Almost exactly a week ago at this time, I was collapsing in bed, having just had a somewhat reasonable night out with Katie and was looking forward to an open-ended weekend.
But lo and behold, I woke up with a horrendous cough. The painful dry hacking cough, which I had seen plenty of other people at work fall prey to, had come to beat my head in. I spent almost all of Saturday in bed, alone, coughing and muttering to myself about how life is unfair.
Sunday was not much better, and coming into Monday, I was faced with a real dilemma: yes, I was sick. Yes, I needed to recoup. But, this was probably the most critical week of the year at work. Falling behind this week – and there’s a lot of projects that were available to do for the first time this week – would lead to massive amounts of pain in the coming months. So, of course, I worked through it – coughing my head off at my desk, alleviating it temporarily with cups of tea and water.
By Thursday, it still hadn’t broken, although most of my projects for the week were completed to satisfaction. While talking to one of my bosses, I continued coughing, and he remarked – “You don’t sound so good.” I explained the whole critical-week thing, and he suggested that if I didn’t have any urgent projects on Friday, I should take a sick day. I didn’t, so I did (although I seem to have put in two hours of work from home).
But a little coughing didn’t stop me from attending two events I had on my agenda for a long while now; one Thursday night, and one Friday night.
## Thursday Night: Premium Blend
Yes, Katie and I subjected ourselves to the nearly two-hour line to be at the taping of two episodes of the new season of Premium Blend. Why, you might ask, would we put ourselves through such a trial? To see good comedians – in particular, one Aziz Ansari. I’m more than happy to say Aziz tore the roof off the place. Even [he was surprised](http://azizisbored.com/2005_08_21_azizisbored_archive.html#112508568070458159):
> I taped my Premium Blend set last night and it was a blast. The audience was amazing to the point of even throwing me off my game a little bit.
In any case, like I said, we were there for two shows, and we weren’t moved in the audience for either show – so for both of the episodes in question, we’re in the fourth row, center. No idea if or how much we were on camera, but since Premium Blend is repeated on Comedy Central about 5,000 times, I’m sure we’ll figure it out at some point.
## Friday: Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
I had been waiting for this concert for two months. All the coughing in the world is not going to keep me from Ted Leo.
Yes, at long last, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists returned to the Seaport Music Festival. This year, there was no rain, no killer bees, no blackout – it was a gorgeous day.
The opener was [Tigers & Monkeys](http://www.tigersandmonkeys.com/), who impressed me for being thoroughly well-rounded and rocking to just the right degree. I look forward to their album later this year.
As for Ted and the boys – well, what can I say really? The concert rocked, through and through. Even when a mosh pit opened behind me during the last song, and I got hit and stepped on repeatedly for no good reason, it couldn’t bring me down. (Ted Leo fans should definitely check out the next post as well.)
All my pictures from the event are in this flickr set: [Seaport Music Festival 2005 – Ted Leo & The Pharmacists](http://www.flickr.com/photos/remydwd/sets/828408/)
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All in all, it’s been a good week – which is not something I can normally say when I’m hacking my lungs out.
