In addition to Black Sunday Roadshow, whom I posted about last time, I am in another musical group called Shenanigans, or possibly Tea With Shenanigans. I'm not sure which. Anyway, we are piano (Galt), violin (Juanita), and cello (that's me) and all three of us sing. We're working on a mix of stuff at the moment, including some new arrangements and at least one original. In the beginning, it was mostly about having fun, trying something new, and being musical with friends. Then it became all of that plus hey should we think about putting on a show? We have been aiming for rehearsing every three to four weeks, but sometimes that stretches out way too long in between. We decided a retreat was in order!
Galt and his husband have a place in Palm Springs, so they invited us down. Once we picked a weekend, I could hardly wait. Charles, Juanita, and I drove down Friday and met Galt and Lyle where they were having dinner at Palm Greens Cafe. Then we went to our home for the weekend, got the tour, chatted for a bit, then hit the hay. The house is fairly new to them, so it is sparsely furnished, which was all the more refreshing and relaxing to me.
Saturday, we ate breakfast at Cheeky's which was clearly very popular. Excellent food and service. Then back to the house for some practicing. Galt has a really cool, high-end electric piano there. It's like an itty bitty grand piano, except there's no harp - it's all electronic. The acoustic in the room was quite lovely, and time flew by while we worked on a few things. In fact, I paid no attention to the clock all weekend. Wish I could do that more often!
We took a break, and I got into the giant, salt water pool for a little bit. Juanita had taken a swim before breakfast. We each seemed to take turns at different times. It struck me as pretty funny that we took solo swims in the biggest private pool I've ever seen. Lunch was a lovely selection of salad, breads, and spreads at the house. Lyle is quite the foodie and knows how to take care of us - he cooks for our regular rehearsals at home. After more rehearsing, we headed back to Palm Greens Cafe for dinner and met up with some more folks. Their menu is a wonderful collection of vegan, veggie, meat, regular and gluten-free, and all organic cuisine. So tasty! I want one in San Jose, please.
After dinner, we played a hilarious game on our iPads called Spaceteam. I'll just copy and paste their description here, because they pretty much nailed it:
Do you like pushing buttons and shouting at your friends? Do you like discharging Clip-jawed Fluxtrunions? If you answered yes, or no, then you might have what it takes to be on a Spaceteam.
Spaceteam is a cooperative party game for 2 to 4 players who shout technobabble at each other until their ship explodes. Each player needs an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.
You'll be assigned a random control panel with buttons, switches, sliders, and dials. You need to follow time-sensitive instructions. However, the instructions are being sent to your teammates, so you have to coordinate before the time runs out. Also, the ship is falling apart. And you're trying to outrun an exploding star.
Good luck. And remember to work together... as a Spaceteam!
Features:
- Teamwork
- Confusion
- Shouting
- An untimely demise
- Beveled Nanobuzzers
- Auxiliary Technoprobes
- Four-stroke Pluckers
We were able to get all 5 of us playing at once. It was complete silliness, and the perfect ending to the day.
Sunday was even more relaxing, yet it felt like we made more progress musically. Nothing like some consistent practice to stride forward. Again, time flew by. Lunch at home. A swim. Everything at a leisurely pace. Aaaah. We joined our neighbors and friends Don and Steve for dinner at Birba, where they serve upscale pizza, delicious cocktails, and mmmm, desserts. We ordered four pizzas for the table and chowed down, family style. The cocktail I ordered was called a Mean Queen and was complex and wonderful. If I remember correctly, it was Pimms, gin, strawberry, cucumber, and Limonata. It was also nearly the price of an entrée...but hey, we were cutting loose here. For dessert, I split an insanely rich butterscotch pudding with Galt. Others got a chocolate brick cake and an olive oil cake.
After dinner, Charles, Juanita and I introduced Galt and Lyle to Munchkin, another very silly game. The learning curve can be a little steep, but once you get rolling, it's just ridiculous. After all the singing, good conversation, and much laughter, I was pretty vocally tired. The long car-ride on Monday would help with that, as it was quite and uneventful, apart from a decent storm.
Here are our happy faces just before we departed.
The weekend was life as it should be. What can we do to have more like that?
