The weekend Thread

[Brian Krashpad]

Yup, though not nearly as bad as I was anticipating which means while I'm still out of shape, I'm in better shape than I thought I was. I was expecting not to be able to walk today.

Well there's you're silver lining!

I hear a lot of that whenever I post pics of me jumping around like a meth-addled monkey on stage, but that's not nearly as much work as real physical labor or strenuous sport. Although I'm skinny again I seriously need to at least start walking or biking a bit.

[deeaa*]

My older son goes riding Saturday mornings.

[Brian Krashpad]

Again, brrr.

Saturday I drove through the Ocala National Forest, down to a Marriott hotel in the small town of Lake Mary north of Orlando, to play a church related High School Youth Gathering. There was recorded music I was to play along with, plus two live pieces with me and the singer from my church band. After I got there and loaded in, had to sit around for hours until a rehearsal for a "show" (the DJ/PA people referred to it as such despite the God element) preceding our service was done. Then we got about an hour quick run-through. I didn't have sheet music (don't read anyhow) or even lead sheets. I made up this for the service:



My singer had been goading me all week to play behind my head at this. During the first song, before the actual start of the actual service, the DJ was cranking a very dance-oriented mix and they got the kids up on a catwalk to dance around, so I figured that would be as good a time as any to do that. I'd been playing on the same catwalk, jumped over to an empty seat in the first row seats (the seats were about the same height as the catwalk), and standing on the chair did the behind-head thing. The kids seemed to like that. Later in that song my strap broke, I caught the guitar and kept playing, then switched to a backup. The rest of the service went pretty flawlessly, though it was all extemporaneous on my part.

Here's a pic of the room, I'm guessing there were 300-400 people in it, probably the most I've ever played to:



After the service the kids had a dance, so I didn't get to sleep until about 12:30, crashed in our vicar's room, along with the youth pastor from the Tallahassee group.



Woke up at 6:20, loaded out, drove back to Gainesville and went directly to church and played the 11 o'clock service Sunday. Watched the Gators get beat in b-ball and vegged the rest of the day.

[Tig***]

Congratulations on the really big shoe, Brian! (us older farts get the Ed Sullivan reference)

[Tig***]

Took the family to a local farm and picked a few baskets of strawberries. Stocked up on other local, fresh fruits and veggies. We had a blast picking our own berries.

Watched a few spring training MLB games. Expected a little more from the Phillies and less from the Astros, and received the opposite from both.

Started work on closing up the old pass-through window between the kitchen and the dining room.


Hung new birdcage chandelier.

[deeaa*]

Phew,

Just got home from visiting our bassist with our drummer last night, he lives a bit farther away so he arranged his wife to take us there last light and back in the morning, which turned afternoon though.

We just had some sauna and played cards and drank beer and cheap cognac, listened to the new CD we got out, had a good time. I didn't drink hugely, maybe a dozen or so beers and unmeasurable amount of that cognac, and I did get to sleep by midnite and slept till eight. The guys were still drinking and listening to music when I woke up (and trying to play along fruitlessly); the bassist's wife said there had been maybe 1,5 hours of pretty quiet there at some point in the small hours, but they started again around four a.m.

I dunno what to call 'em, functional alcoholists? It's just amazing how the two of them can just drink days and nights through, destroying several bottles of that cognac and nearly three 24-cases of beer...but man they are such annoying company in that state, when you're already sobered up well. Hell they could hardly stand and kept babbling constantly and insisted on listening to the same song over and over again at full volume...sheesh :-)

You know hot it is. Incoherent babbles and warm hugs and praises, endless talk of how what is how and what is not and you're such a nice guy, let's drink some more, isn't it great, man, dude, tell me, isn't it great, huh, let's drink, what a nice CD we made, didn't we, huh, what do you think, huh? come on, play some guitar...have a beer...my man...isn't it great, huh? and all the while you need to almost hold them up or at least be on the lookout for when they'll fall on the breakable object, and all the speech comes out painfully slow like a slowed-down record; a drunken man's babble, eyes staring fixedly and body wavering like a reed in wind.

They're really very nice guys but in these situations it always feel like I'm never gonna make it home at this rate; so for 3 hours or so I kept prodding them to put on clothes, collect their gear, and let's get that car going, but man it's hard. You could make a movie out of it, a really funny one. You know, you get one drunkard standing in his shoes and the other one vanishes to have a smoke somewhere. While you try to collect him, the first one has crawled to the stereo and insists on listening to that song once more, and also finds some bottle with still some vodka on it and won't budge for a moment. And even when you get them to the car, you have to hook their seatbelts and make sure the doors are shut, and then you have to go back to the house as one forgot his phone there, and meanwhile they escape again to have a smoke and see if there was any beer left at the sauna...sheesh, it took forever to get them on board, and even on the way they were constantly trying to put on CD's and change songs, and wanted to stop for a smoke, and then stop to see if the phone was in the trunk, and whatnot...it's so amazing how hard it can get. Literally hours of work! It would really make an insanely funny movie.

