Fried Axolotl and Grandpa Glitter

 

The secret club I'm part of does a "secret Santa" thing every year, and this year my "santee" had the clue word of "purple," so I found this assortment of stuff:

However, even though those stuffed animals are very small, I could only fit the giraffe in the box with the gloves and necklace and Christmas card written in our secret club code, in which I said, "Have a merry purple Christmas." So the hippo and the hedgehog are still here. I also got myself a necklace in one of my favorite colors - coral!

This was all at Goodwill on Monday evening right after I got back from work, and before we went to see the Holiday Train. Then in the evening, a strange thing happened: Travalon was heating up my Warmie axolotl Axel, and a little hole got burned in him!

How strange! Axel was made to be heated up in the microwave, but currently he's leaking lavender everywhere, so I have to cut off the singed part and sew him back up. Travalon felt bad, even though it's not clear that he did anything wrong (his probably higher-quality Warmie red panda Ming has never had this issue), so he ordered me another "Mexican fish," and it arrived today.

I'm thinking of calling this one Lexa, which is Axel backwards. That seems better than Axel Two. When the package arrived, I picked it up and noted that it smelled like lavender. It's a huge relief to me that I was able to notice this, because I am very stuffy and achy, so the fact that I can smell probably means I don't have COVID but just some run-of-the-mill cold. 

Last night we went to the classic rock jam again, and I played the same four songs: "I've Just Seen a Face" in G, "Lucky Man" in G, "Norwegian Wood" in E or some unholy key like that, and "Cecilia" in C. This time I think I was practically flawless, but admittedly I haven't seen the videos yet, and also there was a gentleman improvising on the violin who was kind of throwing me a bit, especially on "Norwegian Wood." The coolest songs they did last night were "Brick House" and "Sympathy for the Devil." They also did "Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin, so that was awesome. The guy who does Billy Joel covers showed up, and we always enjoy hearing him. They ended the night playing "Never Gonna Let You Go" by Sergio Mendes, not a hard song to sing but notorious for all the chord changes. Speaking of singing, I was too stuffed up to try "Jolene" last night, and then someone else did it anyway. I met a woman there who really reminds me of my neighbor; she said she's a singer and even has a CD coming out, but she just wanted to check out the jam before actually performing. She said I had "mandolin face" when I play, which is apparently a very sans souci sort of look, as opposed to the scowl of "bass face." I said that makes sense, because my first ukulele teacher told us mean people do not learn to play the ukulele, and when I asked what they do play, he said, "The bass." But where would we be without bass players? As the song says, "I'm all about the bass, bout the bass, no treble!"

There's a guy who's usually at these jams Travalon calls "Grandpa Glitter." He wears all purple, and his hat and shoes light up. When I asked where he got these accoutrements, he said, "Amazon." He likes to get up and dance with the women who also come but don't play anything. Every week I bring my electric mandolin but don't sign up, thinking I'd rather just listen myself, but this week they came over to me and handed me the sign-in sheet. Ah well, if the price of admission is playing the same four songs over and over, there are worse things.

Famous Hat