Tag: music Page 9 of 10

kitanzi and I tend to do most of our socializing on weekends. Most of our friends live far enough away that visiting is an actual expidition for most of them, and no one ever comes to visit us, so on days when we’re tired after a long workday, we’re mostly inclined to just stay home and enjoy each others company. This week has, as a result, been a bit unusual, in nice ways.

Matt and Mary are filk community friends who just relocated to Atlanta from Philadelphia. I had suggested to them that we get together for dinner at some point, wanting to make them feel welcome in their new town. We finally settled on Tuesday night, and since everyone’s money was tight, I offered to make dinner.

I settled on Carolina style Barbecue Pork for a main dish, with cole slaw and dinner rolls to round out the plate. This is one of my favourite crockpot recipes and always goes over well, and it had the advantage of being something I could prepare to cook in the morning before work and have it ready when I got home.

Tuesday morning turned out to be a comedy of errors for both Kit and myself. I had just pulled out on the road when I thought I heard a scraping noise coming from my car. I turned the radio off and confirmed that I wasn’t imagining it and pulled into the elemetary school which is next door to our apartments. Getting out of the car quickly revealed the problem — I had a flat tire. Closer examination showed a large metal object embedded in the tire, and thus the obvious culprit.

I called into work to let them know I would be delayed, changed the tire, and set out for a Goodyear place. About halfway there, my mobile rang and it was Kit, calling from home to let me know she realized after she got to work that this was the day she’d agreed to switch shifts with a co-worker. Lucky, it was the co-worker on the later shift, so this was merely inconvenient, and she went off to do the shopping she’d planned to do on the way home, since it meant our guests would likely arrive before she got home.

I got the tire replaced in short order, and the rest of the day was relatively uneventful. Matt and Mary showed up at about seven, Kit got home a little after eight, and we enjoyed a pleasent evening of food and conversation.

Wednesday night was a rare mid-week night out. Our favourite local band (and in fact, a band we think of “our” band, since I took Kit to see them way back when we were first dating and she was visiting every month from New Hampshire), Screen Door, was playing at a barbecue joint in Roswell, about 10 minutes from our house. As a bonus, we’d convinced friends to come along. I’m always happy to expose new folks to my favourite music. 🙂 We ended up with a party of six and half, including my co-worker eloren, her husband J., their four-month-old son R., and their friends heathrow and her husband T.

The band was in good form, though I was tempted at several times during their two sets to go find whoever was (or, I think more likely, wasn’t) running the sound board and beat them senseless. I’ve run live sound for both small and large venues, and the mix was awful. The actual volume was fine, but the vocals were unbalanced and too far down in the overall mix to be really heard well. I talked with them during the break and found that they weren’t controlling the house sound system at all, so the venue was definately to blame.

Oh well, the food was excellent, and the company was fun. It was nice to meet heathrow and T., who I’d heard so much about over the last couple of years, and R. was adorable — he was clearly interested in and responding to the music, or at least the vibrations. 🙂

Tonight is Thursday gaming, and then tomorrow we’ll be heading up the Tennessee mountains to see chosen family. Life is good.

kitanzi and I had a fun weekend hosting my mother, who finally made it down to visit! I’ll let Kit talk about how the whole “meeting the folks” thing went herself 🙂

Mom arrived Friday night, with just enough time to turn right around again and head down to a little veggie bar called ‘The Sprout’ to see Atlanta’s own Three Weird Sisters. Nothing on the menu looked terribly appealing, but the music was fun and I enjoyed introducing the girls to Mom. She ended up buying both the 3WS cd and telynor‘s solo cd, so it’s a pretty fair guess she enjoyed the music.

Saturday, we went out for breakfast, and then came back home while Mom went out shopping. Unfortunately, about 10 minutes after she left, I happened to glance into #filkhaven and discovered about the Columbia disaster. We flipped on CNN and watched sadly for about an hour, then decided to go and take a walk, instead of wallowing. The fresh air helped, and when we got back, Kit went to take a nap. Mom came home a little after that. When Kit got back up, I got my guitar out and we played some filk for Mom, which also helped keep our mood up.

There was a housefilk scheduled that evening, but most of the people I’d asked indicated they weren’t going, so we decided instead to go out to eat at Shogun, then came home and, amusingly enough, ended up watching Iron Chef, which Mom had never seen. It wasn’t one of the better episodes, but she seemed to be amused anyway.

Sunday morning, we went out to breakfast, and then Mom started her drive back up to North Carolina. Hopefully, it won’t be four years before we get together again. Kit and I spent the afternoon at a concom meeting for next year’s Gafilk, then came home and fixed dinner…barbecue that my mother had bought me from my favourite barbecue restaurant back in my hometown. 🙂 Then we sat down to watch some TV. “Changing Rooms” was up first, and that was fun as usual, and then we finally got to see an episode of “Coupling”. Oh. My. God. I thought I was going to strain something, I was laughing so hard. I think we’ll be making a point of seeing when it’s on. 🙂

(The plot of this one revolved around a girl trying to convince a fellow to have an affair with her; hilarity ensued. This led to an amusing conversation about how most sitcom plots would collapse when approached from a polyamorous point of view. “I fancy you, and I think you fancy me. Let’s go back to my place.” “But I have a girlfriend.” “So?” “Well, i need to call her and let her know I won’t be home tonight, or she’ll get worried.” The whole thing would be about five minutes long.)

Today and tomorrow we’re getting our final preparations for vacation complete. Wednesday we take off for England. Can’t wait to see everyone who’s gonna be there!