Hopefully concluding the cyst saga, the surgery today went fine. I came in on three hours' sleep--I'd been up late listening to stuff, writing, getting things in order (taking time off at my job requires a lot of preparation), and reading/decompressing from same. It's weird--I have a ton of energy lately, but it's not manic energy at all. I'll attribute that to the drastic cutdown of sugar and starch in my diet following my doctor telling me that my blood sugar was far higher than it should be. Since my mom and her father are both diabetic, I took it as a warning, and although my blood sugar level dropped by 25 since my last visit a month ago and I've lost ten pounds (I thought I was kidding myself until Tricia noticed it when I was in NYC last week), I haven't done the proper bloodwork to be diagnosed yet, though that'll happen soon. I've cheated a few times, of course--it's difficult not to--but I've definitely noticed that I'm calmer, evener of keel, even less prone to being short of breath walking up these steep Seattle streets than I used to be.

I was asleep pretty much all during the first half of my hospital time--right after 9 a.m. check-in (not an hour I'm used to being awake, day job or no day job), during the gap between check-in and surgery (about two and a half hours, it turns out; surgery took a half-hour), obviously knocked out during it, and conked for a good two and a half hours after. I began regaining consciousness around 1:30 p.m. and was fully awake by 2. Unfortunately, my legs weren't. For surgery (my first ever), the novocaine was injected at the base of the spine and incapacitated me from the waist down for, like, ever. It took until 6 p.m. for me to finally be able to walk without aid, an hour after I'd been scheduled to start spinning at the Crocodile with Brian, who did just fine w/o me, as I'd figured he would. By the time I got there it was quarter till 7 and there were three friends of ours there and the bartender and some managers. Zip else. Figures--not even the email-invite promise of "Matos on those good hospital drugs" in action upped our numbers. We carried on like we didn't care and it didn't matter, and hit a few really nice grooves. In fact, Brian didn't start till 5:45 due to equipment problems, and we were told to go as long as we liked; I bailed at 10:30, when my iPod battery gave out, and I'm guessing Brian kept it up at least a while longer. Hell, maybe he's still there.

* * *

This is the part of the year that, having either neglected or ignored or been unaware of a lot of good records from earlier in '04 or that are just coming out now, pretty much anything I put on that looks promising pays off in some way or other--decent-with-killer-single(s), smarter/solider than I'd expected, oh that is a new wrinkle there isn't it, well duh of course it's good, like that. The playlist over the past couple days, in no order: The Rose & the Briar (soundtrack to this new book edited by Sean Wilentz and Greil Marcus; looks yummy, though the s/t is a little too stodgy for me to throw myself at like a jilted lover to the railroad tracks); Silkworm, It'll Be Cool and Comets on Fire, Blue Cathedral (same basic idea, wholly different execution); Dungen's Ta Det Lugnt (Clinic as hippies, very roughly); Beastie Boys/DJ Green Lantern, New York State of Mind (goodies galore, my fave of which is "Triple Trouble" over "White Lines"--maybe the problem with 5 Boroughs really is just the production; I wonder how much they paid GL to grab them some cred--either way, it works); Lif Up Yuh Leg An Trample (new soca comp on Honest Jon's, fucking killer so far--it's playing as I type); Neko Case, The Tigers Have Spoken and Ted Leo + the Pharmacists' Shake the Sheets (different ideas, same basic effect--two smart people whose previous albums were striking and had a couple of totally great songs but felt a little too up-and-down for me to play all that often, and whose new albums are faster, blurrier, more relaxed, have nothing that tops the predecessor's high spots but are better as albums); Raphael Saadiq as Ray Ray (he really is a weirdo, which is why I love him so fucking much, though I'm having trouble plucking something off it for year-end purposes; maybe I'll go with the ballad, though I'd prefer not to); Run the Road (great new grime comp on British 679 label, too many goodies to process at once but I'll have a hard time not ransacking it for year-end purposes the way I'm doing with Matt Ingram's mix CD from this summer). Plus the three tech-house discs I need to spend more time with for a City Pages review (my idea).

Most of these I'm playing for the first or second time. The proper response is less "what a year!" than "what a task." A great, fun task, I'll quickly add--but there are acres more behind me that I haven't even mentioned yet, and never will. But I don't feel like I'm cutting corners, which is not how I felt a few weeks ago, and which is a relief.