The weekend Thread

[street music]

Hey Krash, I haven't been there during the winter but I have visited Snowshoe during the World Archery tourament and we would shoot our way down the slopes and timber areas, very nice till the bear attacked the targets.

[Brian Krashpad]

So, at least those in the States may've done something interesting this weekend, what say you? I watched the game but spent a lot of the weekend driving my kids all over creation.

Friday night my kids' youth group had a meeting/cookout at one of the leaders' house. He lives way out in the country on a dirt road a couple miles from the nearest paved road. They had a bonfire and lots of hotdogs, hamburgers, and picnic type food. Cold out, but fun.

I played my 12-string a lot by the campfire. It's the one pictured in the middle below:



That old beater Yamaha sure still sounds good.



Saturday morning I took my son Jack out to Camp Shands, a Boy Scout camp way east of Gainesville (we live a bit southwest of town). This is an annual event called "Camp Buc Tuocs" (Cub Scout spelled backwards) where the Boy Scouts show younger Cub Scouts scouting skills. Jack went back when he was a Cub Scout, and now this year as a Boy Scout. I packed ski clothes for him to sleep in, he was in a tent and it went down to 32 F here Saturday night! He didn't use the ski clothes though, just two sleeping bags.



After I got home and had some lunch, I had to take my daughter to meet a friend at our annual Hoggetowne Midieval Faire. Another hour+ round trip! Then a few hours later I had to go BACK to pick her up.

After I got home we had some dinner and vegged out. A lot of driving!

Sunday, went to church in the morning, and offically transferred our membership from our last church to this one. Sorta like being a "made man" in the Mafia, only you don't have to whack someone first. After that, my wife took my daughter to go to the Midieval Faire with a DIFFERENT friend, while I went to pick up Jack from returning from his camp out. Then, since it was the last day of the Faire, I took Jack out to the Faire with me! We met up with his sister when her friends left, so she could stay a little longer.

Whew.

Last evening we watched the Super Bowl and I did homework with Jack. Apparently he forgot all about a huge history test he had today. So I got up real early this morning and made him flash cards to study with. Instead of having him ride the bus I drove him to school, so he would have longer at home to study, and could study in the van with no distractions on the way over, instead of on a crowded noisy bus. Fortunately the test isn't until after lunch.

You?

[bigoldron]

Geez, Brian, you sound us. The best thing that will ever happen to you is when your oldest kid turns 16. Shuttle service drops drastically at that point!

We didn't do a whole lot. Went shopping Friday night and went to some friends house Saturday night to watch a movie with them. (Fireproof - Excellent movie! I recommend it for ANY married couple and for those who are even thinking of getting married!)

Did the usual church things on Sunday and watched the game last night. We don't usually have that many festivals around here, and we're usually too busy to go to them anyway. (Same old junk vendors, parades and entertainment, so not a whole lot to look forward to...)

Next Saturday, we're taking some of our youth group up to Mercer University in Macon. They're having a Baptist Youth Day for the kids. Free concert with their praise band, lunch, campus tour and a boys' basketball game to boot. My daughter's got her heart set on Mercer, so of course, she's excited about going. So, we've got SOMETHING to look forward to next weekend. Plus, Mama's turning 70 on the 9th, so we're having her a supper on Sunday night, so we'll eat good and have a little cake too.

[sunvalleylaw]

Good on ya Brian! I went to a training last week to keep our local scouting going and make sure our Webelos have a troop to go to in a year. I coached skiing, then skied in clinic with other coaches discussing half-pipe and park ski progressions, and skied really hard and fast with people a lot younger than I am. Sunday, I skied with my daughter during her last lesson day of a series of lessons she was in, then took came home, hung with the kids, took the dog out for an XC ski. Then the not so good part.

I went to pick up my middle son from an overnight trip to a yurt he had gone on with the developmental nordic ski team. They skinned in on telemark skis and skied and camped in the yurt overnight. You could see as he unloaded his gear from the team van how much he had grown in responsibility and confidence. Then he was telling me about it as I loaded his gear into the back of our van, and as he was showing me something, he moved his hand just as I closed the rear gate, and his left pinky got caught in the door. : : :

So, an ER trip was in order. The finger hurt, but does not appear to be broken. It is splinted for a week to be sure that there is not a hairline fracture that cannot yet be seen. Dang it!!!! I felt awful. He was very brave and snuggled with me later during story time, but it hurt me very much to make that mistake. Of course his finger probably hurt worse.

Oh, and I still am not a Steelers fan.

[bigoldron]

Then he was telling me about it as I loaded his gear into the back of our van, and as he was showing me something, he moved his hand just as I closed the rear gate, and his left pinky got caught in the door. : : :

Sorry to hear about your son's finger, SVL. Even though it was an accident, you still feel like a jack@ss. The only good thing is that the kiddies tend to heal a lot quicker than we do...

