Back From The Beach

Well, I've been doing my part to keep things going quietly and smoothly here, by taking off for North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with the family for two weeks. Last chance to have everyone together before our boy's got to hop on a plane back to New York. (He's leaving early tomorrow morning.)

As for the mountain of E-mail, it's not as big as it might be, since the power blipped off sometime shortly after I left, my mailbox filled up, and my mail's all bounced for the past week. I'm not through it, but getting it whittled down. Haven't checked on the G spot yet, though. Don't get much there. (I speak, of course, of Gmail, but you all knew that, I'm sure.) Hoped we'd be able to get on a newtwork at the beach, (think I'll leave that spelling, I like it), but no joy without making a pilgrimage to an "Internet cafe" or some such. Bummer. The "kids" have their own interests that are somewhat divergent from mine, and when I was not reading through all 7 of the Harry Potter books (which I quite enjoyed), I was bored out of my skull while they mostly played race car video games. I couldn't watch TV because they were occupying (but not using) the lone bedroom with the TV in the back, I couldn't practice my lap steel guitar because Mrs. R was usually resting up not feeling well, the kids were in the front with the video games, and I'm really not much into going out on the beach.

I did smoke my pipes some, and played with my daughter's tortoise. He was a joy, and on the first day down there I wish I could've gotten a picture of him standing on tiptoe with his forefeet on the ledge of the low window stretching his neck and peering over looking down at the beach, neighboring buildings and street. He was taking in the whole scene with great excitement, just like a little kid. He spent a lot of time looking up at birds, airplanes and clouds, too, and was mesmerized by the swinging blinds animated by the breeze leaking through the windows, that would beat against him as he walked along the baseboards beneath the windows. He spent lots of time under there. He got hold of a pellet of something that we got out of his mouth before he swallowed it, but it made him foam at the mouth, and he was mildly sick for days. I think it was a bit of ant bait. Worried me sick, but there was nothing to be done about it but encourage him to eat and drink and wait on him to get over it, and he did. Friday I got a rare opportunity to play, and he'd tucked himself into a corner to sleep off a belly full of fruit. I started playing blues, which he's not used to hearing, and he turned around to listen. Came out to investigate and then discovered my guitar case. Started fighting the "tortoise" reflected in the shiny chrome latch, and I had to move the guitar case, leaving him looking silly by himself in the middle of the floor. I was sitting with my feet together at the heels, making sort of a V, and he's used to sleeping in a closet between shoes arranged that way; he walked over and got between my feet. I'd been playing and singing Howling Wolf's "Little Red Rooster," which I'm sure everyone's heard, it's an old standard, and Bowser seemed to enjoy it. So I sang him his own version of the song:

Got a red footed tortoise,
Likes to crawl and explore all day.

You better watch out, you dust bunny people,
Little Red Foot Tortoise is on the prowl.

He enjoyed it, applauded it appreciatively with his "happy arms," crawled out from between my feet and went back on the prowl, investigating the lap steel case again, then went back over to a pile of pillows Jane had arranged under the couch for him, burrowed under them and took a nap. :D

We loaded up and came back Saturday night, leaving just before midnight and getting back around 7 Sunday morning. No sleep. Found the basement flooded due to a malfunctioning heat pump that's clogged up and not draining the condensate. It was even blowing it up the air ducts and draining it out the joints of the ducts into the insulation, which has grown heavy black mold, and dripped water all over my shop stuff. I spent all day Sunday clearing out space around the heat pump so workmen can get in there. I think they'll basically have to rip out and replace it all. Fun, fun. I've been right back at work today, in a bit of a stupor, and am on call tonight.

Oh, yeah: Thursday night we (Mrs. R and I) went to hear Billy Bob Thornton and his band play at The House of Blues. Ol' Billy Bob's a pretty good singer, and he's surrounded by a terrific bunch of musicians, none of whom, unfortunately got introduced, and there seem to be some differences from the personnel listed on Billy Bob's website. There was a young fellow with dark hair who wore a guitar strap embossed with "Twang" when they were opening for themselves as the country group "The Boxmasters" who impressed me with his lap steel playing. Generally this band is just very good all around. If I criticized anything, it would be that sometimes they all do too much at the same time, when the music needs a little space to breathe, but that's a hazard of large groups. Billy Bob seems like a nice guy, he and the band were having fun, and the HOB is a small venue. Jane and I were on the floor with one couple between us and Billy Bob, so we had a good view. I brought home a couple of Boxmasters picks, which I'll keep as souvenirs since I'm not really a flatpicker sort anyway. Wish young Twang had gotten to play his lap steels more, I was really watching him and trying to learn from him. He was playing mostly major pentatonic stuff with lots of really fast slide ups and pulloffs, and on one of his lap steels he was using a steel that looks like a blade; I forget what you call that. He had three different lap steels and three different steels he played them with. The others were more conventional railroad track bars with sharp edged ends like a Stevens bar, which is probably what they were, but one had a more rounded bottom than the other. At least that's how they looked from where I stood. I'd've loved to have talked to him.

Too bad the sound system didn't work well in there. I couldn't clearly understand a single lyric that Billy Bob sang, and the instruments blurred together into sonic mush. I know those guys can really play, but they weren't shown off to best advantage. Some of the worst professional sound management I've ever run into, sad to say. I hoped it was a fluke, but today a couple of my office girls told me they'd had similar experiences with bad sound at the North Myrtle Beach House of Blues.

If you get a chance to go hear Billy Bob, do. Even with the poor sound, it was a great show!

I'm sorry I missed getting to hear Merle Haggard a few days earlier at the Alabama Theater; Mrs. R had a migraine.