Author: brhythm

The weekend started Friday night at the Black Bull. Blind Albert and I had a duo gig there, 9:30-12:30. A new guy who’s moved into the area sat in with us. Frank Sambiase moved up here from CT, I think. He’s been jamming with the local cats, paying his dues, looking to make in-roads with the locals, trying to get gigs. He did a great job with us, and I really like his playing. And, it was a treat playing with two guitar players. Rarely do I play in a band that has two guitar players; the local clubs don’t pay enough money to have bands with lots of members. Usually, I play in trios, or quartets with a horn. It was nice to have that extra voice, and it added a lot to the sound.

I got home from the gig around 1pm, maybe a little later. As I was getting ready for bed, I noticed I didn’t have my watch on. (Pay attention, this will mean more later.) At my gigs, I take my watch off, and put it in my stick bag. I don’t like to wear a watch when I play. I also take my wallet, keys, and phone out of my pants pocket, and put them in the bag. Anyway, I had left my watch in the stick bag. Since I knew I’d want to wear my watch in the morning, I went out to the car, got my bag, brought it inside, got my watch, and put it on the table.

Saturday morning, I “slept late,” and got up at 8:15. I made blueberry muffins for the family. I washed some dishes, took a shower, did the usuall Saturday AM things. It was pretty warm out, and thoughts of my scooter danced in my head. With my plastic snow shovel, I was able to get enough snow away from the garage door to get it open a crack. Once inside the garage, I was able to get a metal flat shovel. And with that, I was able to chip enough ice away to get the door open! Scoot, here I come! But first, I had to make a trip to the dump. OK, I did that, back to the scoot… I put the battery in, which had been in my garage on the battery tender. I siphoned out the stale gas that was in the tank, and replaced it with fresh gas. I jumped on the kick start a few times, with the key off, just to get some oil into the cylinder. Then I touched the electric start. She roared right to life! I let it warm for a little bit. Susan was running errands with Julia, so as soon as she got home, I went for a ride. I went down to the Keag Store, down Dublin Rd, a left onto Ash Point, South Shore Dr, downtown Owls Head, North Shore Dr, then Rt 73 to home. It  was a nice ride, but the roads in Owls Head are tore up! That was a bone shaker of a ride.

After my ride, I took a quick nap. Then I headed out to Winterport for my gig that started at 8pm. I had the mushroom/swiss burger, which was delish. I brought my gear inside, and started to set up. Then, it hit me: where’s my stick bag? Yup, you guessed it. I left my sitck bag at home from the night before! Panic started to set in. No sticks! But wait! Didn’t I stash a pair of sticks in the spare tire compartment? If I did, they weren’t there. God’s provedence was with me, though. The week before last, we played a gig and had a hand percussionist sit in. I have a big bag of hand percussion items, so I brought that bag for him to borrow. I hadn’t taken it out of the car yet. Inside was a pair of sticks! They weren’t my regular size, and they were pretty beat up, but at least I had some sticks! The gig was well attended, and people danced all night long. I broke one of the sticks, but it was just the tip, so I was able to complete the gig. The sitcks went into my cymbal bag, so now I’ll have a back-up pair! When factoring in the time change, I got home a little after 3am.

Sunday was pretty typical. Church in the morning. Lunch at Mom’s. In the afternoon, I was able to take another quick scooter ride. It wasn’t as long as Saturday, as it was a little cooler. I was able to fit a 1/2 hour nap into the afternoon, too. In the evening, it was back to church. After that, I went to McDonalds for the boys supper, and to Subway for me and the girls. Chicken bacon ranch, of course! The kids went to bed, and then Susan and I had a little snuggle time on the couch before we went to bed.

Oh, it’s an exciting one!

Grandma(Susan’s mom) picked the kids up on Wednesday. They were going to be gone until noontime on Friday. I was supposed to have President’s Day off, but, because it was the day before billing, I needed to be in the office. I was going to take Thursday off, because the kids were going to be gone all day. Instead, I decided to take Friday off too, and parlay the whole thing into a mini vacation.

So Wednesday, after work, I came home and picked Susan up. We ended up going to Cafe Miranda. I had the “Pitch A Tent,” and Susan had something called Jim’s Beef. It was all very good. You should click on the link, and check out their menu. It’s huge. There’s so much stuff from which to choose!  Then off to the grocery store to pick up a few things.We came home, and watched a Jeff Dunham comedy show.

Thursday morning was Eggs Benedict morning. We had had some snow, so we decided it would be a “stick around home” day. Around noon, Susan was feeling sleepy, so she went to take a nap. I stayed up and worked on a web site. With four or five uninterrupted hours, I was able to get it mostly done. I thought perhaps I’d use the leftover Hollandaise to make a Bearnaise to eat over a fillet of beef. At $15/pound for fillet, though, I couldn’t bring myself to buy it. Instead, I bought some less expensive stuff, some broccoli, and a Pepperidge Farm lemon cake. I think we watched some uneventful movie before bed.

Friday morning, and Susan was going to treat me to breakfast at the Brass Compass. Instead, though, we got a phone call: Julia wasn’t feeling well, and wanted to be picked up immediately (instead of noon). So we picked up a few items at Wal-Mart, and had a delicious breakfast in the car provided by, um, McDonalds. In the afternoon, I remember I made some biscuits, and we had them under hamburger and brown gravy for supper: sort of a take on SOS. At one point, while getting the boys ready for bed, I lost my temper, and put myself to bed.

Saturday morning was mostly the same as all my Saturday mornings. Blueberry pancakes for the family. Wash dishes. I stayed home with Julia while Susan and the boys went to nephew Caleb’s birthday party. A nap in the afternoon before my gig. It was during this nap that my gut started to churn. I played my gig, but I wasn’t feeling great. The guys noticed. I wasn’t myself.

Sunday morning, and I noted on Facebook that I wasn’t feeling 100%, but I was still going to church. And I did. And I still had lunch at my Mom’s. I come home, though, and take a nap. When I got up from my nap, I felt worse than before. The boys hadn’t had a nap, and they were starting to falter, so Susan asked that I stay home, and put them to bed. So I didn’t go to evening church. At one point, my stomach was churning so much I went into the bathroom. I was able to fight it off, though. The snow was starting to come down when Susan got back from church, and she reported the roads were quite greasy.

My sleep last night was fitful. I woke up at 3am, stomach in knots. Then, I couldn’t get back to sleep. My mind kept whirling. I wanted to stay home, but I knew I would have work to do at the office from two days off. And I knew, with the snow, other staff members would be running late. What should I do? I would drift in and out, but never really fall back to sleep. So I got up at my usual 5:30.

And, everything was as I expected at the office. All kinds of people couldn’t make it in due to the snow. On the good side of things, Gina, the bookkeeper, kept most of the customers at bay while I enjoyed my time off. So there wasn’t a huge pile on my desk this morning. I got the fires put out around 11am, and then came home. I put my jammies on, and took a nap. I think I’m starting to feel better: I ate supper, and it’s the first time I’ve felt hungry in days.