It Was the Weekend That Wasn't, But It's OK

It's after 10 p.m. on a Sunday night, and I hardly had any "me time" at all this weekend, yet I'm strangely relaxed. I guess a weekend filled with activity is OK if all the stuff is good stuff.

So the gig in Frisco went fine; very short (five tunes)--in and out, nobody gets hurt. I did manage to throw in the "Four" quote during Mantooth's "Misty" arrangement, thus making a subtle allusion to Halfling's taping session that afternoon. We had a long wait beforehand, so we occupied ourselves by looking at all the old band composite pictures on the wall (found a few of our old bandmates on there, heh) and laughed uproariously at everyone's haircuts in the '80's pictures (especially the mullets).

After that I hauled back to Garland to meet with the gang at Siciliano's, a place I hadn't been to in nearly four years, way before their move to the nice new building. Following dinner, the after-party was supposed to be at Dingus's, but a lot of people wimped out or went elsewhere. I was there for a few hours, just chillin' and watching the tube, and Halfling and Angie stopped by for a while as well (Halfling was in pure relaxation mode since the taping was over).

The only problem with late Saturday nights is early Sunday mornings; I played my two church services on five hours' sleep. It was pretty interesting this morning; two of our missionaries from Macedonia were there, and we learned a lot of things about the Gypsy people that I bet not too many people knew (for instance, they play their music really, really loud and keep the TV on all the time--hmm, sounds like...college students?).

Afterwards, there was no rest for the weary, as I raced home to teach one lesson (which got prolonged when the dude locked his keys in his car) and then another one in Lewisville with an old improv-class student who's trying out for UNT on the same day as Halfling.

With that, the business part of the day was done. I made the quick trip to Denton to hang with my friend J-Guar at UNT. We chilled at the Tomato for a bit (sorry, TD/D members; we'll hit it ourselves over spring break) and then I played him a slightly-amusing, slightly cringeworthy tape of an old combo of mine. You see, J-Guar's trumpet teacher in Minnesota was Brad, an old Sinfonia bro of mine who played flugel in my combo for a few years. I found a tape of that combo doing a few of my originals, so we listened to it. He got to hear his teacher in much younger days, and I got to go "dang, why did I play that?" It was a good hang, and I still got home by 8:00 so I could have some chill time here.

On to the week ahead...

UPDATE: Since this post, I've actually heard from Brad--both in the comments and by email--for the first time in about 12 years. I wonder how many other old college buds I'll run across now that we all have the Internet.

The Brad/John connection just goes to show that musicians don't need that "six degrees of separation" that people always talk about; we can usually get by with two or three. (Incidentally, the novel Six Degrees of Separation was written by someone named "John Guare." Weird...)