Almost forgot to mention, I'll be on Against the Grain on KPFA 94.1 FM tomorrow. Noonish in the Bay Area, but I think they archive it too. Time permitting, I might play some of my Southern sound work in progress, so if you've been hankerin to hear Taft Wong's Mississippi accent, tomorrow could be your lucky day....

Yeah, what he said.

I almost forgot to mention, KTSF TV interviewed me yesterday; looks like I'm going to be translated into Cantonese for the 7pm news & Mandarin for the 10pm news, both on Monday. That's Channel 26 in the SF Bay Area. We don't get great reception at our house, so if anybody feels like taping these for me, I'd be grateful!

Last time I got translated, it was back in the mid-90s for a documentary where they did Chinese subtitles for all the English speakers. When I saw the finished doc, everyone else's subtitles looked really normal, but when it came to my subtitles, there were all these exclamation points all over the place! Ok, so I learned something about myself there....

Sigh! The hand is still not healed. I finally gave in & went to the doctor for a physical therapy referral. Last night Ms. Artstove said that when her hand hurts, she just yells at the pain to go away & it does. Too bad I don't have that kind of strong will. Anyway, I'm sure y'all are getting along fine without regular blog posts from me. If you're looking for something more to read, you could start with this.

Don't know about you, but I can't even fathom being awake at 5am on a weekend morning. So you can listen to me on the radio here instead. Don't wait too long, though, cause I'm not sure how long it will stay up on the site.

In other news, I am so excited about finally acquiring a butter bell! I eagerly came right home, washed it & packed in a stick of good organic butter. Now I'm going to have a slice of buttered toast with my salad.... Many thanks to Family Koshka for the gift certificate that prompted this purchase!

I'm in the Contra Costa Times today.

My hand continues to improve, still not 100% though. Swimming still happens only with a going-through-the-motions modified stroke, & knitting is completely out of the question.

All over town, every daffodil is blooming! Plum blossoms too! Good thing, because it's so miserably gray & gloomy otherwise.

Spotted in Soho, en route to Chinatown:

Happy Year of the gender-unspecific Chicken, by the way. I had my little taste of the festivities, wading through parade floats shortly after snapping that photo.

I'm back. My hand has improved greatly (but still not 100%). My Rx: travel light to NYC (so light that you can lift your luggage with your left hand & take the A from & to JFK, thus avoiding almost $100 in outrageous cabfare), ride the subway all over town (thus taking time off from the hand/wrist work of turning a steering wheel), catch up w/ friends (talking puts no strain on the hands), do no cooking at all, & watch your famous bro kick some fashion booty:



This blue velvet was my favorite of the Peter Som Fall 2005 collection. As always, you can pick your own here.

I'm so sorry to leave you high, dry & blogless lately. My hand is improving in the most infuriatingly infinitesimal, microscopic increments, with long plateaus in between. I can now lift a larger glass of tea, swim several laps as opposed to a couple (although still with a modified, careful stroke), & probably type a little more than this paragraph. But that doesn't mean I want to push it. Caution is the name of the game here. That said, I shall now disappear for a few more days. The show is up, though, & I daresay (is that really supposed to be one word?) going to see that will give you a much bigger & better dosage of moi than any blog entry yet.

I called my pal The Witch for hand advice; she had suffered a major hand breakdown that put her out of commission for months so I figured she must be the expert. Funny how it never once occurred to me to go to the doctor until a whole week had gone by, & even then I thought, why go to the doctor when I'm sure The Witch will tell me everything I need to know? Her best tip: alternate hot & cold! 1 minute of hot, 1 minute of cold, repeat for 10 minutes. My hand likes that a lot, as you can see by my ability to type this whole paragraph, using both hands! I also googled up this nice page of RSI exercises with helpful animations. Do them!

Did I mention the show is up? It's up! Go see it! & you can buy the catalog while you're there. The opening is Thursday night. I may or may not be able to shake y'all's hands properly by that time, but I'll still be glad y'all made it.

Okay, that's enough typing for today. Time for more of the hot/cold treatment.