Today my boss and I were talking about music. She stopped by the concert on Saturday, a concert I'll talk about at length later, and while we were on the topic of music we found that we have a lot in common listening-wise. I told her about the coffeehouse we used to work back in the day, and she told me a friend of hers went to see this recovering alcoholic who plays jazz, gospel and blues on the piano.
"Preacher Jack?!" I asked with a tone of "you gotta be shittin' me" in my voice.
She dropped her fork and said it was indeed ole Preacher Jack. I guess he's doing well these days and is healthy. Back a year and a half ago I wondered whatever had become of him. Now I know. Perhaps we'll go check him out at a show one day...my boss found out he plays every Friday in Salem at Roosevelts. Hmmmm.
Anyway, I should chronolog our visit with Tess, seeing as so much excitement went down. She came in on Sunday night of last week, Monday and Tuesday I took the day off. I let her sleep in wicked late on Monday, knowing full well the jetlag was probably kicking her ass. We went to Newburyport and loafed around, ate lunch, cruised the harbor, looked at ships. We had dinner and crashed. Tuesday I took her and Jessica geocaching. We set out to do a very local cache, and then went up the New Hampshire coast to do two in Rye.
I neglected to program in the coords for the "virtual" cache, meaning there's something you need to see and then email the cache hider, so we couldn't do that one. And we looked and looked for the second one, to no avail.
Tess was a great sport about it -- she squicks out with spider webs and bugs, but she hung in there, right on my heels with Jessie, lookin' and lookin'... but we failed.
I'll probably go back with Doug and he'll walk right up to it and say "duh, Chris, why couldn't you SEE this. Aduh? Aduh duh duhdee duh duh?"
Wednesday Tess took a train up to Portland, ME to see another friend. She overnighted there and on Thursday I picked her back up at the train and trucked her down to Taunia's where she spent two nights in the diva castle.
Saturday morning we all met up to move Ms. Amy from one part of town to another. I was late in getting there, because I got stuck behind every granny and every tourist from Iowa that was in town... plus, I got stopped at every pedestrian crosswalk with a stop light. It seemed as if everyone said "Let's cross the street when we see a Red Pick-up Truck!" There was a cosmic conspiracy to slow me down.
The move was organized. It was hot but went smoothly. Shah and Amy's friend David worked a hell of a puzzle in getting her couch down the stairs. The truckster came in handy for getting the big stuff, and all her belongings that were not yet moved over to the new place went in one trip. It was an impressive moving crew. I met some nice folks and had fun. Then I took Tess home with me and we went to see Nickel Creek and Bruce Cockburn.
We saw less of Nickel Creek and Bruce Cockburn than I would have liked, and far more of unwashed heathen backs and rude fat bitch asses.
Here's the story. We met up with Gregg, Karry, Karry's bro Kevin, and the kids. They'd scoped out a nice spot which afforded a clear view of the stage. The first act played, he's some guy who wrote a hit song for Norah Jones or something. He was boring. Way too mellow. Nice to hear, but very much not the upbeat and exciting music I was hoping for.
Nickel Creek came on (and Chris looked luvverly in a cute little baseball hat and his mandolin. Yay). They whip into their set, and a hoarde of these hippie kids come and stand right in front of us on the walk way.
We asked them several times to go stand off to the side, that they were blocking our view. One jackass hairy bastard hippie in these ugly assed surfer shorts gave me a ration of crap and refused... but the others were kind of nice and compliant. Mostly because they were higher than the Hubble Space Telescope.
This one guy had on these black glasses frames with no lenses, thicker than Buddy Holly, Elvis Costello, Rivers Cuomo or Spongebob would wear. I don't know who he was kidding, but when he walked away after the fifth time we told him to take his hippystink away, the people next to us said "that is SO not a good look for him," and we laughed.
Tess got the bulk of the humor from our neighbors. Gregg barely kept his cool. Nickel Creek sounded great, but we didn't get to see too damn much of them.
What I was amazed to discover was Nickel Creek brought in the big crowd. After they were done, throngs of people left. Including the hippie kids. I'm going to "Fark" up the picture of these guys' back. They will soon become tattooed freaks from hell.
Anyway, back to the story.
Nickel Creek's departure from the stage may have had the tide receed with the hippie kids and jam-band fans. But it brought in a whole new breed of rude insenstitve pricks. We'd been there since 2 in the afternoon. Gregg and Karry had been there since 10 in the morning.
People started showing up at 7, and they stood right in front of us.
