Today Travalon and I wouldn't have much time after Mass to do the plastic recycling, so we got to church in time to weigh and photograph it before Mass. He had to drop me off at the Brazilian drumming place for our dress rehearsal, which was a "gray" dress rehearsal, and apparently everyone in the world but my one drumming buddy and me knew this meant you could wear whatever the heck you wanted. The two of us were there in our jerseys and white jeans, as requested for the performance. My jersey is way too big - apparently I don't know what size I actually am - and the white jeans are still a bit tight, and my drumming buddy said she had the same issue. I thought we had to be there at noon sharp, ready to go, so I picked up my drum... and one of the teachers said, "You won't be on for half an hour." Then why the big rush? It was kind of cool to watch the really good drummers go through their numbers, and after we did ours, I watched a few more numbers before Travalon returned.
Our next stop was Richard Bonomo's house for his 70th birthday open house, organized by Kathbert, Luxuli, and another woman. I thought I wouldn't get a chance to see Tiffy today, but she came too, so the two of us took a walk in Rich's neighborhood to enjoy the balmy weather. I talked to my OTHER choir director quite a bit, and the son of the man who makes fabulous desserts. (For today, he made a pistachio cake, a carrot cake, and a pumpkin cookie cake.) There were a lot of leftovers from Thursday night, and Travalon and I brought plantain chips from the Mexican grocery store down the street, while other people brought stuff like quiche bites, pigs in a blanket, fudge, fruit, and chocolate hummus. Someone was playing Chopin on the player piano at a very unsteady rate, which was driving Tiffy crazy, so she headed home. Jilly Moose was there, and she sent me two photos. First, a snowman she made from a kit. The carrot nose is so large that I said it looked like Toucan Sam the Snowman.
Follow your nose - it always knows! And she also sent me a photo of an
air plant terrarium she made at the
Garden Expo, which she went to with
OK Cap.
The Garden Expo is something I definitely didn't have time to attend this weekend, and next weekend I won't have time for much of anything with our Brazilian drumming performance, and then the weekend of
Bach Around the Clock I'll miss the festivities because of our gig in
Spring Green from 1-3, which means I'll be busy from 12-4 since it's an hour drive there and back. Speaking of gigs, because we have one coming up, I forewent (I guess that's a word since spellcheck doesn't hate it) the Slow Irish Session today to go to band practice. First Travalon and I took a walk at Yahara Park, wondering if we'd see the swans I'd seen flying around on Friday, but they weren't there, and they weren't at Tenney Park either.
I really enjoyed band practice today because we practiced the Ukrainian stuff, our one
cumbia, an Irish air, and the
Finnish waltz where I get to pretend to be a
balalaika, and we ended with "
Ashoken Farewell," appropriately enough. As far as I know, the only other player Mandy ever had was my grandma's great-uncle or whatever he was, and I have no idea what kind of music he played on her, but she sure gets a variety these days!
Ukrainian klezmer, a Colombian dance, an Irish tune, and a Finnish tune all in one night! And I got to bounce around from chords to melody to harmony, sometimes in one tune. Nobody would ever call me a great mandolin player, but people have noted that I'm versatile. Then on the way home I was listening to my Jewbacca CD and started whistling along to a klezmer tune, and it made me remember that I used to whistle tunes a lot. This isn't my proudest moment, but in college I had a lousy part-time job calling people and asking them to do surveys, and this was in the days before Caller ID, so if they didn't answer but I got an answering machine, I'd leave them a short message of me whistling
Vivaldi. I'm sure that was a real treat for them. I wonder what I'd think to come home and find a message of someone whistling the opening notes of "Spring" on my answering machine? Back then I would have thought it was a secret message from an unknown admirer, but now I'd just think, "Huh. Not a bad whistler. And with good taste in music."
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