Fishgirl Speaks

A Palm Springs Weekend

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?

Zen and Zappa

Trippin' - part 2

Welcome to part 2 of the Summer of '08 mini trips, in which we go to Tennessee for Charles's daughter's high school graduation.

I'll spare y'all the tales of unpleasant air travel, as I'm sure it's already quite familiar. In any case, we arrived fairly late on Monday, May 26th, in terms of both schedule and time of day. C4 met us at the airport in Knoxville, and then we drove about an hour to Gatlinburg. We chilled in the somewhat peculiar hotel room (clean, but excessively patterned, plus aqua sink and tub!). Jami drove over with her boyfriend to visit briefly. Of course, big brother C4 gave him the eye. He left when they did to go stay with some friends, and Charles and I crashed out.

We tried to hook up for lunch the next day, but I think Jami was pretty busy getting ready for graduation. Charles and I had a good time wandering about town - we could walk from the hotel into downtown Gatlinburg. It was warm and humid, but not disgustingly so. Downtown is all tourist oriented. In order of frequency, there are about a billion mini-golf places, then Old Tyme Photos (one of which Charles used to work at), then pancake houses, and then assorted ventures owned by Ripley's Believe it or Not. We had lunch, strolled back to the hotel, and zonked out for a nap.

Graduation was at the convention center off main street, so we drove down to grab dinner, then headed over. The place was packed, but we found some wall space in back. There were two Salutorians and 7 or 10 Valedictorians who all gave short, similar speeches. Then they read the names of the 175ish students. You wouldn't think it would take that long, but they read off where they were headed for college (or entering the work force) and all of the scholarships they earned. Holy effing shit, that school is a scholarship machine. Every single student going to college had some scholarship money. Jami earned about $96,000. I think the highest individual take was around $250,000. The grand total haul by the class of 2008 was 8.4 million. I kid you not!

 

After a lot of elbowing and periscoping, we finally found Jami in the lobby. Hugs around, and some photos of course. Earlier I had asked Charles about a graduation present, and he said he was going to go with ye olde cash. When we shopped for a card, I saw some photo albums and suggested we get a small one, and put the twenties in the photos slots. Around dinner that evening, I realized we didn't have any sort of gift bag to wrap everything in, so I hit one of the many shops. Not finding any gift bags, I figured I'd look for a cool t-shirt or scarf to wrap it in and found a pretty, bright teal handmade scarf, probably from Thailand, to wrap it in. The California hippie gets one in with the eco-wrapping. Turns out, Jami is very into photo albums right now, and the scarf matched the dress she was wearing under the graduation gown. Score beaucoup points for dad's new girlfriend!

The next morning, neither of our two alarms went off and we woke up about half an hour later than we wanted to leave. We made it to the airport OK, with about 15 minutes to spare before boarding. That flight ran late, and our already tight connection was just made tighter. The landing gear of our incoming flight came out right as our outbound flight was scheduled to board. We deplaned, raced to the connecting flight, and had our tickets scanned right as they made their final boarding call. Although we made the connection, our bag did not. Continental delivered it to our neighbor the next morning.

And now, a few snaps, mostly of the curiously touristy Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg:

 

Tennessee was very green.

 

Crazy, quasi-castle themed building in progress.

 

 One of a brazillion mini-golf places.

 

Not your every day pizza joint.

 

One of many Ripley owned buildings.

 

Another building in progress with no distinguishing features, except for that shark of a portal.

 

(psst - for you Californians out there, Tactical Outdoor Accessories = guns and knives)

 

Early morning, outside our motel, day of departure, May 28th.

Denver

A couple of weekends ago, Charles and I flew out to Denver for the Big Weekend of Fu. The Grandmaster visits the different schools year round, but the summer Denver visit is when anyone advancing beyond 1st degree black needs to test. The Diep family (all in uniform, above) tested from 2nd to 3rd black and Charles tested from 1st to 2nd. I'm in uniform because I was on the testing panel...heh heh. The other folks in the pic are also students - they came along for moral support. This was all on Sunday after the giant festival on Saturday.

When I say giant, I mean a large gym full of between three and four hundred students from various schools across the country. Grandmaster was releasing some new material, so we all had to go check it out. Fast strikes and lots of pressure points, hiyah! We had a total of 14 students from the San José school travel to Denver.

This was a short trip - no time for even a Hobee's photo! I'll be around for awhile, but in three weeks, Charles goes to China with the kung fu crowd. He promises to photoshop me into his pics.

Next up: the basement project!

Idaho

Time for a little catch up here...

A few weeks ago, Charles and I traveled to Idaho for a kung fu festival and to visit with his family (i.e. "meet the family" for me). The festival was pointy good fun, using sun moon forks which are sharp everywhere. A skilled practitioner will not only inflict damage on her opponent, but will also NOT injure herself.
That's me in the back to the left, and the Grandmaster himself on the right.
Pointy good fun!

After the festival in Boise, we drove to Pocatello to visit with mom June, brother Paul, and his family. I think it's safe to say the the nieces have "Uncle Chuck" wrapped around their little fingers. He got plenty of "when are you going to cut your hair?" from everyone, but I think Caitlyn (left) and Makayla (right)decided I was pretty OK when I suggested they braid Uncle Chuck's hair. Heh.

We relaxed a lot, and got lots of show-and-tell from Mom who is quite the crafter - beading, quilting, knitting, and spinning. We had a combined Mother's Day and assorted birthdays sort of casual party at Paul's. He lives seven doors down from Mom, so it made visiting with everyone pretty easy. Can't forget Aunt Dorothy, June's long-time friend who is essentially an aunt by proxy.

Later we took a quick tour of the area, including the local mall, which was a little bit ghost town-esque. Witness the lone gumball stand:

Charles took me to the local park, which was lovely. We drove past a really good swingset - the nice, long chains - so we parked and partook.

While driving around I saw the perfect sign for the obligatory Hobee's shirt photo. It's for a funky old motel:

All in all, it was a nice, relaxing, mini-vacation with good company. Here's Paul, June, and Charles:

Next up: Denver trip!