Nose hairs and cat guts

Sunday I taunted friend X for not jumping in the pool. He's a very persnickety guy about things like dirt, spiders, and cloudy pool water with algae along the sides. I can't swim, but I swam that day. I mean, you couldn't get me out of the pool or off the diving board. Monday I woke up with slightly swollen lymph nodes, a bad feeling about the sinuses like when you breath water in through your nose, and a generalized malaise, for lack of a better word. So far, it doesn't hurt when I pee.

When I was a kid I had a small microscope that I used to check out the crazy menagerie that subsists in a pool of stagnant water--crazy amoeba-type thingies enveloping and eating protozoa- type thingies. At least the protozoa had a fighting chance to dart away with their undulating cilia. Me, on the other hand...well I do have rather long nose hairs. My kid sister has made it her raison d'etre to point that out on a regular basis.

_________________________________

I bought this violin some time ago out of some romantic notion that I'd learn to play fushion/jazzy/new agey stuff like Charlie Bisharat. I can muddle my way through a scale on most instruments except those that have strings. That violin has sat idle for a long time mostly because I suck, but also because the little string thingie that holds the tail thingie to to the body thingie broke. And it appears to be made out of catgut. And we're fresh out of cat guts. Is that something you can get at the butcher maybe?

Well, I mention all this because it's my aim to at least fix my poor violin. I've got some ideas about what to use in lieue of guts, feline or otherwise.