Well we did get out of there, and the drummer went on to a local bar to continue...hope he gets home at some point. He always does, somehow, although he won't be heading home ever before he's so stoned from drink that his eyes don't move any more, he can't speak, and he just kinda...flows home like a zombie somehow.

[Eric***]

Just got home from visiting our bassist with our drummer last night, he lives a bit farther away so he arranged his wife to take us there last light and back in the morning, which turned afternoon though.

Wow, Dee. That's quite the story. I was reading your entry out loud to my wife as we were on the road yesterday (I was not the one driving though!), and we were both flabbergasted by your description. Two guys killing 3 cases of beer is crazy enough, without the cognac and whatever else that was in the mix. I think I'd be ready to die the next day if I was to go through all of that. It's almost admirable in some weird way, just how someone can survive all of that abuse to their body.

My weekend was spent on the road. I took a road trip to Cleveland with my wife to check out the place. It's a nice city, and quite cheap. It's the home of Great Lakes brewing too, which is one of my faves. It was a decent chance to see another city and have that under our belts.

[R_of_G]

Yesterday we drove out to Clearwater Beach and went on one of the dolphin cruise boats out in the Bay. We saw several dolphins which is always very cool. The weather was beautiful to be out on the water for a couple of hours. The traffic getting out there was pretty heavy, but with spring break on and several MLB baseball teams having their spring training sites in the area it was to be expected.





Sorry no pics of the dolphins. They didn't surface long enough each time or give me warning when they were about to do so.

[Tig***]

Looks like a fun and happy family outing. It helps when it isn't during the heat of summer.
Oh, is that Miles Davis on your shirt?

I was useless from working nights last week, sleeping 10-12 hours each night. This job really is killing me, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Managed to get the pass through window walled in. I've never done any drywall, so this is gong slow.
Tip: When you don't need full sheet of drywall, look for broken one that is marked down to a buck.

[R_of_G]

Looks like a fun and happy family outing. It helps when it isn't during the heat of summer.
Oh, is that Miles Davis on your shirt?

It was a fun day. Ella had a good time which meant my wife and I had a good time. Plus there was free beer and wine. And yes, that's a Miles t-shirt. Good eye.

[Eric***]

Saturday: Watched college basketball most of the day. Went out walking in the city that night to watch all of the drunk people on the street. Sort of entertaining, I guess.

Sunday: Got up way too early and toted my bass over to church to play two services. Played through some 1x15" Ampeg amph that was lined out to the board. Everything went well. I'm not the most groove-oriented bassist in that I don't always maintain the exact same rhythm throughout the song, which is an area I'm going to try to correct. That being said, I don't think I was too annoying, and I hopefully helped provide an underpinning for the rest of the band. Lots of people came up to me and said it sounded great, so that's nice. I'll be doing it again next Sunday. Bass seems to be a different animal altogether, but it's fun in its own way.

[Tig***]

Saturday was a rare date day/evening for Mrs. T and I. Usually we are busy doing the mom and pop duties. We hopped on the shuttle bus to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. I haven't been since they moved from the old Astrodome to the Reliant Stadium, and it has grown in size tremendously. It was the largest attendance on record that day with 153,000 entering the gates. The total for the 3 week event was 1.3 million. I've never seen such a smooth operation, and every worker or volunteer was really nice. The event raises money for scholarships, research, and endowments.

We didn't know it, but Saturday's rodeo was the final championship for each event, with a 1st prize of $50,000. Even if you don't like rodeos, this was really entertaining.


Brad Paisley was the evening's concert attraction. I'm not a huge fan, but this guy can really play guitar! He didn't spend much time up on the revolving stage, instead, walking along the arena to play up close to the audience. He's a great entertainer, giving back as much as he can.

One of several Tele's and one red Strat he played through a compliment of several Dr. Z amps.


Sunday was Mrs. T's birthday, and she wanted to garden and plant some new flowers in the front yard. Took her out for a tasty Italian dinner later.

[deeaa*]

I bet my wife would be thrilled to see a rodeo...wouldn't mind watching one meself either, but she digs horses a lot...she's had several horses, also owned a proper race horse when she was younger.

