Better

A nice weekend.

On Saturday the Odien bros and I went to the Claremont Folk Music Festival. Wow, it was big this year. Figures, since the evening concert was Jackson Browne, Ben Harper and Taj Mahal. More about that later.

The early part of the day was the usual stuff. Vendors selling vendor-type hippie stuff, organic food and workshops. I went to a belly dance workshop. Kicked my shimmy butt. I really should start belly dancing again. I could feel what it was doing to my back. It really works the core muscles like nobody's business. It felt good but I couldn't keep it going for very long. Just before the belly dancing was a tango workshop. I caught the last bit of it. It looked like so much fun. The teacher had a killer bod. I kept thinking, man, I wish I had a butt like that.

During the last session the boys taught a beginning ukulele workshop. I helped. Bill brought a bunch of his school ukes for those who didn't bring their own. Man, there were a lot of people! Jeff and Bill did a great job presenting. They got everyone playing chords right away. I took care of people as they came in and shuffled ukes around as people came and went. Some of the younger kids got bored with it and left. I had my own little clump of people off to the side and helped them with the chords. The whole thing went really well. jeff and Bill were very happy.

After the workshop we walked down to the village and had dinner. Then we walked back for the evening concert. The field was already pretty crowded and it was going to be hard to find a seat. I heard someone calling my name. It was Lisa, one of the people I had in my uke clump. She and her family had staked out their spot for the show and had some extra room. They invited us to sit with them.

Jackson Browne was on first. Most of his songs were slow and quiet. This kid a few seats down was playing with some spoons. You know, like the spoons they use as a percussion instrument. He's whacking them during the concert and the parents weren't doing anything about it. At one point I got the mom's attention and asked her to make him stop. She did, but only for a little while. After a song or two he started up again. I waited until the song was over and tried to get his attention but he was ignoring me. I said, "Hey spoon boy!" and told him to knock it off. Lisa's brother said, "Man, you gotta stop because she's gonna flip out." It was pretty damn funny. He stopped. No more spoon boy. Later, after it got dark, spoon boy's little sister started playing with a bright blue, flickering LED light. I decided to let that one go. It was so annoying I think even her parents couldn't stand it because it stopped after a little while.

The concert was great! Ben Harper had some really awesome songs (I'm paying a lot more attention to songwriting now) and Taj Mahal got people up and dancing. What a wonderful day.

Today was uke circle. A sparse group today. We had to quit early because some people were using the basement for a memorial service. Still, it wasn't a bad session. Afterward I came home and took a nap. At 5 I went to The Towers where Jeff's mom lives. Bill and Zoey showed up later and we ate grinders downstairs in the big common room. We had all brought our ukes so we had a little practice down there. I had a good time.

Onward to the week ahead. Dede is coming down on Thursday and we're going to put a quick yard sale together to get rid of some of Dad's stuff. I haven't gone through all my stuff yet but I have a lot I can put out there right now. I'm going to try to get as much done as I can this week. That's the bummer about having to work. I just don't have the time to get this kind of thing together anymore. It's going to be a relief to get rid of some of this stuff. Michele and I were talking about it. It's like one of those tile games we had as kids. You have to move the tiles around just right to make a picture out of the thing but you only have one free space to move them. That's my life right now. A little tile game.

Things are pretty good these days. I do feel this kind of vague restlessness and I still worry about the same stuff, like money and my health, but mostly it's all pretty good. Just keep going, keep going.

And now I'm going, going to bed.