February 20, 2009

3:25 p.m.

Saturday Down South

We're content enough here in Maryland. Last night's gig at an arts center (part of a school, I think) started off looking like it was going to be a disaster. We had a couple of eager but possibly undertrained kids doing sound, and there didn't seem to be two things that would go right at the same time. Lines bad, signals lost, EQ off the map, and our main guy had a pretty prominent speech impediment on top of a foreign accent, so it was difficult to communicate sometimes. We had no monitors. It was a new (to us) venue that had hired us on the recommendation of the place we're playing tonight. Fairly low guarantee, and our expectations for audience numbers were low.

In the end, though, it was a really lovely night. They papered the house with volunteers, and we had a few fans there too, and others who just wandered in, I suppose, wondering who this strange band was. We made it through various sound anomalies, and had a good time. A local Sweet Adelines group even did a couple of numbers at the top of the set.

I didn't get quite enough to eat -- the asian chicken salad thing I ordered from Panera, which looked so interesting at first glance at the menu, turned out to be some Romaine lettuce with a bit of cold chicken sprinkled on the top, and I had time to eat about six bites of it. Fortunately the people we stay with here always shove food at us when we get to their house.

Our host is a relative of Phil Ochs. We've stayed here with him and his wife a number of times. They live on the coast -- in fact, their back yard actually touches the water, with a small beach separating them. I have some sand from there on my altar at home, in a little pot I use for burning incense. We fall a bit short, maybe, of his many other musical guests, in that we don't know a lot of sing-along stuff to play whilst sitting around the house. He's the type of guy who loves to jam on old Americana songs. But we always have a nice time here. The house is huge, old, and pretty dusty, so I have to bring Clarinex. But it's filled with all sorts of quirky memorabilia and funky antique signs. A fun place to poke around in. (Ugh. I ended that sentence with not one, but two prepositions. I don't know what I wrote "around in" for. --D'OH!)

Tonight's gig is fifteen minutes away, so we had the whole day to relax. There are several guest rooms here and I've been in two of them. One is a nice, big room downstairs with a private bathroom. The other is a tiny, ex-grandchild's room-turned-art room with a bitty twin bed in an alcove and lots of crap all over the place, and a shared bathroom. As we were packing up I was hoping to get the big room. I sent out my call to the Universe for the big room. When we arrived here I learned I was upstairs in the tiny, dusty, cramped little room. Oh, the umbrage I felt! At least there was an electric blanket, so when I woke up cold a couple of times I turned it on for a minute and went back to sleep. I kept a roll of toilet paper near the bed once the sneezing started. The bed was a little hard on the back, but I managed all right.

The reason I was upstairs was that they had relatives over too, with little kids. They'd all gone to bed by the time we got home, and woke up early and were leaving just as I got up. And guess what? I got transferred into the big room with the private bathroom! I had to retract my umbrage and everything. I'm looking forward to tonight, sleeping in "the best bed in the house." They'd bought it for host's mom when they thought she was going to be moving in... but she died before that happened! So the bed became a guest bed.

We all had a great lunch together and then most everyone went down for naps. I showered (in my own bathroom; did I mention?) and have been puttering about, putting unguents on my hands and eating a little cereal I brought. Oh, but don't get me started about the hands. Let's just talk about something else.

FACEBOOK! My new part time job. I'm using the MyFarm application with gusto. And people keep sending me stuff. I feel highly gifted -- in the sense of, receiving many gifts. And I'm going to Vermont soon to meet a new friend of a friend. I've had my head down in this career for so long, it's never occurred to me how nice it might feel to meet like-minded individuals with similar interests (um... Bornearly -- that's what "like-minded" means, dear) and to actually increase my circle of friends. It's all part of this new, "Stuff-I'm-doing-now-that-I've-turned-fifty" landscape I'm cultivating. Oh -- speaking of cultivating! I'll bet someone has sent me a tree or something. I gotta go check MyFarm.