Three steps forward, two steps back. The day/night/weekday/weekend job has taken over my life again, as it does from time to time, and the stress levels from about last week in October to now have been huge. OTOH seeing what's happening around me (and to my pension fund) I can only give thanks for being heavily in work right now. But the music has ground to a crawl, and I still can't convince the US IRS that (a) I exist (b) I do live in Australia.

Timing as always is immaculate. Deborah and I are in Austria in January: by the time the Australian dollar tanked we'd already paid most of the serious expenses, so we're going and 'll make SURE we enjoy it cos who knows when there'll be any money to do it again?? Among other things we'd booked into Salzburg for a couple of days--turns out to be the middle of Mozart Week. So, we thought about going to hear the Vienna Philharmonic on 27 Jan--until I worked out that tickets for the two of us would cost the equivalent of...$1600. Um...Recession? What recession??

There are some student concerts on that we might go to, a couple less zeroes in the ticket cost. I can't help but think what instrumentation/software I could buy for $1600...EWQL Platinum for starters!

I hope all our American friends can hang on until the current mess sorts itself out. We had bad crunches here (Oz) earlier which eventually resolved, and we're due for a crunch middle of the year (which is why the Oz dollar is low despite the economy still moving reasonably). Tighten belts and hang on. And Mark, that's a _great_marketing idea! I'll try spreading the word yet again!

Tim
http://www.myspace.com/timfatchen