Erkältet and Feeling Like Some of the Seven Dwarfs

Nope, it is not a title of a movie (though it could be one of the chapters of "Life of Bryan") but rather the feeling that I have every time I catch cold.

All through last fall, especially when the weather got quite cold in Frankfurt, I went out of my way to stay healthy, eat right, exercise, and avoid getting sick.  This proved a little tricky over Christmas break during my stateside trip, as my sister, my father, and my nephew all experienced some cold like symptoms during my visit. 

Fortunately, I stayed healthy over the next weeks and months.  There were a couple of nervous moments in January when I thought I was about to come down with something, but I fought my way through it.  Life has been a bit quiet during this first part of 2017, and I am not out and about quite as much as I am used to.  There are lots of reasons for this, but I will save that for a later topic.  I can simply summarize it by saying I haven't recently felt like singing "If You're Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands" at the top of my lungs each day. 

At any rate, with my regular trips to the gym and my efforts to stay healthy, I have been feeling pretty lucky to stay out of the sick bay. 

Until two days ago.

Late last week, I got up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, and somehow managed to squeeze the plastic bottle in a way that splashed me right in the face.  Normally, I would find this rather humorous, but at 2am in the dark kitchen, I was more bemused than anything else.  And wet. 

The next morning, I did manage to chuckle about the experience, putting it into the category of  (sort of) funny things that can happen to oneself, like inadvertently spraying yourself in the eye with an aerosol can or tripping on an invisible step while walking down the street. 

My mental note to try and avoid repeating the water splashing in the future paid off, as I got through the weekend without further incident, until Monday morning when I sneezed three times in quick succession. 

Shit, I am coming down with a cold. 

Sure enough, the rest of the day just went downhill.  Nonstop sneezing, drippy nose, the works.  I had hoped that things would quickly progress into the simply congested stage, but I am still in drippy sneezy mode right now.  That basically means that I have gone through several boxes of tissue so far. 

This morning, my nose is finally red, so I am not looking forward to the trip to the grocery store to pick up more tissue; Christmas was two months ago so the time for Rudolph is past us. 

For some reason, I always think of the 7 Dwarfs when I catch cold.  Sneezy and Grumpy, for obvious reasons, but I somehow connect with the other 5 for the duration.  Happy comes at the end, when I finally feel like I am returning to the land of the living. 

Over the past several years, I have begun to tire of working "home office."  However, it is weeks like this one where I am almost overjoyed to endure my misery in the solitude of my kitchen.

Here's hoping that the cold passes quickly and I am back on the beat very soon.

keep the faith
bryan

New Maps, The Information, and More Questions

I probably have Tim to thank for this:   sometimes we would be sitting on the couch on a lazy Sunday morning, or walking down the aisle at the grocery store, or whatever the random place, and he would call out a song title.  In most cases, the song was one we both new very very well, and in most cases, it was a song from a local band; a band we saw play regularly at one of the rock clubs around Dallas.

One band in particular, Course of Empire, is a personal favorite of mine, and Tim was truly enamored the first time he got to see them.  We could easily connect with the high energy, high intensity rock and roll.  The music was brilliant, and the live shows were absolutely incredible.  We would be so exhausted at the end of each show, but no matter how much beer was consumed (usually a lot), we never felt drunk.  It was that kind of show.

In Frankfurt, my friend Mono will occasionally utter a song title while we are standing around having a beer, and a similar feeling hits me:  a simple song title can instantly take you to a certain time and place.  It is not quite the same with Mono as with Tim, since most of the time the song is from years ago, but both of us are instantly taken back to wherever we happened to be back then.  An example might be Blue Monday.  Mono was already old enough to be in clubs when he first heard the song, while I was still trying to get through some 8th grade math class.   Still, Mono gets it, and understands the power and influence music can have.

These thoughts all entered my head earlier this week when I opened the door to the DHL delivery guy, who was bringing me a new world map that I had ordered on line.  New Maps, you see, was a particularly lively song from Course of Empire, and I remember Tim regularly mentioning the song title at least 15 times per week. 

I have always liked looking at maps.  My grandfather had a world map that covered an entire wall in his basement.  I loved that, and always have wanted to get something similar.  I found a suitable one for my small apartment in Dallas (albeit considerably smaller that my Grandfather's), but somehow never got around to purchasing a new map for flat in Frankfurt, until this past week. 

I am particularly excited about this map (take that as me dancing around my living similar to the way I would behave at a Course of Empire show....if you need a visual, there a few videos posted of COE playing some live gigs) because even though it doesn't cover the full wall in my living room, it is pretty big.  And, as an extra little bonus that I didn't realize at the time I was ordering it through Amazon, it comes with some little magnets in two colors.  One color is to mark where you have been, and the other is to mark where you want to go.  I am still living through the excitement that the map is up on my wall, so haven't even placed any magnets on the map yet. 

Each day, I spend a few minutes looking at the map and collecting my thoughts.  I am still amazed at where I have been, how far I have come, and that I am now in Germany for 10 years. The word that comes to my mind is unfassbar.

Some 25 years ago, while standing at a COE show, I never imagined that one day I would be standing in the middle of my living room lost in contemplation, cup of coffee in hand, map on the wall, with a little sountrack of COE playing in the background.

I must say, it is a nice start to an early Friday morning.