What Cheer, Netop?

although I haven't finished getting all of my stuff out of the car yet.

It was a good vacation -- a pretty big house on the ocean. For a lot of the week it was just me, my mother, my aunt Ann, and her husband Mike -- but Mike was out fishing a lot so really it was just the three of us a lot of the time. (Mom's partner Frank also was there some of the time, and my sister and her family were there a couple of days.) This left lots of reading time, but also time to chat, play cribbage, go into town, etc. ...

I should have gone swimming but didn't, although I did do variable levels of wading. The house was right up on the water, so when it was high tide the water was literally about ten feet away from the deck. (The beach and sea bed had a very shallow slope, so when the tide was out the water was much farther away -- these two pictures should give you an idea of the difference.)

The house was roomy but seemed to be stocked largely with stuff left by people who had stayed there previously, leading to some odd lacunae. For instance, there were lots of nice plates of all sizes but no normal-sized bowls. There were many cooking utensils, but no measuring cups or measuring spoons. (I brought stuff to make a raspberry pie, including a pie plate and pie server since I thought they might not have those, but didn't think to bring stuff for measuring. The result was not the greatest pie ever, although it was still quite edible.)

The house is rented through tomorrow but I had a show to play in tonight, so after playing games of Cribbage against my mother and my aunt (I won both games) I loaded up the car and headed out to Tiverton, RI, where my show was. I had a hamburger and some blueberry pie, then met plant_geek, katrinkles, and katrinkles's fiancé Greg.

The show was for the Singing Out Against Hunger benefit and was at Evelyn's Drive-In, a clam shack in Tiverton. I was the third act, which I think was good, because by then the crowd had built up some. It's a little weird playing in a restaurant setting -- pretty much everyone is eating, a lot of people are talking to each other, and it can be hard to tell how much attention anyone's paying. But I did my 45 minute set and some people expressed their appreciation afterwards so I think it went OK. (The two songs that got the most reaction, I think, were Sam & The Sham's "Little Red Riding Hood" and Cheryl Wheeler's "Potato".)

Right now I am pretty exhausted, so I guess I will unpack my car and either go to bed, watch a movie and knit, or goof around on the Internet some more. Actually, I suppose I should make that a poll.
[Poll #1055571]
Tomorrow (Saturday) I'm playing at the Soutside Community Land Trust Annual Hoedown, and after that I plan to head back to Evelyn's in Tiverton to see Chris Monti play. I'm hoping we will get there early enough that I will see some of the earlier acts -- Chris Rosenquest is on at 6:45 pm, then the intriguingly named 'Barbara the Dancing Spirit Belly Dance' at 7:30, and the Chris Monti Acoustic Band rounds out the night from 8 to 9 -- but we will see. (I would offer rides to people interested in checking it out but unfortunately I think I will be too busy tomorrow to go and get people.)

No plans yet for Sunday, so that may be a day to recover from my week of relaxing.

The other day, I was talking to christychristy about my wacky family, and I mentioned that my great-aunt Maria (pronounced 'muh-RYE-uh', more or less) had a very idiosyncratic way of telling jokes. Here is an authentic Maria joke told in the authentic Maria style:

Q: Have you heard the joke, the punch line to which is, 'We pronounce it "Ohio" here'?
A: Uh, no, I don't think I've heard that one.
Q: Oh! Well, a fellow from the Midwest was traveling through New England. He was traveling by train, and entered into a conversation with the other people in his compartment, one of whom asked him, 'Where are you from?' 'Iowa,' he responded. 'Oh, Ohio? I've never been there,' said the other passenger. 'Ah, no, sorry, I'm from Iowa,' he said. The other passenger smiled condescendingly and said, 'We pronounce it "Ohio" here.'

At this point, Maria would break into uproarious laughter, and her delight was so evident that you couldn't help but join in. It was an oddly effective way of telling a joke.

christychristy then said something about 'the Jake way of telling a joke'. It had never really occurred to me that I had a way of telling a joke, so I asked what my way was. She said that I tended towards the deadpan, and that it wasn't always obvious that I had, in fact, told a joke. That sounds about right.

A few years ago, my sister and her husband gave me a quilt for Christmas. They had assembled all of the individual squares (the pattern they were using was the log cabin pattern) and they had me decide how to arrange them. Then they sewed it together, quilted it, and gave it to me a while later. It's for a queen-sized bed, so it was quite a bit of work!

