blah

Called in sick yesterday due to tummy distress.  I felt better as the day went on and even went to dance class, and felt ok when I got up this morning, but now I'm not sure if I want to throw up or eat all the food I have in my desk.  Or possibly both by turns.  The headache I've had since Sunday afternoon is sticking with me as well.  I really, really don't want to be ill right now.

( Dance class stuff )

Can't decide what to dance to this Sunday.  I want to do more veilwork on Sundays, but in thinking about it yesterday I realized that I don't really know what my kind of veil music is, apart from gothic music that I would use for veil.  The slow AmCab stuff doesn't appeal to me, and I'm not into the whole unwrapping thing that goes with it.  But then I know classical Arabic music too well to feel right using much veil to that, and the setup at the ME doesn't lend itself well to the Arabic grand sweeping intros anyway, you can only malfouf your way around a small space so many times before people wonder when you are actually going to start dancing.  Time to listen to some music and think.  I did have this somewhat crazy idea of doing veil to a Rachid Taha song.  The thought of practicing veil right now though is not helping my general queasiness.

Now I know why I don't feel well...

Which Horrible Affliction are you?
A Rum and Monkey disease.

BPAL of the day is Kabuki: "Compelling, complex, and utterly enigmatic: a luxuriant, exotic blend of cherry, red musk, and star anise." On putting it on, my first thought was "SweetTarts!" which is not a bad thing, I like SweetTarts. That was probably mostly the cherry, and as the day goes on I am getting more of the red musk and star anise. This is a very nice scent; it is sweet without being cloying, and feels warm and rich, like a cinnabar bracelet looks.

you've got a voice

I watched the second half of Bob Woodruff's program on veterans returning from Iraq with brain injuries, and it profoundly saddened me.  Woodruff was "lucky" in that he had private insurance, money, and a high profile media job, but the average soldier has none of those things and is pretty much kicked to the curb at a point when rehabilitation could make all the difference between a relatively normal life and a life of real hardship, or worse suicide.  I don't know how things got so bad, though I can speculate about cronyism and political appointees and fear to speak the truth out of obligation to the appointer, who doesn't like the truth when it isn't his.  And I can't do much about it--but the one thing I can do is make my opinion known to my elected officials, who in some kind of ideal world are in Washington to represent me and the other citizens of my state.  So I wrote my senators this afternoon to urge investigation and more importantly resolution of the situation.  Does one email make a difference?  Well, no, but they can add up, and it is usually assumed that for every person who can be bothered to write, there are others who didn't write but hold the same position.  I would be shocked if my senators (Kennedy and Kerry) did not share the same position I do on this issue (if only as another way to publicly illustrate this administration's botching of the war effort), but I know for a fact that supportive emails matter as much as argumentative ones do, if not more so.

So, my public service announcement:  got an opinion?  Write your senators and congressperson about it!  It's easy to do.  For senators, go to http://www.senate.gov/ and pick your senator from the list.  The vast majority of them have "Contact Me" forms in their websites, so you don't even have to go through the bother of sending an email.  For your congressperson, go to http://www.house.gov/ and pick your congressperson.  If you don't know who that is, there's a zip-code-based representative finder.

It's easy to be cynical about our elected representatives, regardless of political party.  But if we all start from a place of believing our democracy doesn't work, then we've contributed to it not working.  Don't give up your voice.