One half restless, one half happy, third half confused

Cloudburst. Suits my mood just fine, but it was no help at all getting the window cleaned. You see, we recently had a new paint job made on the house, and for that they had to take the shutters off. That and assorted paint blotches kinda made it less than optimal to see that blotch of sky and trees I see every morning from my bed. And of course, just as I was finished, the rain started. But the shutters held most of it off.

Anyway, now that the window is reasonably clean, the air outside smells of rain and I am still feeling a little like I should be doing one of hundreds of things, but lack the drive to do much of anything, I thought I'd write a little article here. Haven't blogged in a while, and just maybe that'll get it out of my system.

So, what's Uli been up to? Well, lots of theatre rehearsals. We're going to be having our premiere on July 2nd and additional performances on 5th, 7th, 8th and 9th. One month! PANIC!

Last week has also been "Music week" for me. It started when Rita suggested we go to the Schwøørz after rehearsal to hear the live Jazz band there. We'd already tried that the previous week, but since we'd had a much longer rehearsal back then, it had been crammed full. This time we still got a table, snd so Julia, Daniela, Rene, Rita, her friend Jenny from the US and me sat in the back, tending to our cocktails and lemonades, and listening to the two bands that were alternating.

I have to admit, it still sounded a tiny bit like elevator music to me, but they had a nice groove, and it was live music, so I really enjoyed it. A while later, Jenny started one of those riddles. You know, where you're told some odd situation where usually some person is dead, and you then have to ask some yes/no questions to find out what happened.

Jenny apparently loves those kinds of stories, and after she had us confused with one of hers (which we sadly didn't really solve because we didn't know what the word "bicycle" meant besides being a vehicle), we treated her to some we knew. The one with Romeo and Juliet being dead she got pretty quickly, and sadly I had to leave about five minutes before she would have solved the one with the guy getting out of the car in the middle of the road and shooting himself. But she sure was close to the solution.

Especially after Rita, who had asked one absurd question at the start and then sat there quietly, pretty much just went "Columbo" on us (though Peter Falk has nothing on her) and kind of spontaneously almost-solved the riddle. Frighteningly smart, that woman... But hey, when it comes to fear, you have my talent right there. You can't learn that, you know? You just have to have it.

Now, on to the next evening: Jörg was having another session at the Kulturfenster. I almost missed it because I took a nap after Uni that somehow decided to continue until 21:00, but I did finally wake up and walk over there. Sadly, I missed some of the singers there, but I was still in time to see Jörg play a few traditional Jewish Klezmer numbers. That's great music with a unique sense of humor.

After that, they went back to the more familiar stuff. A Pal of Jörg's from Music Academy did some guitar numbers, and a few others also did some Jazz, I think. Sadly, the Piano was a little low in volume on that latter one, and so half of the song wasn't really auible. Then came some Blues with a Saxophonist and a Harmonica player. With Jörg and the others backing them, and on some numbers even accompanied by one of the female singers I had missed. Those are the moments I wish I was a musician. But it looks like we may be trying to do "The Scotsman" and/or "The Sick Note" in a few weeks, which I know the lyrics to, so maybe with a little proding and poking from them, I can at least make the most of my meagre singing skills.

When Christoph wasn't on stage "wringing that neck", we sat in the front, listening to the music and occasionally talking, getting updated on the newest on shared friends and things like that. It was fun, as it always is when you're with Christoph somewhere. He's just this guy you hardly notice that keeps things together just by his mere presence. It's great to know him.

And after this wonderful evening and another rehearsal with Bastian to get the scenes we have together nailed, we'd be back yesterday, when I woke up at 4:30 in the morning because of a very weird dream. It was really unusual. I felt different than when I usually wokr up from a nightmare, and I wasn't so much frightened as usual, but rather surprised at being awake all of a sudden. The dream had felt sort of "shared", and then it felt like I had been "thrown out" of the dream by someone. Really odd, if you ask me, but that's the way it felt.

After talking about it with a good friend, I guess it was just anxiety about some of the things I'm planning to do. Though they really weren't any big things. New maybe, and not much certainty in them, but still, I didn't really notice they were occupying me that much. Problem is, it'll still be a while until I can do anything about it. But hey, at least it isn't a recurring dream.

Well, that's pretty much it for me right now. Long entry. Probably won't write much about anything in the next while, though. Oh, in case you need something to read, there's the very interesting web site of Tom Pittman, the genius who brought the world CompileIt! And who did a lot of other nifty programs. He also has an occasional blog and writes lots of interesting articles.Okay, I'm outta here.