Oh Yeah - it's been raining again, or still, depending on your outlook. It's at the point that I'm afraid to walk on the grass for fear that I'll sink out of sight in the VT clay muck. There's so much clay around here that I could throw pots for 20 years from the contents of my back yard without changing the topography one iota.
I own a couple of apartments in town. These are old buildings from the late 1800 to early 1900 era and, therefore, require lots of care and attention. This morning's affair was to assess the condition, and expense to fix, one of the attendant porches. The flooring has deteriorated to the point of too much rot, too little support, and it needs to be replaced along with the carrying beam at the front side.
As always, the first glance "This is easy." assessment was sorely inadequate. Rot loves to sneak around under otherwise nice looking facial coverage and the application of a small pry bar provided a grossly different point of view. I also neglected to look up, wherein I would have found the broken fascia and crown moulding along the porch eve. This, of course, is indicative of further damage under the metal roofing which has been beaten half to death by ice chunks falling off the main house.
There is a new tenant moving in on the first of July. Fortunately the contractor is a good biker buddy friend and the floor, at least, will be done by then. Doncha just love it when a plan comes together?
My profile indicates that music is an important part of my life. No surprise, therefore, that this is true. There are three of us itinerant musicians who have been consistently meeting every Tuesday night for a jam session, two of us for 10 years, one for about 8. Anyone is welcome, but we three are there almost every Tuesday. Over the years, we have more or less informally evolved into a "band", if you will. We even have a name - Meg's Kitchen. We call ourselves this since the place we play on Tuesdays is, in fact, Meg's kitchen. We are so clever.
Every once and awhile, we play out. Farmers Market, weddings, First Night, that kind of thing. We don't advertise or anything. It's all just word of mouth.
It's a lot of fun, playing out. People really enjoy having a little background noise and we really enjoy their reactions.
There's a summer folk concert series in South Strafford VT, and we are going to play on July 8th. This is unusual because it's an actual concert, not just background noise. Suddenly, the pressure is on. There's no room for silly mistakes since people will, we hope, actually be listening. It's really pretty exciting and we are looking forward to it. Over the next two weeks, there will be sessions similar to rehearsals and a program of pre determined tunes will be developed. Fortunately for our audiences, we don't sing, so that's one aspect we don't have to deal with. I'll let you know how it all turns out.
It's stopped raining for long enough that I think I will chance it and go trim dead flower stalks off the lilac bushes. This is an annual adventure where I get to share space with the remaining starving black flies and hordes of new, young, eager-to-eat deer flies. For some reason, Mother Nature saw fit to extend the horror of these flying apparitions by allowing them to hatch consecutively instead of concurrently. But, there is the overlap period during which we mere humans must contend with them both at once, and during which the lilacs must be trimmed. Oh joy!
If I don't get sucked dry by the experience, I'll be back.
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