ticket.
The concert took place in “Gebäude 9″, a really really small club in Cologne (@oceans77: direkt an der Messe, also falsche Rheinseite *g*), which I never have heard of before. But of course Bro2 knew it and has been there before. He has been to all of the regions’ tiny clubs for some kind of obscure concert, I’d guess.
There were about 150 – 200 people at the concert, probably closer to 150 than to 200, so it was small and intimate, which was really nice. Ingrid isn’t know in Germany at all yet, and from the conversations I listened to before the show started, I gathered that most of them knew her music via myspace, Grey’s Anatomy or her support on the Jason Mraz tour earlier this year. There were a lot of students and listen to all this talk about classes and lectures and finding roommates  made me feel sooo old.

“I Just Wanna Be Ok…”

I don’t know what I did this weekend to annoy my lower back. But it hurts. Not as bad as a lumbago and not even as bad as it did in August (after my trip to London). But it hurt enough to not go to a committee meeting and the green party meeting tonight and see my GP instead. She doesn’t do any kind of manual therapy (I still miss my old one with his magic hands), but I guess I can give her treatment a try as well. So I got a few injections to loosen the tense muscles in my back + 10 minutes of heat treatment. This will be repeated tomorrow and the day after and I hope it will be much better then. I also have some heating pack on my back right now, because that definitely can’t hurt.

I’ll stay home for the next two days to give my back some rest and to even be able to go to the therapy appointments, but I’ll most probably will go to work (in the office) on Thursday and work on some stuff from home until then. I can write some of the text I wanted to write this week on this computer at home and just mail it to my co-worker. One of the many advantages of the internet.
If my back problems won’t get worse (which I hope they won’t) I will be on a concert on Wednesday night and I would feel bad to still call in sick after that, because actually I shouldn’t even be going to this concert, if I’m on sick leave. Which is no big deal with my co-worker and bosses and all, but I’d still feel bad about it.

Another advantage of the internet (and especially twitter in this case) is: You find out about upcoming concerts in time. I don’t know how I could miss the show dates on Ingrid Michaelsons myspace page, but I obviously did. She was the supporting act for Jason Mraz a few weeks ago, and I only found out about that when it already had taken place. And I wouldn’t have gone to Munich for that anway, but was mad at myself, that I hadn’t known about that in advance. So I was determined to keep an eye on her tour dates. But these slipped under my radar.

I feel… better

Not good yet, but better, which is a relief. The acute MS attack symptoms? Still there, but not as severe as they were almost a week ago. The meds side-effects? Still there, but either they also weakened or I only got used to them. They don’t bother me that much anymore. I’ll refrain from checking my weight for the next couple of days though, because all the hunger attacks will have put some weight on me. I got about 6 hours of sleep last night and felt rather well rested this morning, which was really weird. Due to some technical problems I didn’t manage to watch the new Grey’s before I left for the IVs and as I knew I wouldn’t be home before late afternoon I had to check out some reviews in advance. With this show I don’t really mind being spoiled. I think I’m going to like that episode, well parts of it at least. It was a relief to get me through the day :-)

Even my brain seems to be working again and made me realize, what I obviously didn’t wanted to acknowledge earlier this week. The historical novel series I’m currently reading gets trashier with every page. *sigh* I didn’t minded it that much while I was reading the first part in my drugged up state, but I had to put the second book away this morning at the neuro practice. Maybe it will finally teach my a lesson to NOT buy too many books of a series in advance without making sure I’m really going to like it well enough to read through all of them. The stack of unread books I’m planning to sell on Ebay is growing constantly. But I’m happy that my brain is obviously back in a state where I can read novels with a bit more substance again. I’m not sure if I’m willing and able to read some more serious non-fictional stuff yet, but I don’t have to.
At the neuro practice this morning I remembered that the “Made of Honour” DVD was supposed to come out today and of course I had to get to the store and buy it at once. Insanely overpriced, but I need something to indulge in to get my through the withdrawel tomorrow. Pain-meds and Paddy on the screen should help with the pain I will feel in every muscle of my upper body starting tomorrow afternoon, 30 hours after the last IV starts. So, yes, Paddy will definitely have to help with that.

I guess I will start indulging with Grey’s right now after I’ve finished this post. And then it’s almost hockey radio broadcast time. And I’ll probably have my Grey’s review up later tonight as well. I should use the time till tomorrow afternoon to be productive.

Totally unrelated: “You and I” from Ingrid Michaelson is my new favourite song at the moment. I can’t even explain why, but sometimes a song just “clicks”. With me at least. I LOVE it. Unfortunately I haven’t found an easy to access sample of the song, so you just have to trust me on this. Or you don’t. I’ll be loving the song anyway :-)

It’s Difficult To Not Be Complaining…

This morning I was sure that today’s post could only be a really whiny one. And I’m still in mostly a whiny mood, but I should start with some good news after all: The meds already show some effect. My cheek doesn’t feel that numb and I think my mouth isn’t that crooked anymore. I’m rather confident that all the symptoms will resolve over the next couple of days/weeks.
Good News #2: When I got home from the IVs this afternoon I found an Amazon US delivery, which I hadn’t expected so soon. Yay! I ordered the CDs last week and even though I choose a faster (and more expensive) shipping, I didn’t expected it before the beginning of November. Thanks to the $/EUR exchange rate in our favour I got two new CDs including shipping for 24,50 EUR. Awesome. And I can finally listen to the new Ingrid Michaelson album “Be OK” and I really like it. I have to check out the second CD later as well, “Down To Earth” from Jem.
And some more good news: This morning the temperature was around 7 °C, which is not necessarily good news, I know. But that made me get one of my favourite Canada souvenirs out of the closet to finally wear it. Ok, I also wore it to cheer me up.

Back in the ordinary world…

I’m back and wish I wasn’t. :-( I already fall back into my old habbits of spending too much time online for no important reason. Except catching up with ALL of my mails and blogs and stories I read, because although I went online every day to read some stuff I missed out on so many things. And I’m still on vacation and can do whatever I want with my time, but I feel oddly guilty *sigh* It’s just hard to break these habits, especially back in the ordinary everyday life. During my vacation I was too busy or too tired to spend much time online, which at least is proof that it indeed was a wonderful and relaxing vacation. I’ll post some pictures and more details later this week.

I was pretty successful in not thinking about work (except for a voicemail from boss #2 who forgot I was on vacation) or local politics (except for some mails and one phonecall letting me know about thwarted strategic plans for the next election). I even get some work done on my term paper, which probably is about 75% done and I’ve basically still got three full days to work on that. It’s due on the 18th, but I have to go back to work on Monday, so I should have it done on Sunday evening at the latest.

Too tired to come up with a meaningful title…

I’m not falling in any kind. Not Apart and not in love, although I wouldn’t mind that, but that’s a different story.  To be honest I don’t even have any idea what I’m trying to say with the first two sentences. I just needed some sort of introduction to this post, in which I only wanted to write about two (new) songs which I really like at the moment and whose chorus lyrics include falling or to fall… I know it’s a really far-fetched connection and no reason at all to combine these songs in one post. But I’m feeling pretty drained right now after 3 days at work (which sucked for the most parts due to my coworker) and local politics meeting on Monday night and today and the prospect of work + another political evening meeting tomorrow night and an extra day at work on Friday. I need a vacation! [Absolutely unintentionally, I'm listening to another "falling" song while I'm writing this, I just thought I should mention it *g*]