![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
After an exciting bus ride through some of the nastier slums of Camden NJ to a Dominican restaurant, I participated in a birthday lunch for my friend Carmen Herrera Von Wrangell, a Flower Show buddy. Much fun -- Carmen is turning 65 so we were a convocation of crones -- twenty of us, to be precise, eating empenadas, chicken and pork, yuca, arroz, fried plantains, mofongo, flan, and birthday cake, all washed down with Pimms with fruit and 7-Up, which somehow made sense as a weird variant on sangria. Hilarity ensued.
I then hustled home to prepare a chicken / rice / broccoli salad with a dressing based on full fat Greek yogurt and Sriracha so that the flavors could marry, while I pedaled off to the YMCA to give blood.
The Y was horrendously noisy -- they have a big gym that they bisect with this canvas-and-screening divider. The blood drive was set up in one half; the other was filled with shrieking children. I thought I would scream, but instead I put on my earbuds and listened to my Tommy Emmanuel CD on my phone.
There was a wait of about half an hour. When the Red Cross lady checked my blood pressure, it was a full ten points lower than the lowest reading I've had in recent years, shrieking children notwithstanding. She commented that it was probably the soothing effect of the music I was listening to. So now I will be listening to Tommy Emmanuel for my health. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.
And here, to make you giggle, is Tommy Emmanuel. Playing Debussy. In E-flat.
(EDITED TO ADD: My fingertips hurt so badly yesterday that I could barely stand playing for ten minutes, so that's all I did. They feel much better today so I think I'll be able to give them more of a workout tonight.)
I then hustled home to prepare a chicken / rice / broccoli salad with a dressing based on full fat Greek yogurt and Sriracha so that the flavors could marry, while I pedaled off to the YMCA to give blood.
The Y was horrendously noisy -- they have a big gym that they bisect with this canvas-and-screening divider. The blood drive was set up in one half; the other was filled with shrieking children. I thought I would scream, but instead I put on my earbuds and listened to my Tommy Emmanuel CD on my phone.
There was a wait of about half an hour. When the Red Cross lady checked my blood pressure, it was a full ten points lower than the lowest reading I've had in recent years, shrieking children notwithstanding. She commented that it was probably the soothing effect of the music I was listening to. So now I will be listening to Tommy Emmanuel for my health. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.
And here, to make you giggle, is Tommy Emmanuel. Playing Debussy. In E-flat.
(EDITED TO ADD: My fingertips hurt so badly yesterday that I could barely stand playing for ten minutes, so that's all I did. They feel much better today so I think I'll be able to give them more of a workout tonight.)