This one lovely, classy pair, especially. They stood in front of us, her in her denim mini and knit tank top, him in some sort of summer weight off-white linen suit, he was probably a former beauty king, but his belly could not be restrained by his nice summer dress suit, and his level of classiness could not be determined by his quality watch and shoes. You know what I mean...white trash dressing well. They stood there and ignored our requests for them to move, they didn't respond. A guy four rows behind us came up to them and politely asked them to move, I saw the fancy dress boy gesture in unfriendly manner, and refuse to move.
Gregg got up.
Gregg talked to the guy, and they got into a verbal altercation. Essentially, Gregg said "You're standing in our way, we can't see." Rather nicely.
The guy responds with, "Well, what about all those people who are standing over there?" and gestures to the far right where indeed millions of people are standing.
Gregg says, "They aren't blocking my view. You are. Can you please move?"
The guy says "Tell all of them to move and I'll move."
What?
Uh, NO. You need to move. So the guy tells Gregg off, Gregg returns the volley, calls the guy all sorts of names but none more harsh than "insensitive prick." I yell to them "No one wants to look at your tuchus."
And the woman grabs her flabby ass in both hands and starts squeezing.
High class here, folks. Way high. I wanted the hippie kids back. They were cute and obliging, and easy on the eyes. At least they'd squat down until they were filled with too much joy and would start standing up to dance, rock and praise.
This woman keeps grabbing her ass. I mean, keeps on doing it.
Tess has photos to prove it. I didn't have my camera handy... I ended up taking Geoff to the bathroom for what seemed like the 10 millionth time, and after that I decided we needed to go. I couldn't see anything but flabby 40 something year old classless ass and it just wasn't worth it to me anymore. Cockburn was only playing his new stuff, Geoff was getting tired, and poor Tess... good sport that she is, she didn't fly all this way to see New England's finest.
We went to Wendy's.
Sunday Doug and I went to church and Tess babysat the kids. There's no Sunday school in the summertime, so we know the Episcopal liturgy is torture on a six year old. Our service was very short, the new pastor was way cool. I really like her (more on that later).
And the rest of the day Sunday was spent baking cookies and shopping and prepping for the All About Buford show in honor of Princess Tess of Alaska.
We barbecued for the band and guests (felt so VIP backstage passy there, yo). Chef Doug did it up right.I bought a DISCO BALL for the band and wanted to give it to them but Adeel insisted I keep it for me. I think they NEED it more, when they do their Michael Jackson covers and "Car Wash..." But now I have a disco ball and have an idea of where I want to hang it.
The show itself was great. Very few people showed up, which in the end is all for the best because my lovely son decided he was going to JOIN All About Buford and got up with them to be their Solid Gold Dancer for a couple songs. He just couldn't resist. All week long, and for months now you know he's been talking about how he's gonna be a rock star. I could feel his little body filling with the arc of desire to perform when he busted up out of the chair and jumped up next to Adeel and started to do this... hand rolling and happy feet thing, watching the band for musical cues. He wanted to perform with Bruce Cockburn, he wanted his band the Bacraders to be up on stage. Well.
He performed. Taunia laughed and lost it during the performance at one point and I distinctly remember hearing her lovely voice intone "Chris is soooo embarassed right now!" in the middle of a song. yep. I was!
Check out that picture up there. Not only is Geoff bustin' a move, but Amy is flashing me the middle finger in some sort of wicked nasty gang sign thing. And you can see Tess' liquid refreshment of choice there...
And Amy -- you're performing and you're smiling. I caught you with a smile on your face. Amy insists that there are tons of pictures of the band and no one is ever smiling. I figured out why. They're smiling all the time, but I can't get a good shot of any of them because the microphones are in the way. Without the mics, there's the smile.
I've never had anyone throw a concert in my honor, so Tess, I sure as hell hope you had a blast and had fun. May you always remember this ridiculous and wacky evening, and your crazy visit to the far East.
I took Tess to NY Monday and put her on the train. I had a great visit with her. It was really nice to meet a total stranger who wasn't a total stranger. She says 'Rock on!' a lot when you tell her something cool (remember, I used to do that all the time too back in the early stages of my journal writing). Rock on!
Back to work yesterday. I got my paycheck today and realized I'd sent my boss the wrong timesheet. I sent her one from May 10 instead of July 10. I got overpaid by 13 HOURS, which is a load of money. My boss offered to void the check and issue a new one, but I've got direct deposit. It's in the account as of this coming morning. I told her I'd fudge this week's timesheet to deduct 13 hours. So I feel like I'm working for free, even though I know I got paid for hours not there last week. Psychologically, it feels awful. And my boss... well, she was amazed by my honesty. I must say, while I'm not surprised I was honest and called out the mistake, I'm somewhat conflicted and disappointed in myself.
What would you do if there was an error in your favor like that? Something to ponder. Email me if you want to let me know.
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