The weekend Thread

[Robert****]

Our family was volunteering Sat and Sun at a triathlon race. When it was over, I ran back home - which meant Forty Thousand Meters before I was home. Or 25 miles, if you prefer.

[Brian Krashpad]

Dude, there are these things called cars...

[Spudman***]

I spent the weekend with Anam Thubten
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anam-T..._fb_noscript=1

[Brian Krashpad]

I spent the weekend with Anam Thubten
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anam-T..._fb_noscript=1

He was expounding on Buddhist religion/philosophy in a Catholic church?

[Spudman***]

He was expounding on Buddhist religion/philosophy in a Catholic church?

The church is now multi denominational. The retreat was held at a local hotel.

[Brian Krashpad]

The church is now multi denominational. The retreat was held at a local hotel.

Ah, that makes more sense. Having a Buddhist speaker at Our Lady of the Snows looked a little... incongruent, if you take my meaning.

[sunvalleylaw]

Quote:
Originally Posted by sunvalleylaw
Also, although it is not a gig, I may sit in this Saturday on a few songs with a friend's garage band like I did last year at their Dipperstock (Dipper Road is where the party is located) in honor of the closing summer and the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. Should be fun! There will be a keg and music there too.

This weekend we worked on the house trying to get into our exterior painting. Unfortunately, weather prevented spraying, but we did a good job of some priming of trim and caulking that was needed, and likely would have been overlooked had we been able to leap into spraying.

Saturday night was "Dipperstock", as mentioned in the post above from the Heavy Metal Kegger thread. Yep, a keg of microbrew at a party with a live band!

The additional good news was I got to play out with my Hagstrom for the first time. I brought both, but the Hagstrom fit the garage bandish sound that was going on. The band was much more confident and tight than last year. I had not played with them, and did not even have a song list, so I was on my own to pick up on what was going on. I held back and played quietly, trying to key on the others and just keep up mostly. But on a couple songs, I knew what was going on and dug right in. DVM's Rabid Rodent, along with the Hagstrom, sounded great live on some Stones tunes and some Neil Young, etc. EDIT: The combination, which I was using with both pickups on, neck turned down a bit, gave a super nice throaty snarl that was so so fun. I was on the red LED setting, with filter neutral, distortion at about 10 and volume straight up. I was quite pleased with how the pedal worked in a band setting with a loud drummer. One of the other players has a Fender Blues Jr. and a nice American Stat, and my chords blended in and and provided some nice background for him to rip it up against. The Hagstrom sounded great and mixed in with the band nicely with no effects as well. Very fun guitar to play out. Will not replace my strat, but since there was already an overdriven strat in the band, it was nice to have an alternative. END EDIT. Bottom line, had a great time, and I love my gear, and hope to play out more.

Also, live music and keggers are good things!

Today was more housework. Raked the big rocks from construction digging out of the area. Ouch, blisters on my fretting hand! And then mowed. Did not get to paint again due to thunderstorms. But got my MIL more settled in her new quarters in our house, and got her tv and cable hooked up.
I did try for a MTB ride between storms and got caught out in one. Got pelted by big sleet, and set my bike down and got down low as the storm passed over. : Cold and wet ride home, but fortunately, not electrifried.
Oh, also, Mark Wein's "Foundations for Guitar" showed up in yesterday's mail. Cool! I can't wait to get started.

[deeaa*]

Them beer kegs are nice...how big are they? We have 5-litre kegs but they are not very popular around here for some reason. We've destroyed a few of those with the father-in-law when barbequing, but never brought one to a party.

Maybe one reason is because people in parties are very much into safeguarding their own drinks...everybody wants to make sure nobody else drinks his beers, and everyone always feels like they brought too little to drink after all, no matter how much they have. Very often people make sure everybody buys a slightly different brand so they know their own. One 5-litre keg could be just about enough for each person, but then there's a problem of refridgeration etc. and there are just a few brands sold in kegs.

Being vigilant over one's booze helps with knowing how much you've drunk though. You will know if you are able to drive a car legally by 3 p.m. or 6 p.m. the next day if you know how much you've consumed. The limit here is 0,5 promille blood alcohol so it sometimes takes well into the next night till you're under the limit, if you're up to around 3.0 or so after midnight. Next saturday I'm going to this sauna/pool party, am already pondering what to take for drinks. I'm thinking three sixpacks of beer will last me the evening OK, counting on that somebody else is offering a few sharper schnapses this time.

[sunvalleylaw]

A standard US keg is 15.5 US gallons, or 58.67 liters, or 103.25 Imperial pints. ;-) The neighborhood party was just down the road a bit, so I was walking, and most folks walked or rode their bikes. A very bike friendly community here.

[deeaa*]

60 liters, whoa! That'd be perfect for a 2-day party with the band guys. Exactly 18 beers each per night, just perfect!

I suppose that's sort of what they use in bars as well.

[Brian Krashpad]

3.0!

Crazy Finns! :

Low-key weekend for me. Friday night I went to dinner at our fave local Mexican Restaurant with la familia. After dinner I and the kids went to the video store and got a season of "My Name Is Earl" and "The Spirirt." I wanted to like the Spirit but kept falling asleep. Fort some reason it just never engaged me. Maybe I'll try again before returning it.

