Change of pace...

Feht had been threatening to come into town these past few days, to go soak at The Springs, which is always a good idea provided you have the time, spare cash, and not too many other customers to compete with.

One thing is for sure, I certainly do feel a bit less stressed right about now. Feht assures me I will feel the real benefit of the treatment—soaking in progressively "cooler" baths, starting with one that was 109°F—tomorrow morning when I get up.

Aside from some translation in the morning, some email processing a little while ago, a couple conversations on Skype, and posting right now, I have pretty much stayed away from computers today. Having tapped out that sentence, I note that it is akin to saying: "Aside from having eaten steak for breakfast and leg of lamb for dinner, I've been on a vegetarian diet for most of the day."

Which for some reason reminds me of a passage I found in David Lebovitz's The Sweet Life in Paris, about visitors:

And it gets better: "... and we'd love to meet up with you for dinner one night. You can help us order since two of us are vegans, but we don't eat vegetables. Oh, and my sister is deathly allergic to shellfish, and the triplets can't have gluten, dairy, or anything with DNA. [...] Americans are "customizers" and we want to know beforehand what cut of steak it is, how it's going to be cooked, which ranch it was raised at, how far away it was, what the cow ate, did it live a happy life, what exactly is going to go into the sauce, what's going to come alongside it (and can they change that?), whether it'll be possible to share it, and whether they can take the rest of it home. It takes great restraint for me not to yell across the table, "Just order the damn piece of meat—and eat it!"

I am reminded of the time a colleague I was working with in Moscow asked about the availability of vegetarian dishes, and was offered pork or lamb as alternatives to dishes with, um, meat.

Cheers...