Yup that is me mentioned below in Colfax playing with the Blue Band! Come see the blues historian in action Sunday night 7pm in Colfax Iowa.
The pressures and anxieties of having to entertain readers of these notes is giving me a headache. Or it could be the fumes from this week's stain and varnishing of the trim woodwork on the remodeling of the house. It's kind of like what I imagine sniffing glue must be like, only living inside the tube of glue. I could go on and on about this week's adventure in living in a construction zone and probably will after the important stuff...
Saturday night (7/17) we've been invited to be part of the Nevada (the city east of Ames, not the state east of California) Firemen's Street Dance. This is a celebration of the fire department's 150th anniversary year and an attempt to raise some operating cash for the department's expenses next year. It's not often that we get to play in the Ames/Marshalltown area, so bring the kids, bring the kids' kids, and support a good cause while dancing in the streets of Nevada (sounds like some cowboy/western movie like Cat Ballou) (if you don't remember the movie Cat Ballou, you might be too young to read these notes) As some regular Blue Band players actually have lives outside of the band (what? there's life outside of the Blue Band?) (who knew?) it's going to be a special and possibly one-of-a-kind collection of players, with Sam Salomone bringin' out his big organ and Eddie McKinley, on loan from The Diplomats of Solid Sound, playing tenor sax. Wow, the sound of the goodle days with 6 pieces and only one horn player! We play 8-11pm, off of 6th street, in greater downtown Nevada. I've been told there is a rain location, I just haven't been told where that is...
Sunday night (7/18) marks our first EVAH appearance in Colfax. I know, it's hard to believe that in our 29 year history we've never played Colfax IA, but hey, there's a first time for everything! Normally the Colfax Party In The Park happens on Saturdays, but this is also part of a local Fair that's going on and Sunday night is the wrap up of the festivities. Mason City trumpet man Doug Huey will join Heath in the horn section and Iowa Blues historian and piano man extraordinaire Tom Gary will join us on keys (it's getting to the season where you can't tell the players without a scorecard) We start at 7pm, play a couple sets before the fireworks and one set after the fireworks on the Anspach Stage in Women’s Club Park located on 13 East Division Street. Ooooo, ahhhhh, FIREWORKS!!! Maybe there will be CAKE too!!...
Next week, Thursday (7/22) is our annual appearance at the Grinnell Central Park Gazeeeebo gig 5:30-7:30p, followed by Friday night's Geeeezer Gig, our only nightclub show of the summer, at our home in Sparkle City, The Hub, 4th and Main, with modified, summer geeezer hours, 7-10:30p and Saturday (7/24) has us in the city of the Sudlow Jr. High Tigers, Davenport IA, for the annual Downtown/Bix Street Dance, 2nd & Main in D-town. I love playing that gig, as many people from my high school (the Davenport Central BLUE Devils) stop out and we tell stories about when we were all very different people! (ya shoulda seen me throw that ball!) And don't forget about our RAGBRAI show this year, Parkersburg For Lunch, Thursday July 29 10:30am (that is not a misprint, we start playing at 10:30 IN THE MORNING) until a little after 1pm...
So the good news is that I now have an operable kitchen sink for the first time in over 3 months! How I got the sink and faucet is an "interesting" story. I hesitated to go along with the idea of getting granite counter tops because I'm just getting to the age that I hate to buy something that I know will outlive me. But my wife is WAY younger than I am, so granite it is. We drove to Des Moines to pick out the stone in March. It was finally delivered last Tuesday. The plumbers came the next day to hook up the sink faucet. At last, I could finally wash out my own coffee pot in my own sink once again! I thought. But NOOOOOOOOO. When the granite counter top maker made the ever living stone counters, he cut a precise hole for the sink. Cool. And a perfect hole for the faucet fixture. Very cool. But the plumber discovered that we ordered a sprayer along with the faucet and there was no hole for the sprayer, which apparently is directly hooked to the water line with the faucet so you have to have the sprayer hooked up or every time you turn on the faucet, water will spray all over the brand new cabinets. Boooo. And since we are planning on the cabinets outliving me also, we needed that hole in the rock solid granite countertop before I was gonna get any water to wash out the coffee pot. I would have thought that there would have been a drill bit strong enough to bore thru granite in Sparkle City. There's not. So we had to get the counter maker to come back. He lives in Norway (thankfully the small town west of Cedar Rapids, not the country west of Sweden) It took him two days to get back. Apparently absolutely nothing else could get done on this remodeling project until the one inch hole in the granite was drilled because all of the other contractors stayed away for those two days also. It was devastating to think that nothing else would get worked on until the hole was drilled (rim shot). The man came from Norway and was finished drilling the hole (insert your own joke here) at 3:55pm. The plumbing contractor sent a guy out immediately to hook up the sprayer. Unfortunately, that plumber discovered that the other two plumbing guys stopped hooking up everything else (like the garbage disposal) in the drain after they discovered that we had one less hole than we needed (no joke here, this is serious stuff) and it was already 4:20pm and he couldn't work past 4:30pm so I wasn't gonna get to wash out my coffee pot again. Do you know how difficult it is to eat CAKE without coffee???...
And I haven't even started to tell you about the varnish fumes that started on Monday (then sat there until Thursday, presumably because the hole wasn't cut in the granite) and then picked up again today meaning that pretty much as soon as I had gotten rid of the fumes from Monday they were replenished today. That'll have to be for another time. I wish I could blame this headache on the fumes, but I have a feeling (sick as it may be) that not sleeping in the last 20 hours has something to do with it and maybe, now that the hole was drilled, (do yer own joke one more time) some more contractors might show up in about four hours. YIKES!!...
See ya on the Blue Highway, wear yer zydeco tie and rub it with the firemen (they'll be there to put you out if you spontaneously combust from rubbing it to much) bring CAKE when you stop over to see my new sprayer (!) and always remember we love you. Bob Dorr & The Blue Band
No comments:
Post a Comment