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I’ve been sick all this week, which has been Unpleasant. Like most males of my generation, even the slightest cold sends me into a spiral of whininess normally only seen if you kick me in the harblz. It started last Friday with a major league sore throat, and was exacerbated by a HUGE weekend of frivolity, starting out with a performance of the National Anthem by the Cathedral Choir at the Phillies game on Friday night, continuing with Charles’s birthday party on Saturday, and then finishing up with a Sunday involving three lengthy church services, a piano recital, and a banquet celebrating our collective churchy awesomeness. Let’s tackle each item in chronological order:

The Phillies game was both awesome and totally unrad (and also anti-tubular), in that our performance was sweet, and James Earl Jones was there reading “Casey At The Bat” to a bunch of kids in the infield, but that the Phils ended up losing 13-0 (I left in the bottom of the fifth ’cause my throat felt like someone had poured battery acid into me) and JEJ, who got old while I wasn’t paying attention, seemed particularly hunch-backed and mildly Alzheimery. It was very depressing to see Darth Vader in this state, being led around the stadium with a big dopey grin on his face.

Or maybe he was just drunk, I dunno. That would be AWESOME.

I took along my camera, and got a few decent pictures of the game, but I couldn’t get close enough to the field to really get anything totally supersweet, and I lack a 300mm zoom lens, something I intend to rectify before I go to another sporting event.

Charles’s party on Saturday was HILARIOUS. I made a half-decent cake (half of it was chocolate (the decent part), and half of it was boring-ass vanilla ’cause that’s all my wife will eat), cut Charles a piece of the chocolate side, and let him rub it in his hair and ears for a while. Great times. We got a bajillion pictures which I intend to post, possibly later today when I have time to get them off the DVD and do some editing. (Note: we finally bought a DVD burner and have been steadily moving pictures onto DVDs, which is totally kick-ass because I have 4GB worth of cards for my camera, and every time I load them onto a laptop I completely max the hard drive. Plus the long-term storage prospects are pretty pimp.) Charles also got a huge number of presents, most of which he didn’t get a chance to open before he got so unbelievably sleepy we had to put him down for a nap. We’re saving the rest of his toys for later opening when he gets bored with flinging his new enormous-lego-style blocks at the cats.

Sunday was a LOOONNNNGGGG day, starting with an 8:30 christening service for Charles’s buddies Tori and Rowan, whose parents decided to baptize them simultaneously in the interests of time. Charles got a little angsty during the service, so I took him out in the hall for a diaper change and a little crawling around, which was nice because it got me out of the rest of the service. (I’ll never argue with anybody’s right to worship in whatever way they choose, but the service featured a little too much arm-waving during hymns for the liking of a High Church dweeb like myself.)

After that service ended, I ran over to the Cathedral for our usual Sunday service, which on this occasion featured a period to recognize and reward all the choristers, acolytes, and other participants, which meant the service ran to about 105 minutes, which caused my ears to bleed a little bit, but that’s nothing but a thang. After THAT completed, those of us who take our piano lessons from the Cathedral Choir School’s various teachers (even if we don’t actually get lessons through the choir school’s scholarship program) performed the piano recital, which was of course completely ridiculous because they had me performing last, normally the spot reserved for the best student, which I am not. Also it was rather embarrassing because I’m roughly twice the age of the other performers. At least I didn’t screw up too badly. Wooooooo.

Then we had the choir school banquest, which was fine but chaotic, and I gathered up my various robes and music and headed over to Christ Church (where my father is coincidentally the Deputy Organist-Choirmaster (I’ve been considering getting a little tin star made for him)) for an evensong, which wasn’t too bad. Our clergy doesn’t much enjoy doing the officiating at such services (it involves a great deal of chant-singing), so I’ve been doing it, and I managed to get through it without coughing up too much of my lungs. (I was sick; you may recall me mentioning that earlier.)

I stayed home from the office on Monday and Tuesday, attempting to recover my wits; I even went to the doctor on Monday, something I rarely do for myself, because my mother was diagnosed with a case of bronchitis last week, and homey don’t play that.