Wow, I’m still feeling the effects of a very wonderful weekend. I didn’t get too much work done around the house—there’s still a pile of uncut tree branches in my front yard from last weekend—but I really had an enjoyable time. The weather was pretty bad, especially on Sunday, so I played video games, watched the French Connection on video, went out to dinner at our local Mexican place, read the Sunday newspaper in front of the fire until 3 o’clock, went to Seabold Second Saturday and saw some really good amateur music. One guy did a really whispery version of Bruce Springsteen’s “One Step Up.” Another did a absolutely mesmerizing instrumental piece on an instrument I had only seen one other time before, called a thumb piano. He was, by far, the highlight. We were sitting in the second row, so we could see him frantically thumbing away at the prongs of this instrument—just watching him play was enough to put me nearly in a hypnotic trance, but the sound this little thing made was soothing in the way that tuning forks are. Everything was aligned, I guess. All day at work I felt lucky to be alive.