I stride manfully to my drums. Andy has started the opening guitar riff to MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE and the crowd is going nuts. Problem is, I missed hearing him start. Is he on the first time around or the second? I look over at Sting and he’s not much help, his cue is me – and I’m lost. Never mind. “Crack!” on the snare and I’m in, so Sting starts singing. Problem is, he heard my crack as two in the bar, but it was actually four – so we are half a bar out of sync with each other. Andy is in Idaho.

So said Stewart Copeland about the Police’s Opening set in Vancouver last week. I am here to say that I felt that they did open a bit off on the first couple of songs in Seattle last night (where Eddie and I were in attendance) but really got into a great groove. And, even those first two “bit off” songs were awesome.

I discovered an appreciation for Stewart Copeland, and really enjoyed his interaction with the audience, the other members of the band, and his awesome come out of the floor drum set that reminded me of the ever evolving Neon Brown drum set. I also kept thinking he reminded me of someone, and realized it was our parish’s Auxiliary priest.

I must say, Tantric Yoga must be da bomb, because Sting looked awesome.

It takes a lot of guts for a band of fiftysomethings to play video footage of dinosaurs walking, but they did pull it off during "Walking in Your Footsteps".

It was a great set of all of the favorites, and we had good seats – far from the band but straight back.

We learned that Jimmy Swaggart said that “Murder By Numbers” was written by the devil himself (who knew?). And, that Andy can riff.

At the end, I turned to Eddie and said “Every Breath You Take”? for the encore, and he said “we haven’t heard ‘King of Pain’ yet either” and I said, “well, that’s my favorite Police song, so if they are playing just for me, then that’ll be their choice”. Apparently, they were playing just for me, they saved “EBYT” for the second encore.

(photo and review at the Seattle PI)

I get a word a day from Wordsmith in my inbox each morning (ahhhh, blogging – where all our quirks are exposed for the world to see!) My favorite part is usually the etymology of the word, I find that fascinating. In late May, the theme was words borrowed from Spanish, and this was the first one:

peccadillo (pek-uh-DIL-o) noun A minor offense. [From Spanish pecadillo, diminutive of pecado (sin), from Latin peccare(to sin). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ped- (foot) which gaveus not only peccadillo (alluding to a stumble or fall) but also pedal,impeccable, podium, octopus, and impeach.]

After I got over the fact that I probably used that word incorrectly (I thought of it more as a fetish), I was fascinated to read that the Spanish word for sin comes from the root for foot. It makes complete sense when one considers that a sin is a misstep (or as the etymology says a stumble or fall). For me, this mental picture of misstepping along the path of life is very powerful. One of my favorite quotes in Orthodoxy is that it isn’t the falling down that is bad, it is the forgetting to pick oneself up afterwards. Oh, how true that is.