Rough month, with a few bright spots

This past month, and particularly the last couple weeks, have been pretty tough. My sister, who has been fighting cancer for several years, recently took a sharp turn for the worse. She appears to have reached something of a plateau for now, but she's in pretty bad shape still and I don't think anybody knows what is going to happen, or when. So, that has been putting a fair amount of emotional strain on the family. I went down to Urbana, where she is in the hospital, for most of last week, and then a soon as I came back, I developed what I think is a sinus infection which has had me out of commission for a few days. At least I didn't get sick while I was down there.

But there have been a couple bright spots, mainly having to do with my band, the Xylenes. First, we finally put up a recording of a Xylenes original on our MySpace page. "Furlough Day" was written by Mort Ames and me---Mort wrote lyrics, and I put them to music. The subject matter may be of limited interest, but it's a catchy song, and we played it at our office Christmas party to a very warm reception.

We also recently recorded a couple versions of an old standard, "Tonight You Belong To Me", for a compilation CD that a friend of mine is putting together. I should have the final version of that song within the next few days and when I do I'll put it up on the MySpace site as well. In the mean time, Mort posted a video of Crystal and Kelly recording vocals for the "feline" version of the song on his Facebook page.

This Saturday is opening day for the 2009 Roller Derby season---I hope I'm well enough to attend! I'm going to the doctor this afternoon and hopefully some antibiotics will have me back in the pink by the weekend.

Looking back, I started this blog on New Years' Day 2008, and for all the bad things that have happened recently I still feel fairly hopeful for the future. I will try to blog more often! Have a happy!