Blueberry Fields Forever...

Since we seem to be living indefinitely at our temporary home in the outer boondocks of Silver Spring, we are becoming well acquainted with nearby Ashton and all it has to offer.

Dempsey's is a great place to get excellent breakfast all day long. After our breakfast for lunch Doug wanted to go pick blueberries since Blueberry Gardens was just down the road on Route 108. At Blueberry Gardens they offer pick-your-own organic blueberries, massage, acupuncture, and yoga and QiGong classes. How handy is that? Very handy if you live in Cloverly, Sandy Spring, or Ashton.

Since I am somewhat immobile these days I decided to stay back and take some pictures of my foot on the hood of the car. At least I can still do that. It's just wonderful having to hobble around on something that looks and feels exactly like a ski boot.

The last time we went blueberry picking was about 15 years ago in Oregon, near Mt. Hood. We picked quarts and quarts of them and ate them all that day. The next day we both had green pee.

Doug was back in about 15 minutes with these yummy petite organic blueberries. It's the end of the season now, but they still taste good!

The other good thing about today is that our real house, or fantasy house depending on how you look at it, is starting to somewhat resemble a house at the beach. I kind of like that.

More Clarinda

Okay this is the last one, I promise! I was recently sent this link to a 10 minute TV feature about the Jack Million Band's trip to play at the Glenn Miller Festival in Clarinda Iowa. It took place during all of the flooding and tornados back in June. It is quite interesting to hear all of this described in Dutch, and also to see some of the recreational activities the locals decided to share with the visiting musicians from Europe. I didn't know about the guns - that must have been the day I was out exploring on foot. Anyway this clip is highly entertaining, at least it is to me - because I'm in it!

sometime it's okay and sometimes it's not

Last week we took down a whole bunch of the lower branches on our birch tree so that it would be easier to mow under and so that it no longer looked like an enormous bush. It is beautiful now.

When we came back from taking the branches to the recycling area at the dump we continued to work on the siding. We've made pretty good progress, but it's not going nearly as fast as we'd like.

Towards the end of the day my left foot suddenly started hurting a lot in one spot just above the arch. I'd sprained my right foot a few days earlier and since it was almost all better, with the help of an ankle support, I was back working at the house again. I guess my left foot had been working extra hard to accomodate my sprained right ankle.

I iced it when I got home. It continued to hurt all night so the next day I went to a podiatrist. The x-rays showed that I have a couple of extra bones in my foot and that apparently the one above my arch has a rather pointy chip sticking out that looks like it might be a little fracture. She sold me a $275 boot that I'm supposed to wear for six weeks.

That means I can't climb a ladder, or go for walks, or play bass standing up, or mow the grass, or do anything else that I need to do, for SIX WEEKS. The timing of this is absolutely horrible. We have so much work to do on the house and now I'm totally useless. I'm starting back at UMD this fall too. That's going to be fun.

That was Friday. And I had to cancel out of a gig Friday night, which totally sucked. On Saturday Doug had a gig in Wilmington that included a hotel room. Since I wasn't working that night, I went along so that I could sit on the bed and watch TV all evening, giving my foot some rest and elevation. In our temporary place we don't have a TV or a couch so it's not that much fun hanging around the house. I can only take so much time in front of the computer.

On Sunday we had to get up at six to make it back down to DC for my brunch gig. I took a stool and it was fine. And I could walk about twice as fast as I could the day before. But it's still really slow with this boot thingy. Anyway here's a view from our hotel room in Wilmington at 6AM Sunday morning:

How do you like them apples?

The apple tree is producing a huge quantity of excellent apples this year. They are so crisp, tart, and juicy. Yum! I love McIntoshes. And there are plenty for the deer and for us. I just hope they don't learn our trick of shaking the tree to get the ripe ones to fall off.

Beautiful Day

Wasn't the weather today just perfect? We were putting up siding and it just felt great to be outside all day long. Look what we did. The front is well underway.

The clouds today were amazing.

And here's a little backyard rabbit action.

We worked until 8:30 and then went to see "Bottle Shock" at Bethesda Row. Delightful movie. Very tired now. Must sleep. More siding tomorrow, then a gig.

Assateague

On Friday we took the day off to celebrate passing our inspection and headed down to the beach for the day. I love Assateague because it is usually uncrowded, the scenery is beautiful, and it's fun to see the horses.

Unfortunately there a ton of flies, more than I've ever seen down there, and they were biting. We ended up spending the whole time in the water, which was actually an excellent way to spend the day.

Assateague is a very narrow island.

The flies were driving the horses crazy too!!!

The sea gulls were handling it okay though.

On the way home we did our usual stops for crab cake sandwiches at the Assateague Market, and eastern shore veggies and goat feeding at Wright's Market. We picked up a few bargains at the outlet mall in Queenstown and headed across the Bay Bridge. The sky looked like a giant crab crossed with a bat.

There is two-way traffic on the Westbound span on Friday nights.

The End

Dupont Circle

I have been seeing way too much of this image recently. We have nearly finished covering our house with Tyvek this week. Then we can finally put up the siding and Foam Core Fantasy will finally begin to look like a real house that might one day actually be finished.

" FOAM CORE FANTASY "

Summer Weekend

I had a nice variety of gigs this weekend. Friday night I subbed for Man of La Mancha at the Church Street Theater. The regular guy left his bass for me to use so I took Metro down. It was great not having to haul a bunch of equipment for a change. Things were really jumping at the Dupont Circle Metro on the way home.