[Brian Krashpad]

I shut a car door on my daughter's fingers when she was little. Terrible feeling.

Mojo and prayers.

[Brian Krashpad]

So what'd everyone do this weekend?

Friday I took the afternoon off and helped clean up Casa Krashpad because my sister and brother-in-law from Ft. Myers were staying the night, on their way up to Atlanta to see their college-age daughter in some singing competition. Friday night after they arrived they took us out to one of our favorite resaurants, La Fiesta. We went to a branch that's a little further away from Casa Krashpad than the original location, as we tried a different restaurant first that was full. I'd never been to this location:



My old pal Moe Rodriguez (who originated calling me "Brian Krashpad" before even I did) was tending bar. This is Moe:



As you can see, Moe is an entertainer as well as a bartender; he also does show promotions and has a local music radio show.

We all had a good time at dinner.

Saturday my wife went out with some of her friends and was gone all day. While she was gone I took my son Jack for his flag football tryouts. They grade the kids so as to try and get the teams as even as possible. On the way there, we discovered he'd outgrown his cleats. So we stopped here:



We took Jack's old cleats in as trade-ins on "new" ones. Since the "new" ones we bought were really used ones that only cost a tenner to begin with, and we got 4 bucks in trade for the old ones, he got a new (to him) pair of cleats for $6. I highly recommend this approach to parents with kids who need sporting goods clothes/accessories they may grow out of! Cheap, and one less thng in the landfill.

Sunday we played hooky from church in the morning,as Mrs. Krashpad had not got back from her dinner at a friends until quite late. In the afternoon, my wife took us (me, the kids, and one of Jack's friends) out to the place she'd been with her friends during the day before, the La Chua Trail, part of the Paynes Prairie state preserve here in Gainesville. The prairie is a large semi-dry lake bed south of town that has lots of wildlife. We saw blue heron and cattle heron, LOTS of gators, bison, turtles, migrating sandhill cranes, and ducks. There's a raised trail that leads to an observation deck about a mile and a half out into the prairie, and we walked all the way out and back. I should have some photos we took posted later this week, for now here's one I found on the web already:



That night after we returned home we went to a different Mexican restaurant I'd never been to, Mexico Lindo. It was good too, although the service was a little slow. There were a few TV's around the place, like in a sports bar. During dinner I went back and forth between watching the Pro Bowl and a match from La Liga Mexicana, Pachuca versus America. Football, and futbol!

After getting home from dinner, I checked our messages and my side band were having a practice, so I jumped in the Rockmobile and drove over to the office for practice. Got to try out my "new" bass, for the first time, an old '80's Peavey Fury I:



The bass sounded good although the action was a little high. My right hand was tired by the end of practice. It'd been so long since our last practice I had problems recalling my exact bass parts at the start of a couple songs (this is a band I've gone back and forth between bass and guitar at various periods), but in general it went well and we had a good time.

Got back at around 9:30 or 10:00 and my son had overlooked one of his homework assignments and Mrs. K was tired and angry at him. I told her to go to sleep and I'd handle it, so we worked on his last assignment until about 11:30.

The end.

You?

[sunvalleylaw]

Sounds like fun Brian! And thanks Brian and Ron for the kind words about my son's hand. He still has a splint and a little soreness, but it seems to be healing well.

It was his birthday this weekend, and we had a big sleep over party, set up our big dome tent in the living room for said party, and let the boys (and his sister with a friend over as well) have fun! Quite loud, and lots of 8/9 year old boy energy going on, but everyone had fun! Of course we had ski team on Sat. a.m. and I got out for quick skate (XC) ski on the bike path at the mouth of our driveway to exercise the dog and quiet my head Sunday. Not much guitar got done this weekend, due to all the visitors, but that is ok. After all, it is a B-day weekend.

[bigoldron]

I would say that we carried our youth from the church to Mercer University in Macon for "Baptist Youth Day", but the only one's who showed up were the youth pastor, my 18 year old and me. So, we left about 6:30 and got there in time to meet up with my daughter's "friend". He's a guy met a while back and they've been texting back and forth. Supposedly not a "serious" thing, but I'm not buying that. Anyway, he's seems to be a good kid and his minister of music (one of our friends who moved away) gives him a good recommendation, so I'm not losing any sleep right now. Plus, he's 5 hours away...

Anyway, the day was good, not a very big crowd, but we did find out it was the 1st time, so you have to start somewhere. We heard and met a really good Christian rock band (JJ Weeks Band), who's based in Macon. They did a really good job, especially for 10:30 on a Saturday morning. Got their contact info so we can maybe get them down here.

