Good karma helped Paris Claire and helped levitate the falling rack. I will drink to both.

Glad Claire is cancer free!

And glad the audio damage wasn't worse. Wish I were there to attach it to the studs for you.

Too easy.

You should take this as an omen. The audio gods want you to upgrade!

Al, glad to hear that Claire is doing so well after her surgery. Of course you'll have to tell her that she owes all of us a beer.

Also, I swear that I didn't back into your stand!

Glad to hear that Claire is doing well Al,

Also, for your turntable shelf, you need one of these:

Glad to hear that both your friend and your system are blessed with resilience.

When the karma is going in the right direction people and high end gear can survive some serious adversity and come out OK.

You should take this as an omen. The audio gods want you to upgrade!

This.

Thanks for all the support and those other comments. Nate and Steve, I would love to fly you out here to engineer a solution and screw studs--you guys pick which task is right for you. I have that exact stud finder (even without Fitz here) and feel pretty confident that the only thing I need to upgrade is the screws.

Tonight, Claire and I went to a "salon" for SF Jazz donors. It was at the home of a venture capitalist who is also an audiophile and the chairman of Fender. He has one of a kind guitars on display, including a neon orange Esquire that Bruce Springsteen gave him. Brazilian pianist and singer Eliane Elias and her husband Mark Johnson, who played bass with Bill Evans for the last three years of Evans' life, performed for 45 minutes or so. It was excellent and we felt very spoiled to see a performance like that in a living room with 25 or 30 people. They both play remarkably well and she has a great voice and personality to bring it all together.

Just flew back in from a remote ranch, where I had to oversee a job. No internet or cell service for a week is just brutal these days. What a wimp I've become!

Brokeback Mountain?

@Shelly - 'grat on the pull up! Haven't seen many women who could do that!

@Al- more good thoughts your way for Claire de Paris, and for more safe equipment/less poltergeists!

Brokeback Mountain?

, I could only dream. The reality was far more sobering.

We are sitting at the airport in Indy waiting to board our plane to DC.

I'm in the kind of "do not fuck with me" mood today that is going to cause me to say something stupid but which feels so good. We'll see if I'm still employed later.

I won't fuck with you.

Are you allowed to keep bourbon in your office?

We are sitting at the airport in Indy waiting to board our plane to DC.

Approved? Isn't Jeff in DC right now as well?

Yay for Claire de Paris! Sorry to say Al, it is time to upgrade your audio gear (except for the Cicadas). Your "old" gear has some bad juju.

Nonetheless I am glad to hear the damage was minimal and you can still play music for the time being.

As for me spent the last hour with a Dell tech guy as he swapped out the motherboard on my new Dell XPS. I spent an hour online last week with Dell's customer service trying to trouble shoot why this new friggin' Dell cannot send a digital signal to my external DAC. I tried two different optical cables, I tried iTunes, Foobar even Microsoft Audio and two different dacs. The only way I can play music is through the green audio jack and you know what that sounds like. I even performed clean reinstalls of the updated Realtek drivers from both the Realtek and Dell websites. Sometimes I hate 'puters.

Packing my bags in preparation to come home. Its been a good trip.

Packing my bags in preparation to come home. Its been a good trip.

Packing my bags in preparation to come home. Its been a good trip.

Aboot bloody time. It's getting tough staying awake at work without some banter.

**BRENT**

Messed around with LR and flickr/Smugmug after dinner to catch up on photos I haven't gotten around to uploading (grandparents have been impatiently waiting for new photos of their granddaughter). While doing so, I somehow managed to delete most of the tags/keywords I had applied to the piles of photos I uploaded onto flickr yesterday/today. As much as it annoys me that they're gone, I don't think I have the energy to go through them and add them back at this point.

Started getting a sore throat last night. Tried to go to bed early, instead I was up half the night - just couldn't get to sleep. This morning my throat is killing me and it is clear that I am sick. It wouldn't be so bad but I have to fly to North Carolina tomorrow to give an invited address and run a special session over the weekend. I need to work on my talk but all I want to do is sleep. Sigh.

Blah. Hope you feel better, Shelly. Hope it's a short sickness. I prescribe lots of rest, chicken soup, and some good music. Oh, and some would say whiskey and honey!

Feel better Shelly and good luck prepping for the talk.

I would love to be listening to music, resting, eating chicken soup and drinking whiskey and honey right now! Thanks for the sympathy John and Al.