K&W at Brea - 18Nov2006

I've never played Brea before, though Jim & Warren have, and Warren warned me that "there's no place to set up". That turned out to be very true, but we moved some roll-able displays out of the way and figured something out.

I played pretty well, considering the 3 weeks lay-off and lack of home practicing. My brain seemed somehow more lucid than usual, as if I'd had some kind of bandwidth upgrade -- stuff seemed to be easier than I remember, so I could handle it all without a lot of specific effort. Odd feeling, that.

Also, being away from the songs for a while has an odd effect: I remembered, well enough, how to play them, but wasn't remembering the exact things I usually do with the vocals, so I was free to (slightly) re-interpret them. Hard to explain, but, I think, good for my performance.

Unfortunately, we were mostly ignored, with light clapping between songs -- except for one young kid at the back that perked right up when we started, and was watching and listening pretty much all the way through to the end. I got the impression (proved right later), that he played guitar himself. He moved up closer in the last hour or so, and talked to us afterwards. Nice kid, and it's always a big help if at least one person is really listening.

Our best reaction all night was for "Homeward Bound". Didn't expect that. And, despite it being a bit early, I played my 6 most presentable Christmas songs. I'm really doing well with "River" these days, now that I can hit that long, high, note without so much strain, and I played "Please Come Home For Christmas" probably better than I ever have.

I had broken my ring-finger nail really short while unpacking the camping gear last Sunday, and it hasn't grown back enough to play guitar with yet. I've been in fear of this happening eventually, and it's come close before, but this was the first time it was completely un-playable. So, I went and bought some "press-on nails", which worked surprisingly well. I looked kinda (let's use the word) odd, I'm sure, with one shiny pearl-pink nail, which looked not-so-bad at home, but really picked up a shine in the well-lit store environment. But it played just fine, didn't feel "in the wrong place" to be unusable, and didn't break loose in the middle of a song. I tried to remember to keep my hand closed up in between songs, but I'm not sure how successfully I hid it. Still, it's good to know that there's a pretty simple solution if this happens again, and I'll know to at least knock the shine off with some sandpaper, next time.

Princess Campout at Oso Lake

A great little campout. This is a new place for us. It used to be a private fishing lake, but it's recently been bequeathed to the Boy Scouts and they're opening it up for camping groups. It's really nice, because it's literally 10 minutes from home, so kids with soccer can get to their games and back, and, in our case, I was able to take Acacia to her Saturday art lesson, go on back, and play the rest of the day.

They have fishing (which we don't do), canoeing (which we missed), archery, and slingshots, which were pretty fun. We've been to other camps that had archery, but it's usually just for the kids -- this time I got to shoot, and it turns out that I'm not half bad, but that bow pulls to the right...

Usually, on Friday nights of the campouts, somebody brings a notebook, a projector, and a sheet to hang, and the kids watch a movie. I always think that we ought to be able to think of something better than that -- they can watch a movie any time. So, I volunteered to do a concert. Some kids (possibly prompted by the dads) made some flattering posters that they enthusiastically waved, and they had some beach balls to bounce around, just like a Real Concert. And between songs, they kept chanting "Four more years!"

On Saturday, the kids added little personal messages and little illustrations of my songs (a dragon, the lollipop tree, some waltzing bears), and gave me the posters to keep. Sweet.

I can't really keep Acacia in the Princess program for yet another year, but I'm gonna miss getting to play for a group of kids around the campfire. I'm wondering if the YMCA can give me some kind of unpaid volunteer staff position that lets me show up and play whenever my schedule allows and the camp isn't too far away, without having to pay the annual Membership fee. I guess I'll check into that as we get closer to the end of the program year this Spring.

Halloween 2006

Because of the Japan trip, Halloween snuck up on me this year. Daleen, typically, had much more foresight and built a princess dress for Geneva, and a (very re-usable) Hogwarts wizard robe for Acacia.

I took Acacia over to a friend's much-more-active tract for Trick-or-Treating, so that was fun. Geneva, being In High School Now, went out with some friends, with no parents for the first time. There were no phone calls from the police station, so I guess it went all right.

We have a pretty lame and mostly-non-participated-in annual costume contest at work, to which I usually just wear my astronaut jumpsuit. This year, I was half resigned to just skipping it like everyone else, but I don't want to be That Guy, so, the night before, I built a "Silent Bob" wig out of yarn, and painted my beard black with Daleen's mascara. It actually came out really well, but you either know Silent Bob, or you don't -- and more than half of the people at work, don't.

Oh, well.

Trailmates at Ortega Oaks

We had a campout at Ortega Oaks this weekend, which was ostensibly for Trailmates, but since there are so few of us, we invited the older Princesses along, "as a recruiting tool", wink wink. So Acacia got to come along.

It was a pretty good weekend, it's a really pretty place under huge oaks. It was *really* cold on Friday night, but nice and pleasant on Saturday. We basically just hung out around the campground -- I made a swing with some rope and a piece of firewood, and we flew the little R/C planes around, despite the risk of them getting caught in the trees. Which they did several times, but we just threw things at them to get them down -- they're pretty hard to break.

On Saturday night, we had the usual array of skits from the girls, but, since we had a screen and projector all set up for the movie on Friday night, I got my computer out and showed the "Waltzing With Bears" cartoon. It was fun to see it wall-sized.

After we were out of skits, I got up and played "The Indian Princess Song", with the cue cards. Most of the Trailmates are from other Princess Nations, so they've never heard it (or sung it), and it was fun to introduce it to them. Then I played some more songs, but people started to wander off, and some of the guys were anxious to start another movie, so I quit.

I get that it's fun to watch a movie with your friends, but it always seems to me to be a waste to watch movies when you could be doing camp stuff. You can always watch a movie, but how often do you get to toast marshmallows?

K&W at Costa Mesa - 28Oct2006

It went pretty well, considering that we hadn't played together in 5 weeks, and I'd been in Japan and hadn't hardly touched a guitar for the last half of that. I did try to rehearse a little, but I didn't have much time for it, so I expected to be really rusty and screw up a lot. But I didn't, too much. I kind of watched in amazement as my hands played most of the songs by themselves. I guess someone was singing, too -- probably me, somehow.

I had a few outrageous blowouts, but surprisingly few. Overall, not a bad time -- especially since I had completely foregone the recording rig, simplifying the setup, and removing the pressure. So, I just cut loose and played. Or my hands did, anyway. Kind of fun.

We had some nice people listening in, and a bit of applause. Only one guy, a previous fan, took us up on the first-time-ever Live CD, much to my dismay after all the work I'd done on it for the last few months...

Vacation in Japan with Acacia

Acacia and I spent 9 days in Japan! It was a terrific trip, but too long, complex, and picture-laden to report on here, so I created a specific webpage for it:

http://members.cox.net/acacia.comer

Check it out!