Princess Campout with Horses

Busy weekend! I ditched work a little early to get Acacia right after school and go see the new Harry Potter movie -- she had her heart set on seeing it the first day. We both really liked it.

Then we went down to the campout, arriving pretty late. But fortunately, we didn't have to set up the tent in the dark, 'cuz Acacia stayed with a friend ("camping sleepover!") and I went home to bed so I could get up early enough to go to a required Living Trust seminar on Saturday morning. After that, back down to the campout to have dinner and play at the Nation Campfire.

Which went *really* well. An unforeseen consequence of my distributing "Waltzing with Bears" CDs to essentially the whole nation is that my campfire audience suddenly has an intimate knowledge of not only the songs in my repertoire, but the full lyrics thereof. When the chief calls me up to play a song, there's a pitched battle of girls calling for their favorites. "Lollipop Tree" is a big favorite these days 'cuz they all like the part where I pretend to cry.

When I got to, inevitably, "Bears" itself, I asked if anybody knew the words, and got almost universal affirmative screaming in return. So I asked 'em to come on down and sing it with me. Fortunately, there was a pretty big stage area, 'cuz I got about 50 little girls -- and it was a ball. They were singing out, having big fun, and the dads were enjoying it, too. A lot of guys told me afterward that that was a great idea.

Sunday morning's assembly was similar. I did "The Marvelous Toy", with a lot of in-seat participation, and the dads got it in their heads to do "the wave", several times, while I was singing. Took some concentration not to lose my place with that going on out there. Later, before "The Indian Princess Song", when I repeated my plea for somebody to step up to take over the guitar playing for next year, when I'll be (supposedly) graduated out, up went a chant for "One more year! One more year!".

Flattering. And, truth be told, what with Trailmates continuing to be the bust that it is, I'm tempted. Acacia seems to be amenable, Allen and Meagan seem to want to do another year, and maybe we can talk Todd and Arielle into it... We'll see.

Anyway, after all that, Kevin (who in the Marine reserves) took a few of us who could make it to the stables on Camp Pendelton for an hour-long ride. It goes without saying that Acacia loved that part.

K&W - RSM and MV - 11/12Nov2005

Friday at RSM was kinda medium. Started off with lots of people there, played OK, but about halfway through, the place was stone empty. I've never seen a café with literally nobody in it. Fortunately, it didn't look like it was our fault -- the waiting-for-dinner crowd always empties out when their tables come up, and the others just got finished with their studying or whatever and went on home. At least, that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. In the last half hour, though, some more people "my age" showed up and were liking us pretty good, so it ended well.

Saturday was one for the books, though. We got there, and the helpful staff had brought out the amp and two speakers, on the stands. Nice. I got there first, and started setting up all my stuff, now including a notebook computer to snag a recording, adding to the complexity. Warren got there and started running all his wires, and, since the staff had *not* cleared us a space to play in, and we needed little tables, and, and, and -- anyway, we finally had everything in place at 8:10. I fired up the amp to start the sound level setting process, and, nothing. The power light on the amp glows, just barely, but no sound.

We screw around another 10 minutes swapping every conceivable component: cables, power cords and wall sockets, instruments, speakers, channels, jacks -- but nothing. We finally give up and I go home to fetch my amp.

While I'm gone, Warren finally flags down a store employee who looks at the amp and says, "Oh, this is the Dead One" and fetches the Live One from the store room. Warren takes the time to write "Dead" on a napkin and leave it on the Dead One, in hopes that no other band gets to have this experience...

By the time I get back with my amp, Warren's got everything set up and we were playing pretty soon thereafter -- "only" 50 minutes late.

The upside was that, by that time, the café was calm and quiet, and I do love playing in a quiet place. I can hear myself, and there's less distraction, so I can really perform. And the results were terrific. The gig the night before makes a great dress rehearsal, I felt good, I could hear good... The resultant recording is pretty darn good.

