wordcraft songcraft

Teaching: Good for the Body as Well as the Mind?

Out of curiosity, I stuck Mila's pedometer on my belt this morning before heading out the door. 8,450 steps later (over 4 miles) I was back home again.

April 17 Dentones gig

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at the Carousel Lounge website and noticed that local 90s alternative rock heroes The Wannabes were playing at the club but apparently had no opening band. A quick call to Nikki, the club's manager, put an end to that vacancy. The Dentones would open for the Wannabes starting at 7:00.

It was a strategic move. I was resigned to the fact that there was not enough time to muster much of a turnout from our fan-base, but I figured that Wannabes fans would start showing up toward the end of our second set. If nothing else, it would be a chance to reconnect with Wannabes guitarist Kevin Carney.

I was 33% right. Very few Dentones fans showed up. No other fans showed up until way after we were done. Kevin didn't arrive until almost an hour after we had stopped.

There was a band in the middle. A very good one, actually. The Ron Titter Band was chutzpah incarnate. Imagine a mixture of Elvis and the Stooges and the New York Dolls (what other component am I missing here?) performed by a set of fellows who mostly look like Dell tech support lads. My, but looks can be deceiving!

The evening was far from a waste. The band played quite well. Alexei, a newish friend and the sound engineer who is recording the Dentones in his studio, got the PA very nicely balanced. The bartender liked us a lot, offered the consoling words that early shows are notoriously hard to populate, and gave me free beer for the rest of the evening. Also, Garrett Williams, the drummer for Right or Happy (with whom we are doing a May 29th gig) caught the last few of our tunes. He was probably there on a fact-finding mission to make sure our PA is acceptable and that the Dentones are, too. He talked to Big A for a bit (they have a mutual friend who was the genesis of this upcoming gig), introduced himself to the rest of us, and said we sounded good.

That was music to my ears.

Ha Ha Tonka

watch and be amazed

Ticket to Ride

We had our friends Tap and Maggie over for dinner on Saturday and, as it turns out, they love games just like we do. I was glad to hear that they have hosted "game nights" at their house in the past-- even though it was mainly trifling things such as Yahtzee, Scrabble, and the like.

Anything's a start. Right?

To ease these newbies in to the world of respectable gaming we chose "Ticket to Ride- Europe". Tap and Maggie learned the rules very quickly, and we launched into the thick of things right off. Oddly, unlike previous games that have been played like four-way solitaire, this game was much more interactive, with people blocking each other off early on and 80% of the first third of the game taking place in France and Italy alone.

Base scores:

Maggie 86
Mila 96
Tap 116
Po 122

But, there is a bonus for longest rail. Toward the end of the game, Mila brought up the topic of longest rail and we paused to count out the length of everyone's rails. We all assumed Tap's rail was longest. It just LOOKED like it was. However, looks can be deceiving and when we counted it out, my rail was a bit longer. I sort of wished the issue had not come up when it did.

The game proceeded a few turns longer, and the issue of longest rail seemed to be forgotten as everyone concentrated on meeting the obligation of their Destination cards.

When the game was over we counted the base scores and came up with the numbers above.
My rail was 29 cars long. Tap's rail was 31 cars long.

Final score:

Maggie 86
Mila 96
Po 122
Tap 126

2 train cars made all the difference! It was, all in all, a very enjoyable game.