After that, we heard a couple of short speeches, did a brief campus tour and had lunch. At 1:30, we got to watch the Mercer men's team play Jacksonville State. It was a really good game. Fairly even matchup, not too rambunctious a crowd. JSU got up to a 10 point lead in the second half, but Mercer came back and made a 2 pointer with 10.2 seconds left to go ahead 71-70 and managed to hang on for the win. It got very exciting in the last minute or two and the crowd was on its feet for that. Afterwards, we said our goodbyes and had a (thankfully) uneventful ride home.

Yesterday, we went to church in the morning, had a birthday lunch for my father-in-law and went to Mama's and cooked hamburgers for her birthday yesterday afternoon. Both of them have 2/9 for their birthday. FIL is 67, Mama's 70 today. So overall, it was a pretty good weekend, just too short.

[Brian Krashpad]

That's a shame more kids didn't go to that music thing Ron.

That reminds me-- isn't Macon where Gretsch is headquartered?

Sounds like you had fun anyhow between that and the birthdays!

[bigoldron]

That's a shame more kids didn't go to that music thing Ron.

That reminds me-- isn't Macon where Gretsch is headquartered?

Sounds like you had fun anyhow between that and the birthdays!

Well popularity/familiarity is a funny thing. If we'd said we were going to Athens to UGA, we'd probably have to carry 2 buses. Macon is a private Baptist college (read that as "expensive"), plus there's no football, so you can imagine how much popularity that it generates around South Georgia.

Yep. Gretsch is headquartered in Macon. Saw that last year when I took my Number 2 daughter to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.

It was a really good weekend. Shame I have to be at work today.

[Brian Krashpad]

Friday I loaded up my van with a backline for a birthday party at my friend's house on Saturday. His actual birthday was 2/14, but since that's Valentine's Day he re-scheduled the party to this weekend. All five original members of our college-days party band, the Band of Fools, attended. One guy lives in England most of the year and comes into town for a few months during the winter. A couple of the other guys drove up from downstate, one from Tampa and one from Orlando.

Obviously we didn't practice or anything, just threw together a few songs on the fly, with a guy sitting in on drums so our original drummer could play guitar. It was pretty cold out, and that didn't help with the guitars staying in tune either. At least the cops didn't show up.

My daughter played bass on a couple songs, which was the first time she had ever played with a band or in front of people. Here's a few hilarious/painful seconds of that, sorry about the weird keyboards, that's what happens when people drink too much! Pretty bad when the only one not making a fool of herself is the teenager.



Sunday morning I had to get up early despite not getting home until 1:30 a.m., because my son was acolyting/crucifering at church. Stopped for lunch on the way home, then later in the late afternoon I drove back up to my friend's house and loaded all the stuff back up. Went from my friend's house to my office for band practice. Since I had a little 2x10 cab I bought for my daughter to practice at home with me (had used at the party for bass), I tried out the 2x10 cab at band practice in combo with a Hartke 4x10 and it sounded great. I think a 1x15 with the 2x10 might even be better for the contrast.

How was your weekend?

[Spudman***]

Sounds experimental. I like it.

[Brian Krashpad]

Sounds experimental. I like it.

Haha, if experimental means "bad," yeah.

Oh well, everyone had fun. Lotsa people and some I hadn't seen in years.

[bigoldron]

Oh well, everyone had fun. Lotsa people and some I hadn't seen in years.

That's what it's supposed to be about. Glad ya'll had fun! Does your daughter have a learners permit yet? She could double as the bus driver.

Wait a minute, did I see in one of your posts that her name is "Hannah Beth"? Too weird. My older one is Carabeth and my baby girl is Annabeth, affectionately know around town as the "Beth Girls". I get called Ronnie Beth way too much because of it.

[Spudman***]

I get called Ronnie Beth way too much because of it.

That's probably going to start happening here now too. Ronnie Beth.:

[Brian Krashpad]

That's what it's supposed to be about. Glad ya'll had fun! Does your daughter have a learners permit yet? She could double as the bus driver.

Wait a minute, did I see in one of your posts that her name is "Hannah Beth"? Too weird. My older one is Carabeth and my baby girl is Annabeth, affectionately know around town as the "Beth Girls". I get called Ronnie Beth way too much because of it.

Yes, she does have a learner's permit. She can be my designated driver!

And yep, we call her Hannah Beth, her name is Hannah (for a great-great-grandmother) Elizabeth (for a great-aunt). Since Hannah was/is a popular girl's name we knew she'd probably have other Hannahs in her classes and such, but that there probably woudn't be any other Hannah Beths. Now at school I think she's shortened it and just goes by Hannah, but at home we call her Hannah Beth a lot still.

In Spanish we call her Annabel, which is the name I think she uses in her school Spanish classes.

[marnold***]

Sounds like a Johnny Cash tune: The Ballad of Ronnie Beth

[Kazz]

Hey Ronnie Beth......