Saturday Night's Alright...

Saturday at the Expo

We went to the Old House Expo on Saturday specifically to talk to a man mamed Kevin who is on the HPC with Emily. Among other amazing things, Kevin restores wood windows in old houses like ours. You may recall my lament last fall about how I spent a lot time on doing this for one window (out of a bazillion) and I was disappointed with the overall results.

Well, Kevin was a wealth of knowledge, gave me good pointers and some confidence to try again. For my part, I selflessly offered my own home as a learning laboratory; If anyone wants him to physically demonstrate the process, and they want to practice hands-on, they can come to my house. I will provide the beverages and the sandwiches.

We ran into a friend of mine who is a social worker in Muskegon. We met while I was working for Barnes and Noble and hadn't seen each other in almost three years. It was fun. We of course made all sorts of promises to get together and have dinner and drinks. I hope we do.

I also got to meet Tom Logan who is the author of a great book about Heritage Hill here in Grand Rapids called 'Almost Lost'. I bought it for Em some years back and she subsequently met him in his home, which was designed by an acolyte of Frank Lloyd Wright and is indeed kitty corner from our only FLW home, the Meyer May House.

Afterward, we decided to take advantage of the brisk but gorgeous Saturday and walked a fair bit to have a taco lunch and a stroll. It was a nice time to be sure.

Saturday In the Garage

Not being able to resist temptation, I spent a spare hour or so messing with the Corvette on Saturday. I am pleased that it staved off infestation by rodentia for another storage season and it started right up on about the third crank after not being started all winter.

Unfortunately, that model didn't come with the self-healing brakes, so I still need to replace the master cylinder and booster and do all the fluid maintenance and it should be good to go for another summer of ice cream runs.

From Grease Monkey to Symphony

Life is a dichotomy. After tooling around with the 'Vette, I took a shower to clean off the smell of unburnt hydrocarbons and we met Chandra and Jason for the G.R. Symphony. They were featuring Leahy, a large family from British Columbia of Irish descent. It was a Celtic show and I was not terribly excited to go.

It was fantastic. I have not the words to describe the concentrated talent of this gene pool. I don't know what they gave up to be this musical, maybe they can't read or write, or maybe they have gills or something and can't be out of water for more than an hour (that explains the long interval). But who cares? These people, even the children were phenomenal! There was one kid who wasn't even old enough to walk doing the full Bojangles! My adorable meeter has been broken since I decided to be a cynic rather than a human and it was still the cutest thing I had ever seen.

On the technical side, they all played all the instruments. One even played a full fiddle solo... with the fiddle upside down! And this was no Hot Crossed Buns, this was a full solo with 64th notes and all. The Single most impressive thing to me, though, was the front man. At one point, he was fiddling so fast his fingers were blurry. Blurry! To the naked eye. And as this is happening, he is moving his bow so fast and then... wait for it, he begins to pluck the frets (the fingerboard) with some fingers while using other fingers conventionally to so his bow could make notes and he was plucking and playing at the SAME TIME!

Words can't describe what a feat this is. Go look them up online. It was a great time. Afterward, we went out. That's right. Put us all together and we are something like 110 years old and we stayed out until almost 1 a.m. Isn't there a law? Oh well, it was a great show and a great night with great friends.

Truck You

It has been decided. We will wait until October (Ford Truck Month, incidentally) when Emily's lease is up and then I will get a truck. This will allow us to keep Grandma Marjorie Rubenstein for a couple more years. I mention this only so it is in writing as a matter of public record. You've read it... you can't unread it.