We went to the cottage today, decided to try some ice-fishing (got none) but the spring is well on the way already indeed. Just a few yards of snow on the cottage yard..the road was still quite blocked for anything but a snowmobile, so we walked there over the lake. Here's some pics approaching the cottage...terrific weather, the sun is just brilliant these days. There were a bunch of people driving round the lake or fishing here and there. Which is weird because usually you hardly see anybody around. Boys got to ride on neighbor's snowmobile as well, and my wife rode around the whole island...took just 5 minutes or so, the thing goes like 90 miles per hour or more. I just concentrated on planning a deck I'll build when the snow melts, between the sauna and the outdoor hottub.

[omegadot]

Very jealous d. I remodled the bar and ordered parts for my MAME cabinet.

Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

[Tig***]

Massive spring cleaning in the house. Yipee.

Took the 16 year old son to see "The Hunger Games". It stuck to the book and characters well, but the shaky-cam moments were annoying and pointless.
As usual, the details that made the book work so well are skipped in the movie version. I'll give it a B- at best.

[deeaa*]

Hm, gotta remember to read that some day soon.

Me, I had my father-in-law's 50th birthday...all went well, Karaoke and all. Nice. Had a terrible hangover but kept it under control :-)

[Brian Krashpad]

Thanks for all the posts and pics, cats!

Sorry I haven't been posting. March was madness indeed. Just realized I didn't post any of the pics I subsequently got of the youth conference I played at the beginning of the month down in Lake Mary (near Orlando). Here's one playing off to the side of the catwalk up front:



Here's one taken from the DJ platform, with me on the catwalk and all the kids (and a couple of the adult leaders) up there dancing:



In this one I stepped off the catwalk to stand on a seat in the front row:



The weekend after that I played a reunion of my college party band Band of Fools at a friend's house up in High Springs (half-hour north of town):



Didn't do anything big St. Paddy's weekend, at least not that I can recall.

The weekend after that I went back down to Orlando, to see my daughter in a play at UCF. She was really good, it was a heavy play and she cried onstage. Here's a cast/crew/writers pic at the afterparty, my daughter is the girl in the green on the right:



This is going to be another wild month, tomorrow I have a church band practice at noon, then in the afternoon I'll go back up to my same buddy's in High Springs for a welcome-back party for his adult daughter (I can remember when she was so tiny she slept in a dresser drawer!), then Easter morning I hafta play the sunrise service. Ugh. Plus it'll be up front since the brass is taking over the choir loft, so extra work.

On the weekend of the 21st-22nd I have two shows w/2 different bands, on Saturday afternoon I play with the church band (First Things First) on the downtown plaza; then on Sunday I play with Crash Pad in a big multi-band benefit (for an inclusive-recreation program that gets differently-abled kids and youth out and into sports with other kids and adults):



Hopefully the first week of May I'll be taking a cruise w/Mrs. K as an early celebration of our 25th anniversary, then on the 12th is my birthday and Crash Pad is playing with a sit-in drummer (from my side-band Pedagogy), so I hafta get him practiced up, as well solidify the bill (house is letting me book it, yay birthdays!).

Phew.

[Tig***]

Good rawkin' times, indeed! You're doing life right, Brian.

I'm on vacation from April 4th to the 14th. We have the mom-in-law over the first week from NC.
I'm enjoying not working nights, too. Helping Mrs. T with dinner for Easter. We just came back from a local farm with fresh produce and eggs.

[Brian Krashpad]

Good rawkin' times, indeed! You're doing life right, Brian.

Man today was wild. Went to church and got all my gear set up in the Fellowship Hall, along with my big bass rig I was lending our bassist, and then worked on getting the PA all connected. Two hours into that our band leader arrived and said we were playing... in the sanctuary!



So, I moved everything over to the sanctuary.

Then we're about to start practice, and our band leader says, "Brian, we have something for you."

I'm totally puzzled.

He gets out an Epi hardshell case and sets it on a table and says "Open it."

I look at him like whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? So I say, "I hope this is something you got for the church..."

I open the case and it's an Epiphone Casino. Last weekend someone had asked what my next guitar would be, and I said I hadn't bought a guitar in 2 years and wouldn't any time soon, but that there was a sweet Casino on Craigslist.

The nutters bought it for me! He said "It's for your birthday next month, but we thought we'd give it to you early so you could play it at Praise In The Field (our next out-of-church concert downtown in a couple weeks)!"

I'm still totally flabbergasted.

Seller's pics from cl: