Spent a few hours with the boys at their school on Friday arvo. Last day of third term, they had a uniform-free day and a Bike day" (bring your bike to school day). Both SJ and Ix loved having me around for the few hours, just hanging out in the relaxed casualness of their last day of school term, riding their bikes, playing footy and kicking a soccer ball around in the sunshine. Then watching them receive awards at a school assembly. It's all good.
Matt and I kicked-back over a few social beers (only a few! I swear i only had three beers in five hours! Honest! lol) on Friday night, just talking-talking-talking and listening to music. Matt and i can be absolute motor-mouths when the mood strikes us, so it's funny both of us trying to get a word in edgeways when the mood strikes us. it's all good. Plus we always try to surprise ourselves with different kinds of music from left-field. Friday night he played me a live CD of Harry Manix, who just totally blew me away, it was that good. Acoustic, folk, eastern, psychedelic... what a staggering array of styles, and such delicate playing and musicianship. (Excuse me while i stop drooling! heh heh).
Saturday's band rehearsal was a beauty... we spent a good time just working out some nuts-and-bolts of a few songs, recording some good takes for our demo album (which, with about 4 or 5 hours of stuff recorded and to choose from), we're well-and-truely on-task for what we'd aimed for this month together. It's all good. then we were able to just jam for about 2 hours, working thru some different feels and grooves. i pulled-out my green gherkin electric guitar, and we worked thru some great feels together that way too. That'll be an easy way to fill-out some time when we need to play lots of sets at a gig... lots of grooves. we worked-out a great, catchy, pumpy groove for the old Stone's ditty "Sympathy For the Devil", and there's so much we can use from working ideas out together with it, simply by jamming thru it for 20 minutes straight, and not tiring of it, that there's plenty of stuff we can use with it when we come to gig with it. Not that we'll let it run for 20 minutes, but if we ever had to, with a very drunken trippy crowd, it'd be a snap to pull out and just improvise jazz-like for an extended jam. Blah blah blah.
I bought myself a little fan on Friday arvo, just to add as part of my gigging kit. It's just a small one that kicks out a tremendous amount of air - perfect for those hot steamy sweaty mid-summer-night gigs we'll be doing - and rehersals too. Not bad for just $5! I used to have one (that was always part of my 'gigging kit" years ago), but alas it died the death many moons ago. I can't believe that, in those long-ago-days before workplace safety was a huge issue, i used to play with this little fan on the front of stage - without a protective grill! madness! How no-one never cut off their fingers with it, gawd alone knows. Needless to say, this one is 100% worksafe! hahahahaaa.
The clover in my little back yard needed some urgent attention, as in small parts it had grown knee-high (I'm not exxagerating!) It only took 10-15 minutes to knock it all over... living on your own, and not going out into the back during the colder Bathurst months, i hadn't done anything to it for about FIVE months! hahahahaaa. I'll give it another run-over next Friday, and it'll look good for the start of summer and BBQ season.
I printed-out another 5 or 6 overhead cells as well. Now I'm thinking of obtaining another OHP... there's gotta be a zillion old working ones just gathering dust in schools across the country, surely, that I could pick-up for next-to-nothing. Oh, just thinking aloud.
There was a suggestion of going to a party last night, but from the sounds of it i would have been way out of my element... so instead i sat home with a glass of French Red watching my team Manly demolish New Zealand, and work their way as favourites into next weeks' NRL Grand Final. Yay!
Mind you... it was only about the fourth or fifth game of football I've watched all year! heh heh.
I actually "took this afternoon off" and sat and read half of Eric Clapton's autobiography for four hours in the sunshine today (Sunday). Not just sitting around feeling shirty and moping about, but deliberately chillaxing with a book. I admit I haven't enjoyed that for a long while.
If the water temperature hadn't been still just a few points above freezing, I would have gone out for a sail! Yeah, I'm hoping to finally get my sons out on the water this summer for some sailing, and take Matt and Julian out as well for some relaxation out on the water. oh, they'll love it, I know they all will.
How's that for a chatty post?
Peas be with ewe
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