Slide on the ice

This morning I had the misfortune of slipping on the seemingly permanent ice on the walkway in front of the house, landing square on my ass and screwing up my back. So today was spent laying in bed filled with pain killers and trying to recover. I hope this is not serious. I was laid up for months in '03-'04 with a torn muscle in my lower back. I do not need a repeat of that incident. If tomorrow finds me still unable to stand, it's off to the doctor I go to have things checked out.

The next couple days will be fairly warm, and will hopefully get rid of the glacier currently occupying my yard. Jeff's truck needs some pretty major work, an intake manifold gaskets and motor/encoder assembly for the transfer case, plus a pair of hinge pins and bushings in the driver's door. I got an Optima battery to hopefully cram into the Mini Cooper, seeing that the original battery dies after the car sits for a few days. Contrast this to the 7+ year old battery that is still plugging away in the Stratus. That battery gets replaced very soon, since experience tells me that it will die a sudden death with little or no warning. These minor projects will happen if my back allows them to.

Prog points

This may or may not tag me as a 'musician'.

My 'ex', Kit Watkins, has just released his latest CD "SkyZone", a collection of ambient/experimental/meditative music previously unreleased on his other works. Included among the tracks is a piece that we did as a jam one night, "Harmonic Hum". This has me with a guitar, my ebow, lots of reverb along with Kit on keys and his new-at-the-time Yamaha fretless bass. The track resembles something Steve Roach might have come up with. Anyway, this one recording of us managed to find it's way out of the dustbin of obscurity and into a released CD. I forgot how flowing and dreamy the piece was.

I guess I really should dust off the axes here and try playing again. My increasingly stiff fingers keep telling me otherwise. Oh well. At least in terms of obscure progressive music, I have gained a point in street cred.

Go me!

(Kit's website is set to randomly play songs from SkyZone. "Harmonic Hum" is in the rotation. You can click the button on the upper right of the frame to turn off the music then turn it back on again, repeating the process until the track shows up. Better yet, leave it play, turn it up a bit, and relax.)