I actually had no idea the Academy Awards were gonna happen last night, until I was working down in my shop with NPR on the radio. They were saying that the King’s speech would be getting a lot of attention, and I thought maybe Elvis was coming out of his fake-death retirement to accept a lifetime achievement award or something. But apparently that was actually a movie. Then some rather typical NPR critic spoke about Oscar music, and was all agog over some “courageous composer who combined an oboe with a penny whistle.” Oh, such audacity. Christ, between guys like this, John Powers, David Edelstein and, most especially, Maureen Corrigan, sometimes I really understand why the teabaggers hate NPR so much.

Anyhow, I didn’t watch the ceremonies but that isn’t sheltering me from finding out who won – whether I want to know or not. Whereas I’m just plain unwilling to shell out the bucks to see a movie before it hits HBO (which I may have to drop pretty soon, too, but how can I give up Bill Maher, and, goddamn it, “Curb” is coming back in the spring and then it’ll be time for True Blood, and…), I frankly don’t give a crap about the Oscars, except I’m glad that Melissa Leo won, because I’ve always liked her, from way back in the Homicide days. Plus, she said “fuck,” so she’s clearly my kinda broad. And, she’s an old-timer (like fine wine and Richard Belzer, she only gets better with age) – like me, another great product of 1960.

Otherwise, it was a tough weekend for me. I’ve diagnosed myself with medial epicondylitis, aka, “golfer’s elbow.” No, I haven’t been playing golf, but it apparently is pretty common amongst those of us who use keyboards for a living (especially if we become weekend DIY warriors swinging had tools and twisting wrenches).

Despite my left arm being all but useless over the weekend, I managed to complete my homemade keyboard tray (made form scrap wood – it’s adjustable, slides in and out, and is kinda cool, if I do say so myself), get Cat 5 cable run to my office, stain an nail in the trim, and get things pretty much completed, except for painting the underneath and maybe mounting the plethora of power strips up out of sight). And I need to build some wall cabinets and/or shelves. And then…. Well, it never really ends, does it?

Also, my gut hurt all weekend. Possibly because I didn’t eat much more than almonds and was hitting the ibuprofen pretty hard, both for the arm and because my teeth hurt. And then my goddamn temporary crown (which is actually my old crown, slammed back on) fell off. So that hurt even more, though I managed to stick it back on.

So, to recap, all weekend I was cold and everything hurt. Pretty much sucked. Had SU lost to GT in hoops or avenged last year’s loss to Army (barely) in lax yesterday, it would have been even worse.

Oh, and, as I mentioned yesterday, I finally updated WP. Once I saw that it was named “Rheinhardt” for Django Rheinhardt, who was perhaps the world’s greatest gypsy guitarist (long, long before Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies), and who died of a brain hemorrhage long ago at a very young age (probably because he never seemed to take that cigarette out of his mouth). On the bright side, Stephane Grapelli is still with us.

Speaking of dead guys, Frank Buckles – the last surviving US WWI veteran died yesterday. Only 110. So sad.

Well, it’s already warm out, and supposed to get warmer still. That would be great, except, in looking at the radar, a hard rain’s a gonna fall (OK, actually it’s already falling).