Cake bonus

Birthday this year was very fun. And of course, I ended up enjoying playing in the concert that evening, bad outfit and all -- the location was great, the weather beautiful, and our group played really well.

And at the end of the day, there was cake to be had! In honor of the Cake Wrecks Blog, Tom ordered an intentional wreck (that isn't that far off from some of the "real" ones!).

(As opposed to "Joy!!!" Get it?)

Thing was, when Tom took the cake out of the box, I said, "Wow, that cake's taller than normal." Tom insisted he'd ordered the usual single-layer cake, but he agreed about its height. Then we cut into it and behold! -- they'd made us a double-layer cake! BONUS! And ... whoa, that's a lot of cake.

And it's reeeeeeeaaally good, too.

"Cloudy with a chance of presents" ...

That was the forecast Tom gave me yesterday morning when I first woke up.

Very fun way to start out a birthday!

Sneaky summer concerts

The band I play in has a modest number of outdoor summer concerts, usually on town greens or parks. Fun when it's nice out, less so when it's windy (stands toppling, music flying -- inconvenient for us, though no doubt brilliant entertainment for the audience).

Somehow we snuck in another concert venue, semi-last minute (ie only three weeks notice).

The date of that concert?

My birthday of course!

Geez.

I mean, I don't make a big deal about my birthday. This year it falls on a weekday, so I'll be going to work and doing normal stuff.

But making someone play Sousa marches and old show tunes on their birthday (to say nothing of having to wear that summer band outfit of ours)?

That's cold, man. Just ... cold.

Finally finished the popcorn

It took five days, but the giant bag of kettlekorn is all done.

But it's okay, because Tom baked oatmeal cranberry walnut cookies this evening. I've only had four so far. I've been good.

And the apartment smells amazing.

The Saturday fun continued ...

After I got back from playing at Faneuil Hall, I changed out of my fancy band outfit and headed over to Riverfest.

I was just passing the first big concert tent when I stopped dead in my tracks. Because I recognized the player.

It was my sax teacher, Stan Strickland!

Okay, former sax teacher. I took alto sax lessons from Stan in the nineties, and eventually got to join the Longy Jazz Band (where I met Tom, I might add!). I loved playing jazz sax and Stan was a funny, mellow, calm teacher. And I love to hear him play.

He has the coolest sound!

Once I found Stan playing, I didn't move until he was done. Medge found me at this tent, listened with me for awhile before wandering off, then ran into Tom elsewhere at the Fest and told him where I was. So Tom joined me and we both listened to the rest of the set.

Afterward, Tom and I strolled around the Fest, enjoying the mild weather and the happy crowd.



We also had some great food -- amazingly tasty cheese arepas and Thai dumplings. There were tents with foods from all over the world, along with the usual things outdoor-festival foods like fried dough, Italian sausages, pizza, ice cream, fresh-squeezed lemonade, Hawaiian shave ices ...

Hang on ... what??

Now, it's only this year that I've seen "Hawaiian shave-ice" anywhere in New England. What's up with that?

And of course ... well ...

Yeah.

Saturday was pretty awesome!

Music on Saturday morning

The band I play in participated in "Boston Festival of Bands" this past Saturday, in Faneuil Hall.


I really like this concert, because it's fun to play in Faneuil Hall (even if the sound is a bit hot), and you get to see other bands play. The groups are all really good. There were seven bands, each with a 40-minute slot, so it was a lot of music! But people can wander in and out all day.

I had only one minor gripe, which you can maybe guess from seeing the concert program.

This is the band listing, with their time slots.

And who had the first timeslot?

That would be us!

I mean, 11am on a Saturday? That's just mean!

Oh, it wasn't that bad -- I just had to wake up earlier than I like to on a weekend. Actually, we all gathered inside at around 10:30 and got our stuff together, and we had a few minutes to warm up before people started showing up.

The balcony's really cool, too, so I went up to have a look before our warm-up.

You can even see my empty chair on the left edge of this (admittedly dark) photo.

We'd wondered if people in general would be up for band music at that hour, but we ended up playing to a pretty lively crowd.

I stayed and watched two other groups play before heading back across the river.

Not a bad way to start the weekend (though next time I hope we get a noon time slot!).