In which the Strangeness and Contrariness of Life faithfully manifest themselves.

ith the machinery of weight loss running smoothly, the appearance of a monkey wrench was inevitable. In response to  the call of its ancestral destiny, a monkey wrench duly showed up. And the manner of its arrival was thus. 

     Assorted studies have revealed that one the necessary conditions for catching a cold (perhaps the only truly essential one) is dehydration. Your common mucous membrane is quite happy with its job of slipping the occasional stray rhino-virus on its way, as long as it is sufficiently hydrated. (The membrane, not the virus. I don't know if viruses are happier when hydrated, and face it, nobody cares, because nobody loves a rhino-virus. The way that they reproduce should make it clear that rhino-viruses are not even attractive to other rhino-viruses, and I'm not surprised in the least. But I digress.) One of the problems of the training programme I've been on, is that you sweat. A lot. There is a fix for that, which oddly enough consists of drinking water by the gallon. Still for various reasons, (the taste of the local water is one) a couple of weeks ago, I got nicely dried out, which the local rhino-viruses took as an excuse to roll up and start squatting in my sinuses, writing graffiti on the walls, throwing all night raves, and never cleaning the bathtub. Overall, not good tenants. 

     "Okay," said I, "I'll just carry on as I was." Which I did... until late last week. At that point between exhaustion, bad sleep, and lack of food, things took a turn for the worse. By Thursday, the viruses had started to file badly written court documents asserting adverse possession of the sinuses on the left side of my head, and I wound up mostly in bed for about three days. 

     Good news: I live in a civilized country, where one can purchase codeine over the counter. This greatly relieves the, ahem, discomfort associated with raving viruses in one's sinuses. 

     Bad news: I can't take ephedra based decongestants. Which would have helped, a lot.

     Good news: Doctor Who is on Netflix. Which helps, more than I would have imagined. 

     By Monday, I was back in the gym. I did about half a workout, and found myself looking for reasons not to go to sleep on the floor, beside the squat rack. This was taken as a sign that it was time to go home. I finally got a really good night's sleep, which also helps. 

     Today, in celebration of the temporary and anomalous lack of blizzards, I went for a walk. Allow, y'r o'b't correspondent, at this point, a small divergence to rave about one of the greatest websites in the world: http://gmap-pedometer.com/ This is a development on top of Google maps, which allows you to track the distance you walk (or drive or run, or bike, or whatever.)  It will give you a number of details of your walk, including the elevation changes and, a calorie counter! So, even in the absence of The Cardio Machines, there is impartial evidence of a 750 calorie workout.

     Based on this, y'r o'b't correspondent can be pronounced "Back to normal," for vaguely defined values of normal. The weather is also back to normal (for here.) When I click on the weather network, it just says, "Honestly, now, do you really want to know?"

     The inability to work out did not put any weight back on me, I'm happy to see. 

     While it's good to be working out again, and will be better when I can drop the intensity below "Kamikaze pilot on three-day meth binge," my musical situation is really strange. There's no band to play in. I still practise, and might arguably be getting better, but even so, there's a strange feeling of, "and then?" I miss the Trafalgar Players more than I can say.  

     The same malaise, (aggravated by the pernicious interference of gravity) affects the realignment of the studio. I've just about figured how to make it all work, but question keeps coming up, "and then?" 

     More dispatches to come, on the road to finding out.