New GBS album art!

I am up too damned early, but as long as I'm at the keyboard anyway, I shall now take this time to note that the album art for the new Great Big Sea record, The Hard and the Easy, has shown up on the front page of greatbigsea.com. This art makes me giggle, because every time I look at it I think of the second-season Red Dwarf episode "Better Than Life", wherein Cat is introducing Lister and Rimmer to his virtual girlfriend, who's half-woman and half-fish. And the fish part is on the top. As quoted thusly up on imdb.com:

Holly: What's happening, dudes?
The Cat: We're having a really nice time. I'm dating Marilyn Monroe and also I have another girlfriend who's a mermaid. She's half woman, half fish.
[turns round to look]
The Cat: It's Miranda, my girlfriend!
[As she comes out of the water we see that the top half of her is a fish, the bottom half is a woman]
Holly: Somehow I'd imagined she'd be a woman on top and a fish on the bottom.
The Cat: No, that's the *stupid* way round!

With cover art like this, anyway, on an all-Newfoundland-trad album, I expect there to be a high quantity of fish and sex in the lyrics. Possibly even in the same songs. ;)

Also, for those interested, a track list, the cover art, and a sample snippet of one of the songs, "Captain Kidd", can be found here. And I'm particularly interested in hearing "Old Polina", since I'd actually heard of this ditty via an OKPer ages ago when asking him about other Newfoundland traditional songs, and "The River Driver", which both seimaisin and otoselkie have now heard live.

For New Orleans

This song has been stuck in my head all morning. It's from the soundtrack to Elvis Presley's best movie, King Creole. In the recording, it's played up-tempo, saucy, with a lot of brass. Right now, though... I'm more thinking a single soulful-voiced singer at a piano in a smoke-filled bar, slow tempo, soft volume, and a lone spotlight. Right now it feels like it ought to be a bluesy lament.

I really hope the last verse of the song picks up its tempo again. I want to hear those horns coming back.

"New Orleans"
Sid Tepper & Roy C. Bennett

You'll never know
What heaven means
Until you been down to New Orleans
You ain't been livin' till you cuddle and coo
With a black-eyed baby by the old bayou

You've never seen
You've never seen those kewpie doll queens like they got 'em
(Where?) In New Orleans
Ooh-ooh, they love you like-uh no one can
It makes you awful glad that you were born a man

If you ain't been there
Then you ain't been nowhere
The livin's lazy and the lovin's fine
If you feel low down
So help me Hannah
You're sure to lose the blues in Louisi-ouisi-ouisiana

So get the lead
Get the lead outta your jeans and hot-foot it down, hot-foot it down to where?
New Orleans
Louisiana baby tells you stay awhile
Live it up
Love it up
Southern style
Way down in New
New Orleans

Almost normal again

Early this morning I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep, a prospect which sat ill with me thanks to this year's earlier history with insomnia, but fortunately it wasn't too bad. I decided to get up and play Nethack rather than toss and turn and disturb solarbird, which was a pretty decent way to spend the time; I didn't get too sleepy by the time it was time to go and get my stitches out.

Which went pretty much excellently, as expected, and can be summarized in three little noises: snip, snip, yoink. Dr. Stickney joked that next year she'd have to remove earwax or something, since I don't have a thyroid anymore, and then sent me off to the lab so they could do yet another blood draw and see how many calcium is holding up.

Then I came home and rested a bit, and found that some more of the long-anticipated September rent had arrived in the mail. Dara, who'd dropped me off and headed down to MurkSouth to sign papers with one of the new tenants, came back with more new rent. So since Dara's busy getting ready for NASFiC this afternoon, I took a chance on having enough energy to make it down to LFP on my own to deposit the checks and have them safely taken care of before tomorrow.

I made it without any problems, though I needed to get Gatorade for the walk back and take a bit of a rest partway there. I'm good with that.

Now for a bit of rest now that I'm home.

EDIT 3:56pm: Oh yeah, the Polyclinic just called and said that my calcium levels are looking great, which tells them that my parathyroids are functioning, so I can punt back down to my usual single daily calcium supplement. Yay! This means I can just take my regular vitamins now and my Synthroid, since I'm out of Keflex at this point and (hopefully) shouldn't need the Percocet anymore either.

Tuesday miles: 1.1
Wednesday miles: 2.1
Miles out of Hobbiton: 325.1
Miles to Rivendell: 132.9