My brother-in-law wrote to me today saying that a friend is working on her own log cabin quilt and wanted to see a picture of the one they made, so he wondered if I could take a picture of it and send it to him. I thought that as long as I was doing that I might as well post the pictures here too. Be warned, they are quite large (which is why I am putting them behind a cut).

( pictures )

As previously mentioned, my mother and her boyfriend Frank came down to Providence for dinner tonight. Frank's daughter Naamah also joined us.

My first thought was to go someplace on Federal Hill, but parking was pretty nutty, so I quickly decided that plan B was to go to Julian's on Broadway. This was a good call -- parking was pretty easy and we got a table immediately. I had the crispy hot and sweet duck with bacony lentils and broccoli and for dessert the strawberry rhubarb white chocolate tart with lattice crust. It was all divine.

I chatted with my mother about various goings-on and just had a generally pleasant time. When we left Julian's the temperature was in the high 70s, which is just about perfect.

It was a good evening. I hope you all had a nice Friday night also.

---

While I'm thinking of it, and to annoy doctroid:

Tomorrow afternoon/evening there's going to be kickball in the West End. [website] The Decatur Drunksefenders will be playing at 3 and the Bike Panthers (margo_virago's team) will be on at 4. I think everyone who's expressed an interest in walking tomorrow evening will be there, so if we have the time and inclination we might do some strategizing and plan-changing there. (Also, let me know if you'd like a ride to see kickball.)

---

I have some other plans for tomorrow morning and early afternoon. We shall see if they come to fruition! Oh yes!

---

In less good news, I had to rip out about an inch of the baby sweater owing to doofusness. Currently I'm engaged in getting all of the stitches back on the knitting needles without dropping any. (But I am in a good mood anyway.)

Yesterday my father and stepmother (Dick and Chris) came down for a visit, so I took a day of vacation and did some bumming around Providence with them. It was basically a good day, although I mishandled some stuff -- thanks to my parents' general mellowness it was still overall positive.

( Details! )

When I was visiting my father the other week, I mentioned the R. Buckminster Fuller stamp to my father, which led him to speculate what horrible name the 'R' must stand for since he apparently preferred being called 'Buckminster' or 'Bucky' to being called whatever his real first name was.

So I looked it up.

His first name was 'Richard'.

Which also happens to be my father's first name. (Except he doesn't go by Richard either; his friends call him Dick.)

I feel like there's a moral here, but as usual I'm not sure what it is.

[I should note, even though it ruins the story a little, that Bucky's father's first name was also Richard, so maybe he was called Bucky by the family to distinguish him from his dad.]

This is based on memories of a story my parents told me when I was young, so I probably have a lot of it wrong.

My parents met in Chicago while they were in VISTA (which, if you aren't familiar with it, is sort of like the domestic Peace Corps).

This was during the Chicago riots, when parts of the city were essentially cut off from the rest of the city and essential services weren't available. VISTA took food, medical supplies, and so on into these areas. As part of this, they asked businesses to donate food and supplies.

One of the companies that they made this request to was Oscar Meyer. Oscar Meyer replied back saying that they were unable to donate any food, but they could donate a bunch of promotional sets of 45 RPM records of the Oscar Meyer Wiener song being performed in different musical styles.

The offer was declined.

On Friday I drove down to New Jersey and visited, in order:

* My uncle Tom and his wife Marcia in Manhatten (Friday night through Saturday morning)

* My grandmother Mig in Montclair, New Jersey (Saturday midday)

* My grandfather Ben in West Orange, New Jersey (Saturday afternoon)

* My friend Craig in Montclair (Saturday evening through Sunday morning)

* My aunt Kate and her husband Raul, also in Montclair (Sunday midday)

* My aunt Peg and her husband Bob in Brooklyn (Sunday afternoon)

Then I drove home.

I should go to bed but am still a bit wired so will probably post a few stories about the weekend.

My sister gave birth to a son (Ezra) in October of this year, and shortly afterwards I got the idea for The Project: I would go around Massachusetts and Rhode Island and record family and friends singing or otherwise performing children's songs. Then I would make a bunch of CDs of the result and give them to my sister's family and also to everyone who participated in The Project.

The Project was brought to a successful conclusion the week before Christmas, with twenty-seven recorded tracks from twelve different people (some in groups, some performing alone). Huzzah! Also, it has now been played for Ezra and it didn't make him cry or anything, so that's a win.

( Details on how it all came together and what I learned )