There are two things worth mentioning tonight. I was driving to a piano recital to hear my choir director perform. At a stoplight on a VERY busy road, I started fooling with a fingernail that was shaggy. The day was gray and wet. I glanced up to see if the light had changed and since it hadn't, I looked down at my hands again and what do you suppose? Surprise, surprise, great blue spots appeared on both hands. Irregular blue spots the size of nickels, for crying out loud. This did not amuse KEM, in fact, if frightened her to the core. So, I stared at my hands thinking it was an optical illusion, but just more blue spots appeared. The only thing left to do was to look away because I am a big chicken and the idea of my eyes checking out was hardly appealing. But curiosity kills the cat, so after a moment I looked down again trusting I was merely losing it, but there they were again, multiple blue spots scattered across the backs of my hands. They just appeared, one after the next and my fervent prayer was, Go away, you horrible evil ink spots. By now the light had changed and I decided to move ahead rather than collapse in terror, head hanging over the steering wheel, blue spotted hands dangling limply, on about the busiest road in central east Florida.

I am pleased to report that the blue spots have not returned to haunt me . . . not yet anyway. I report all this because maybe one of you, my blogging friends, will tell me what it was/what to do. My first guess was something I looked at when I glanced up caused me to "see" things, you know, your eyes can play tricks. Then I thought it was some migraine manifestation, just a new form that I had not had the pleasure to make the acquaintance yet. Then I figured I have a brain tumor and days to live, well, that's a stretch, but I'm not one to shy away from dramatics. I do think I will call the eye doc as my eyes are having a hard year. I'm sure he'll give his old age speech, but still, better safe than sorry.

Well, then we met friends for a Florida Orchestra concert, I'm telling you, this has been a musical weekend unlike any other. The soloist for Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto was Markus Groh. He was the substitute because the scheduled world famous soloist Mikhail Rudy canceled due to tendinitis, isn't that sad? Those opening series of bombastic luscious gorgeous chords . . . if that's all I had heard, I would have floated home and been delirously happy forevermore. The performance was stunning, I'm not exaggerating, my gusher status notwithstanding. Of course, I sat there mesmerized that anyone at all could memorize tens of thousands of notes and execute them so superbly, flawlessly, exquisitely (calling all words into play), all at humanly impossible speed. Yes, it was the end all (word for the night). At the end the audience leapt to its feet and we thundered for curtain call after curtain call and were rewarded with Mr. Groh (he looked 25, but maybe he must be older) sitting back down at the piano and saying the director told him he should play something. It was very cute with his German accent. He charmed us with a delicate Franz Liszt piece. Ahhhh. He wore a long ponytail looped up, always interesting combined with tux tails.

BTW, I had a bad hair day, a VERY bad hair day. I became desperate and piled goop into my hair, positively saturated my head, various assortments of goop that have long lain dormant in bottles and tubes on back of shelf, in and of itself frightening to the Nth degree. Do you know what it means to go from bad to worse? With every fresh application of product, I looked worse than before. But that didn't stop me. I felt like a man doing the comb over the bald spot, you know, you're fighting for your life. But no matter how I arranged my hair, it cooperated not but was rather hideous with a capital H. Finally, I simply ran out of time and options. I was forced to walk out the door for the concert in a slight depression. I tried to find the hat Christa made me, in hopes if I slammed that down on my head it would tame the shame, but there was no use. I had to march onward with poofy hair and no one looks worse with poof than yours truly . . . no one. You'd think with all the gels and such that my hair would look plastered, really, I don't know what it looked like, but vastly unattractive comes to mind.

So, it was misting and all, very damp. I was pleased that when we got home tonight and I was forced to look in the mirror to remove my contact lenses, that my hair had vastly, just short of miraculously, improved. It even looked kinda smart. What's with those taters? Maybe it was the Wild Applause Shakedown. I don't know, but I'm not asking questions.

Okay, best be gittin'.

KEM of the Intriguing Day, bad, good, ugly and less ugly . . . exactly in that order

PS I'm annoyed that spellcheck has never heard of regular words like poofy. But only slightly annoyed.