The exact opposite of getting screwed.

[maugorn]

This weekend was exactly the opposite of getting screwed:



Friday was nice- even tho patches023 was out of town for a sewing retreat and I was left to my own devices.

I didn't get my full agenda done, but it was just as well.
I got to help move some furniture (a fantabulous Art-Deco score from a thrift shop) which; I'm sure, increased my stash of Karma points, as that would certainly be a plausible explanation for the rest of the weekend.

Then, I finally got to have a Birthday dinner with sagesaria. Red Robin is a fine place to eat if you're after basic burgery goodness, but want better than fast food. Now, if Five Guys offered onion rings...
Anyway, it was good. Many ups were captured, stories were told, laughs were laughed, brags were bragged, complaints were complained, and of course, fatherly advice dispensed to the ritual rolling of eyes.





3LF had a very big and prestigious gig on Saturday for the (appropriate county) Historical Society at some fancy schmancy hotel in Easton MD. They were offering us impressive $$ to provide some background music for their coctail/casino hour and then a set of music and dance after dinner.

They weren't going to be able to offer us dinner so the plan was that whomever could make it would meet at a local pizza joint to eat beforehand.

Since I was flying w/out Patches and since luscious_purple's car gets much better gas mileage than my van, I rode out with her. We arrived about a half hour early and as luck would have it, there was a nice, old-school music store right across the street where I got to poke around in piles o'stuff and found a nice bargain on an extra guitar strap and some leftover pickups.

Dinner at Ledo's was unremarkable, but their next door neighbour/co-bar is a place that hires live music.
Sometimes there are no coincidences. I may give them a call.

We arrived at the gig to find that we had a very spacious "green room" to keep ourselves and our stuff in as we awaited our time(s) to go on. Oh, and there was all kinds of help to get the stuff in and set up.
And that help re-materialised for tear-down!!!
BIG Thanks to everyone who jumped in on that action. AWESOME!

The first part went without any significant hitches. We played great & sounded great, and no one seemed to notice when I accidentally pressed the wrong button on the keyboard when I was trying to make it louder.
(Note- new keyboard should be run thru an amp for any venue bigger than a bedroom)
I never seemed to be in the right place to snatch any hors-d-oerves, but that was to be fixed later...

Then came the boring part- the wait for the 2nd set.
We mostly hung out in the green room which they called their "board room", which naturally got renamed to a familiar and apt homonym.
No matter tho, it was, as I said spacious, and they provided us with water, and while folks knitted or read or sewed, I practiced my guitar.

I've got say tho, that in all my years of green rooms, with bands, and theatrical types, that *this* was the absolute QUIETEST green room I've ever been in. No loud discussions, no smuggled in liquor, no shenanigans, no dangerous games with known perilous objects. Very strange...

And then came the best news evarr. An entire table of patrons had failed to show, and were there maybe ten of us who would like some salad. "Sure! we said."
And then there came the not quite surprise that was even bigger and better news (I'd anticipated it, but kept mum):
There were leftover dinners as well. And deserts.
A mighty feast was had as we took in their silent auction.

Finally, it was time for our set. Once again, we played really well. The dancers looked as if they were having fun (yay)and we got a nice bunch of patrons up to dance with us. (double yay).
Unfortunately, since everything else ran late that night, our set was cut short from the full hour that we were signed for. No matter tho, we still kicked ass, and were treated like rock stars.
And then Fred shared the news that they payed us a bonus of 25% over our promised amount.

At Some gigs sometimes, you get screwed. This was exactly the opposite, AND dinner got included after all!

Alas I wasn't the best company going home, as I kept dozing off.





Sunday, I finally dragged myself out of bed at about 11 and made my way over to Microcenter to try and exchange the hard drive I could never get to work no matter what I did.

It took for frickin' ever, and then came the bad news, that I had taken too long to come back.
I'd have to seek relief thru the manufacturer. But they could not find me that appropriate info for me. So they'd agree to an exchange if I payed the $5 price difference. Sure. No problem if it gets me a working drive.

And imagine how my heart sank when I tried it in the store and the new one didn't work either. I could tell how tired I was because I almost burst into tears at their help counter. But after a patient wait, someone finally took pity on me, saw what was happening and then had me try something I'd never known about:
Windows actually HAS a disc manager that can initialise a new disc. I'd never needed to use it before, and never knew it was there. Now I know and I have a new working 1Tb drive to keep archiving my audio.

Yay.

So probably the first drive is okay, and I paid an extra $5 that I might not have needed to.
But $5 for a computer lesson in a fundamental this important that I didn't know is frickin' bargain.

I triumphantly drove home and was about to crash (on the couch, not the road) when patches023 got back from her retreat.
So I helped her unload and THEN crashed hard.
I mean real hard.
I slept thru most of NASCAR.
I barely saw The Simpsons.
I have no idea what else was on.
I eventually woke up and stumbled upstairs where I crashed again, until Patches came to bed and I kind of saw some TV news that sounded like "blah blah _The Black Swan_ mumble mumble _The King's Speech_ murmur murmur Thunderstoms..."
And I rolled over slept until morning, except when I kept waking up to either catch my breath or go to the privvy.

Resolved: I WILL be getting a sleep study done soon.
I'm tired of being SO tired so much and still being all woozy even when I get enough sleep.
I feel semi-human today, but yesterday just sucked.

But not really. It was still a great weekend of exactly the opposite of getting screwed!

Comments

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Woot! To most of this.

[cedarwolfsinger.livejournal.com]

YAY on your weekend. Please get the sleep study done. My older brother passed away because he failed to wear his CPAP mask and fell asleep in front of the TV. I just had a sleep study and was diagnosed with sleep apnea. I've had some real difficulties getting used to wearing the mask but I keep plugging away. Please do it! Love you -- Cedar

[luscious-purple.livejournal.com]

You wouldn't happen to be missing a green tunic, now would you? Tsk-tsk, leaving your clothes in a lady's car trunk ... no wonder your reputation has more fun than you do! *smile*

[lysystratae.livejournal.com]

If there's a Smashburger in your area, I highly recommend them; better burgers than Five Guys, and while they don't have traditional onion rings, they do have haystack onions that are very very yummy.