On Saturday night I had my favorite kind of summertime outdoor gig. It was a backyard party on Capital Hill with the Stateside Steel Band. I just love the playing calypso music with a steel drum band outside where everybody is having a good time. That's what summer is all about.

Sunday I played my usual brunch gig at Lia's in Chevy Chase. It's a jazz duo with bass and guitar. And I get to eat what usually ends up being my favorite meal of the week. The food is excellent.

National Arboretum

Today we went to the National Arboretum out on New York Avenue to do some research on crape myrtles. We want to plant some eventually and we had heard that they have a rather impressive array of them there.

The first thing we saw was the Capital Columns. They were moved from the Capital in 1958 to make way for an addition. I had no idea that I'd be seeing them. In the distance they look like ancient ruins.

Then we saw the Giant Log Monster wandering through the underbrush.

Finally we located the Crape Myrtles. They were magnificent.

Some of them were quite huge.

They came in all sorts of colors.

They have tons of crape myrtles, azaleas, magnolias, and other stuff there just growing wild. The grounds of the Arboretum are huge. You can't really walk around and see everything unless you spend the entire day walking. A lot of it has a slighty abandoned quality which is unusual for something that has "National" in its name. But the slightly independant character is kind of fitting in a way. They also have a pretty large formal Chinese garden which we didn't really have a chance to look at. We'll check it out next time.

Dancing Headless Work Uniforms

I have noticed that my blog, which began as a somewhat articulate (or so I think) description of certain miserable events, has recently devolved into random and utterly meaningless frivolity. I guess I'm just trying to keep myself amused and entertained while I wait for whatever is coming up next. Anyway, here is what amused and entertained me today on the way to the dump:



It looks like the guys in the back of the Washington Gas truck are just getting warmed up here.



Now they're starting to get their groove on.


They're going wild!

In other news, the quantity of deer under my apple tree has now doubled.

If I get Lyme Disease.....

It will be because of this apple tree. Granted it's a nice tree and produces delicious slightly wormy organic McIntosh apples, but it is a real pain to mow the grass under it and my head always brushes against the lower branches. It's going to be difficult to spot that bulls-eye rash when it finally appears under my hair. There are always deer under this tree and that's where the ticks come from. I remain hopeful that my eventual demise as a result of Lyme disease is just a hypochondriatic delusion. Wish me luck!

At least this one is actually eating his apple. Most of them take one bite and drop the rest on the ground. And I don't have a very nice attitude toward these deer now do I? I'm just grouchy because I had to mow the grass today.

The King of Jazz

On Tuesday evening we went down to the Library of Congress to see a screening of the 1930 movie "The King of Jazz" starring the very appropriately named Paul Whiteman. He is not the first person that most people would think of as being jazz royalty, but he was definitely one of the most successful early bandleaders who played "jazzy" music. This movie is a spectacularly entertaining example of the musical revues that were popular back in the 1930's. It features singing, dancing, novelty numbers, and some very elaborate costumes and scenery.

The Library of Congress might consider placing this movie on the National Film Registry, which means that they would then be able to preserve it and repair some of the blurriness and scratchiness that exists on the original. If you are interested in the restoration and preservation of this movie let them know by writing to:
National Film Registry Public Review Process
M/B/RS Division, Library of Congress
Washington, DC 20540

Here are some clips from the movie that I found on YouTube.
This first clip is the cartoon prologue:



This one has some amazing dancing:


George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" was written as a result of a commission by Paul Whiteman. This is one of the earliest performances.

Man of La Mancha at Church Street Theatre

Last weekend I subbed on bass for Man of La Mancha at the Church Street Theater, AKA Keegan Theatre, in Dupont Circle. It was a nice production and apparently this review will appear in the Alexandria "Metro Herald", whatever that is. Anyway, this theater is a great place to see a show because it is so small that there are no bad seats. I won't be there, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

One of the best things about this particular gig is that the regular bass player left his bass there for me to use, so I didn't have to haul all of my stuff down there. It was pretty nice to be able to just walk in, pick up the bass, and play the show.

Shameless Self Promotion

So I learned a new blogging skill today. (see above) The drummer is the amazing and incredible Brooks Tegler. The bass player is me. The trombone player is kind of cute, isn't he?

Lunch with Looking2Live

On Monday I had lunch with Barbara from Looking2Live. She is just as cool in person as she is on her blog. It was very interesting to finally meet one of my "imaginary friends" which how I tend to think of these people whose blogs I read. I've always felt kind of shy about communicating with most of them so I just read what they've written about what they've been up to and that's that. But with Barbara it was a little different because we have a friend in common and when Barbara showed up at one of our concerts, I thought I recognized her from her picture and it was a little too weird to just let that go.

In case you find this sort of thing interesting, here are links to the posts that eventually led up to our having lunch yesterday: This one , this one, and this one. Because we seem to have so many similar interests, I have basically became totally addicted to reading her blog. And we actually have even more random things in common than she might realize, including choral singing, a thyroid surgeon, and paddleboating.

Since I have been without a TV for the past three years, I've spent a lot more of my "lazy" time surfing the internet. And I am lazy - I haven't made very many links to other blogs yet and only about half of my links come back to my original post. Plus, my daily blog-reading routine pretty much consists of going to Barbara's blog and clicking on all the blogs she's linked to. You'd think by now I'd have my own damn list.

But she makes it so easy - what can I say - she's got good links! I read about half of her favorite links, along with a few additional links from the original ones. I really enjoy the huge variety of writing styles and lifestyles that I get to read about. It's a million times more interesting than watching TV, that's for sure!