A Tuesday

Yesterday was up and down.

Morning: Mixed performance review at work. Near-tears involved at key moments. Boss comment: "You've seemed a bit off the last month or so. Would you agree? Instead of giving your normal 110%, you're only at, like 90?"

Noon: First ever successful parking ticket appeal at City Hall, resulting in $100 that can now be earmarked instead for coffee. Followed shortly thereafter by acquisition of first ever (110% legal) resident parking sticker, despite my earlier assurances to the contrary, since the process was held up by said $100 parking ticket. As I wrote in text to a friend, "Shazam!"

Evening: Church council meeting. I'm the secretary. 3.5 hours on a folding chair in a Back Bay basement, taking minutes. Although my friend and council colleague, Chris, provided some excellent Flying Dog Ale to make the proceedings go down smoother. Sometimes church business does go better with beer. Although it does certainly go slower.

Late Evening: Ride home from said meeting on the #9. iPod listening choice: Indigo Girls, 1200 Curfews. In the way that sometimes, some nights, some songs just make you, listened harder than necessary to the dressing-room cover of Gerard McHugh's "Thin Line," to wit:

i thought the time was passed when i could
find beauty in the birds
i set the stage and the scenery
rehearsing every word

with my confidence on fire
i set to fixin' up my roles
my separation of desires
just left me deeper down the hole

now i'm tryin to get back
to what i know that i should be
hoping to God that i was just
a temporary absentee

yeah when i tried to make it more
well it was always less
it's a thin line between pleasing yourself
and pleasing somebody else

Very Late Evening. Fried up a $2 steak with onions, tried to pair it with seriously overaged and overchilled Sangiovese from the fridge. Realized with some heavy-handedness that I'm on that thin line a lot these days. Grateful for coffeehouse songs from 1994 that still have truth about the ears.