The good: the 1/10 gig went much better than expected.  The whole holiday thang makes folks less inclined to buy tickets in advance.  While the band was worried, I wasn't.  Seen this before.  Our crowd generally buys tickets the week of the event, and boy did they buy!  I was expecting maybe, at most, 150, and we were well over 200.  Very happy ( Read more... )

Seems like I haven't been reading much lately. Not like there isn't a huge pile of books just waiting for me to dive into them, but nothing seemed interesting enough until 
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The holiday season thus far?  Not so happy.  We both lost elderly aunts.  My aunt was in her late nineties; his, over 100.  Not unexpected, but still sad.  For me, this is the last link to my mother's family overseas. I really want to thank whoever coded the right-click translate function.  Mother's side is from Sweden.  I understand some spoken ( Read more... )

I'm so proud of my little coastal community. Our local shul decided to do something to help our immigrant population. Instead of spouting "thoughts and prayers," they got together and figured out what was possible to do to help. We have neighbors who want to become citizens. They're doing all the right things, learning English, holding down ( Read more... )

The fires are mostly out, the first two concerts are over, there are still way too many birding things on the schedule, but life is getting back to normal. So normal that I decided that today was the official return to German study.


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 Two concerts on two consecutive Fridays, the second of which had a five-day power outage beforehand.  First gig: 230+ people, bar nearly sold out, dancers banging into each other.  Second gig: 80+, bar did okay, but the second audience was there to enjoy the music completely.  While our radio station didn't make the amount of money I always aim ( Read more... )

 It is definitely Fire Season.  While we're not threatened, just west of us is having some problems with the Burris Fire, there's a new fire in Willits (east and north of us), while the Kinkaid fire is southeast of us.  For a bit yesterday, being Sunday, we couldn't have left our Beautiful Nowhere, as highways 101, 20, and 1S were closed.  Maybe we ( Read more... )

First concert of our season is Friday.  I am channeling my inner Virgo and going through all of my many checklists, printing way too many things, sorting, emailing loads of people what seems like every day for little things, fretting, and fretting, and yet more fretting.  I've been doing this for several years now, but each gig feels like the first ( Read more... )

 Back from vacation means back to slogging through trying to learn German, nicht wahr ( Read more... )