I got a few decent takes the night before, too, so I've implemented a new feature on the K&W website -- "Song of the Week". It'll be a live take of a song that we captured recently, with a link on the top (Schedule) page, so (maybe) people will see it. This week's song is "Desperado", which I've recently added to my book, and which is working out pretty well.

Sally Ride Science Festival at UCI

On Sunday, I took Geneva to the Sally Ride Science Festival at UCI. It's a program she's started to encourage girls to go into science and engineering. There was a street fair with booths -- run by Actual Female Persons -- showing science stuff. Then we went into the gym and Sally gave a little speech and took questions. After that the kids got to choose two workshops to go to -- Geneva likes biology so she did "the bugs one", and one about fish.

Meanwhile, I was in a class about "Helping Your Daughter Get Into College". Pretty informative really, but how can it be that I have to start thinking about her college already?!? Ack!

Ice Skating with the Princesses

Acacia and I went ice skating on Wednesday night and had a great time. She's been doing a lot of roller and blade skating lately, so she's a pretty good skater these days.

There was a problem with the pizza, and in retrospect, I should have asked for a different pair of skates 'cuz my left one was way too sideways-slippable, but we had fun.

KC - RSM 04Nov2005

Another rough one. I used the store's amp again (so I could record, for what that's worth), and, again, couldn't get it to sound right. Oddly, halfway through the night, I inexplicably decided to turn the right-hand speaker 10 degrees further away from me (I originally had it pointed towards myself 'cuz I forgot to being my little monitor speaker), and it sounded pretty good, then. I guess the direct feed is just too harsh, but through a little speaker cabinet wood, not so bad.

Anyway, the bigger problem was that there were not one, but two groups of people who had come in to talk. And when I say, "talk", I mean "holler". Some kinds of joyful reunions of old friends, I guess, but they were really loud. Probably trying to hear themselves over that jerk with the guitar...

Clearly, they have a right to be there (probably more right than I do, given that they bought some coffee), so I can't really complain, but it made it pretty hard to play. More great training for the harsh realities of the performing life, I guess. First time ever that I even thought of just packing up and going home in the middle of a gig, though.

Todd and Tammy come by, but didn't stay long (probably 'cuz they couldn't hear anything anyway), and I had a few appreciative customers -- one a big Simon and Garfunkel fan. But most of the night was lost in the noise.

Still, I sold 4 CDs, and unaccountably made $20 in tips. It's strange that we used to get $4 or $7 when we thought it went pretty well, and these days we get $20 or $30 even when it goes not-so-good. A chunk of that increase is explained by the CD sales, I guess. And, sure, I know that I am (and we are) getting better all the time, but I can't believe the audiences can tell the difference, so much. I mean, we're not *so* much better than the "us" on the April 2004 CD...

My Halloween costume

OK, we're encouraged to wear costumes to work on Halloween, but there's not a lot of enthusiasm. I guess the Chinese people, understandably, just don't get it, so there's no response there...

Anyway, I usually wear my Space Camp astronaut jumpsuit, but this year I "accessorized" it with my cowboy boots and hat. "Space Cowboy", get it?

Unfortunately, almost nobody else did without a lot of prompting. Clueless...

Halloween Costumes 2005

As she was at school last week, Acacia went Trick-or-Treating as a gypsy. Trouble is, she hasn't really seen any "real" gypsies (not even Esmeralda in "Hunchback"), so she was kind of faking it. She pinned a bunch of little jingle bells all over her skirt, and that made it special. I told her that she should be wearing the scarf on her head, not tied around her hair, and she loved the idea, and that helped.

Geneva didn't have any ideas this year, and it's tough on an eighth grader, 'cuz they're so self-conscious. But I got down my old "Sergeant Pepper" jacket, and she went for it. A little red duct tape down the pants, and she was all set. She probably should have kept her hair down, but I guess she decided she looked like a girl, rather than a hipppie, that way. We wish we'd'a had a brass instrument of some kind for her to carry, but she made do with a borrowed pair of drumsticks.