Saturday I got up early and went in to practice at church. We only had 3 songs in the service. The "slow" song was too difficult to play on mandolin, so I played the electric 12 string on it. On the other 2 songs I played my '52 RI Tele. Did an outro lead on one and a very short instrumental break on the other.

After getting home I basically folded laundry all day, and did some picking up and putting away of the dishes.

Sunday morning I went and played in church, first a run-through at 10:30 or so and then the service at 11. After church we had a meeting about the youth band we're making. It will play at youth-sponsored Gator football parking (we're a few blocks from "the Swamp") and other youth events. It'll have a high-school age guitarist, drummer and bassist, with my daughter on bass. I and the pianist from the praise band will sit in with them. The other guitarist and drummer already play with the adult praise band, but this'll be Hannah Beth's first real public performances on bass (although she did play a couple songs with me at a party earlier this year).

After that planning meeting, I broke out the bass and had a practice with yet a third church-related band. This is a trio with the praise band leader on piano or guitar, me on bass, and the praise/youth band drummer. The material is originals by the praise band director. Sort of like Ben Folds Five with a more spiritual bent. Very different from anything I've ever played before, might make a bassist out of me yet. The band is called "Pedagogy," which frankly isn't my fave pick for a band name, but it's what the leader was already using so no big whoop.

On the way home we had to stop by my office to get my CD boombox so my wife could use it in her English classes, since the one she kept locked in a file cabinet over the summer at one of her classrooms (she doesn't teach in a school, but on the UF campus at married housing where many of the foreign students live) went missing. Also let my daughter poke around in the recycled clothing store around the corner from my office, but she said most of the stuff was hideous. Oh well.

Finally got back around 4 p.m. Watched the end of a Liga Mexicana football match, had some dinner, and then some of the Chicago-Denver pre-season football game, but didn't see the end.

[deeaa*]

Ah I am also an English teacher. At a vocational college...cooks, waiters, hotel personnel etc.

[Brian Krashpad]

Ah I am also an English teacher. At a vocational college...cooks, waiters, hotel personnel etc.

In my wife's case, her students are mostly the spouses and other adult family members (such as parents) of foreign visiting college students enrolled at the University of Florida. It is a very large school (50,000 students). Also, she gets a few farm worker migrant type and other "illegal alien" stereotype (US stereotype anyhow) folks. So most of her classes are made up of Asians, and Latin or Central Americans (the latter group is mostly UF student-related rather than migrant-related). A small smattering of Eastern Europeans and those from the Middle East or Mediterannean.

Are your students mainly Finns?

[deeaa*]

Ah, that is a HUGE school. We have something like 6-700 in our unit, something like 8000 in the whole system which includes vocational colleges in several towns nearby.

My students are mainly straight from grade school, i.e. 16-17-year-olds up to twenties, but there's also a large number of adult students changing careers or just on some update courses. Almost 100% Finnish, with varying levels of English skills ranging from near zero to quite passable. A few Russians, occasional exchange student but pretty homogenous when it comes to backgrounds. It's not like there's a lot of foreigners here in the first place :-) most foreigners are teachers, scientists or other people who've come here for assignment and found they liked it and stayed or still on their assignments...or spouses who've moved here along with hubby/wife. One woman from the U.S. writes a humorous column in the local paper as well in English, going over those 'minor' differences in cultures etc.

[marnold***]

I actually did something this weekend (apart from my normal activities, don'tcha know). My congregation and the other WELS ones in the county had a booth at the County Fair. It was upper 50s and drizzling on Saturday when it was our turn to staff it. It felt very strange wearing a sweatshirt in August. After church on Sunday I drove down to Green Bay for my fantasy football draft. I'm thinking of renaming my team "The League of Super Evil" because I drafted guys like TO and Ochocinco. My team's name otherwise is the "Fightin' Wombats." When I play fantasy hockey my team is the "Ice Chiggers."

I'm also awaiting a package from Metal Method. My son and I went in on the 2007 revision of the course. The reason for getting the newer version is because this one starts assuming you know nothing, whereas the 1992 version started out pretty quickly. Also, over the course of Stages 3, 4, and 5 you learn parts of a solo that you should be able to play in toto by the end of that Stage. It makes it much easier to gauge progress. Stage 5 also gets into harmony soloing, something that really wasn't touched on in the older version. They also re-released the original 1983 cassette version on CD. I bought that for nostalgia but also because it teaches some Rhoads and Van Halen stuff I'd really like to learn.

[Spudman***]

I went to another wedding and ate a lot of fabulous food. I also got a gig out of it playing with the Miller Sisters when they come to Pocatello.

[Brian Krashpad]

Jeez that's a big-*ss tent.

You knows some rich folks.

[Spudman***]

Jeez that's a big-*ss tent.

You knows some rich folks.

More importantly...they know us.

Now this is a BIG tent.

[pes_laul]

Last weekend I helped my brother move into college. I really miss him (not so much him but his XBOX and GTA 4)