On the bus!
3:25 p.m.
Yesterday I went back to the appliance store and handed over a substantial sum of money for a dishwasher which had not yet arrived at the warehouse. Instead, the handsome Guillaume will call us as soon as it is in stock and we will arrange a delivery date. Not a moment too soon.
I’m so sick of dishes piling up on the counter. We have very little counter space anyway, and most of it is taken up with things like a microwave oven, coffee maker, toaster oven, fruit baskets and assorted other clutter. I really ought to do something about the latter.
Speaking of clutter, we got a revised house insurance bill. The assessor had been around several months ago, noting changes since we were first insured almost 20 years ago. We were informed we had to put in a railing along the stairway going to the attic, extend the nosing in front of the wood stove so it is the regulatory 18" (it was when it was just a fireplace, but the wood stove extends about 6" farther and eats into that tile space), and that we had to do “housekeeping” in the basement. That refers to all the boxes we can’t seem to get rid of, and the other junk impeding access to the circuit board. More work for you know who!
The night before last Hubby offered to help me learn some of my blues tunes by accompanying me on guitar. It didn’t go well. We really don’t work well together, and hard feelings developed for which apologies were necessary to assuage.
Last night, however, we met with the boys for the first time to go over the tunes for our upcoming blues concert. That was better. The other three musicians are all jazzers. They are comfortable with simply being told: 12-bar blues in E-flat, and then they go from there, listening and improvising on what they hear. Hubby is a classically-trained musician who, even after playing jazz for several years now, still can’t get away from the printed page.
I could not find charts for most of the tunes we’re doing and I was rather daunted by the prospect of learning them off of recordings. I, too, am more used to sheet music in front of me. So I searched the interwebs and found the original sheet music for several of the songs which I could download for a fee. I did that, and now am sorry I went to the bother and expense.
Some of the songs, as sung on the recordings I have, were totally unrecognizable from the composer’s original notation. I gave these printouts to Hubby, and he immediately latched onto them as a drowning man would a piece of flotsam. This proved problematic, especially for one song in particularly, when I told him not to pay attention to it, that it wasn’t useful at all. It took the bass player finding the tune in question on Gr00veshark and playing it for us for the boys to know what they needed to play and for Hubby to realize that I was right.
Otherwise, things went really well. We got through all the vocal tunes and I think I’m getting better at singing off the page. Even Grandpa Mike seemed pleased.
However, as I was on the bus this morning (it’s going to be a long day on the bus) I instant messaged with Hubby, who told me that our drummer accidentally booked another gig last summer on the same date as our blues show. The only date available for us to change it to is January 22 (the day before my birthday), which is awfully close. Otherwise he will have to find us a sub.
Kevy is rather short on funds and can really use both gigs, so I have no problem with changing the date, except that I won’t be able to have all the words memorized for my tunes by then. If they don’t mind me using a music stand and glancing at it from time to time, I don’t mind the earlier concert. It will require a lot of intensive rehearsing, though.
So, I’m on the bus going to visit my mom. I’ll stay with Little Princess as I usually do and hopefully get to see Buddy Boy. I have a couple of pairs of underwear he left behind by accident in the wash over the break. I’m sure he’ll be happy to get them.
<~~~ * ~~~>
