Which, in the past week, has been almost everything. While I've been developing a painkiller habit you wouldn't believe, various shows have slipped me by. But luckily, even if I've fallen off the ball, my blogger colleagues are emphatically on top of it.

Maybe my most regretted miss - certainly a show that pushes all my buttons of interest - is Brigid Jackson and Adena Jacobs' This Is For You, which closed last night at La Mama. Ming's response is here, and Hannah Liddy has another fascinating meditation at Vibewire. And according to Australian Stage Online, Catalpa, presently playing at the Mechanics Institute Performing Arts Centre in Brunswick, bears out its promise. Rhys at Stop Panicking has been posting reports on the fantastic Arts House program at North Melbourne, about which I have been hearing Good Things (in particular about Blazeblue Oneline), and Bardassa at On Stage Melbourne has posted on Red Stitch's The Pain and the Itch. (I wonder, do I need to go out at all? These days I could just sit here and post links...)

Then there's the tyranny of distance. I would personally like to be wearing a Frequent Flyers groove between the capital cities - maybe one day, when I can afford my own pink helicopter - but in the meantime for news from Sydney I mainly rely on Nicholas Pickard's Arts Journalist blog for gossip and reviews. Today he posts a rave about The Rabble's Salome, another show which I was hoping to see this week, and will probably miss. Meanwhile, fellow Sydneysider Two Blue Fish's post on Ignorance in the Theatre is a cautionary tale to all of us (I think we've all been there). And now they're joined by Kevin Jackson's Theatre Reviews, a stimulating new blog featuring long and thoughtful reviews mainly concentrating on Sydney's independent scene, which suggests the the Sydney theatrosphere (as our American friends so euphoniously dub it) is livening up.

As for me, I'm still not out of the woods. But plans are still afoot, the moment I am capable of writing a sentence that makes any sense, to review The Hayloft's production of The Soldier's Tale, since even I am getting tired of my peevish complaints.