Just another weekend
Last night's concert went extremely well. I had some problems in the first piece with a note not sounding, but after that, I played shawm better than I ever played in my life. The singers were equally solid. Those of you who weren't there (which was all but, oh, 3 dozen of you :-( ) really missed out. Afterwards, Dr. Duffin stood the first round at a local wine and martini bar. A good time was had by all.
The weekend took an abrupt turn for the worse when Rusty got a call at 8 (she was still in bed). She'd been reminded that she had agreed to pick up her granddaughter Sara (age 10). And Sara was bringing A Friend. Sara is an OK kid, but her friend was loud, hyper, obnoxious. We hadn't eaten breakfast yet, so I cooked, and they both said they didn't want any as they'd had breakfast. OK, cool. Then Sam started asking for food. "We asked if you wanted breakfast, and you didn't." "I don't want any eggs that came out of a chicken's butt. I eat store eggs." Well, where do you think eggs come from anyway??" So she's sped up on caffeine and sugar, driving even Sara nuts, to the point where Sara was saying to her face, "I'm not bringing you next time." They decided to play Monopoly and that we'd play along. Cool...but Sara said, "Sam is really bad at math". And that was the truth, besides having no attention span. Her money was all over and she couldn't keep track of her properties. We felt sorry for her, so we'd voluntarily pay her (In my family, if you landed on a property and the owner didn't catch you, you didn't have to pay.) But she owned a utility, and Sara kept on singing out the answer to "4 times the amount on the dice". Finally, we made a rule: you had to ask for your own rent. Next roll, I landed on the utility and shook an 11. "Here's an easy one: what's 11 x 4?" "Uh.....41?" (Rusty): "OK, pay her $41." I mean, that's the way it works in the real world, doesn't it? Sara had the first (dark blue!) color group, but wasn't aggressive about building it up. And after Sam turned down a green and then bought it at auction for $200 over what she could have had it for, I bought it from her for $320 to complete a color group.
We got rid of them at 3. I'm making fetayer, drinking a Belgian-style ale and listing to string quartets...what all God-fearing people SHOULD be doing on a Sunday afternoon.
Comments
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: February 18, 2007 09:25 PM
Inquiring minds what to know: what in Hades (or Elysium) is fetayer?
Posted by: Jo
Posted on: February 20, 2007 10:14 AM
...Why didn't I know you play the shawm..?
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: February 20, 2007 02:29 PM
Jeffrey:
Middle-Eastern hand pies...these particular ones filled with lentils.
Jo:
You don't know ALL my dirty little secrets, do you? Actually, IIRC my major shawm playing started after we were seeing each other regularly, so it just didn't come up.
My boss Stephen refers to shawms as "woodwinds of mass destruction" and riffed on it during the invasion of Iraq: "I heard they found a mobile reed-making laboratory in Iraq. They didn't find any cane, but it COULD have been used to make shawm reeds."
Posted by: jeffrey smith
Posted on: February 20, 2007 09:56 PM
Hmmf. A woodwind of mass destruction is an offkey oboe in BWV 232
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: February 21, 2007 05:11 PM
Nah, Bach's works are indestructable. But it would certainly make a Messe.