Maybe there’s a reason I’m nicknamed the Red Tornado. Here’s the week so far. Hang on folks…it’s a ride.
Monday – taught lessons, dealt with major construction on the street outside Lady Bass Music that caused major, major delays for students.
Tuesday – got stung by a wasp, 5 minutes before my first lesson. Yeah, really. I had a moderate allergic reaction that “some people” apparently have. I still taught a double shift of lessons – the morning in FXBG, the afternoon and evening in RVA. I figured out how to strap an ice pack to my leg so I could be mobile and keep my hands free. It is also day two of dealing with construction delays.
Oh yeah, and I adopted a Dean 12 string bass that needs love. Thank you Andy. And thanks to Lee for offering me his bass, Lola, another Dean 12 string, to use as a visual template in the rebuild. I always wondered how these Dean 12 string basses would fare with different pickups. I just didn’t want to spend $500-ish (used) to $900-ish (new) to find out. Looking forward to trying out some ideas on this…
I come home and collapse on the couch. Somewhere in all that, I tried goat cheese macaroni and cheese for the first time. Not too shabby. Thank you Aldi…we will do that again!
And that’s Tuesday…I’m done. Paper wasps really are a 4.0 out 5.0 on the pain sting index. The description in the pain index was “hydrochloric acid poured on a paper cut”. I’ll go with “shard of glass stabbed into your leg, followed by the feeling of a cattle prod randomly jabbed into your muscle when you attempt walking.” Follow that with the acid comment, but more like acid poured on a razor burn. That’s more accurate. But I also had swelling.
Wednesday – Swelling is down from the wasp sting. It’s the last day of lessons at Forte. I need to finish moving out. I move some of my things into Pickers Supply to make that studio nicer. It’s an emotional day; lots of folks had their last day on Wednesday. People are looking forward, but there is the realization we are parting ways. I took many SuperVan loads of gear out of the building. While I worked, I could hear another studio upstairs from me getting torn down and packed up. I found an abandoned boom box from a previous teacher and spin Incendio’s “Summoning the Muse” while I work. #soundtrackfortheday
And…adopted a stray marimba. Because. Marimbas. They need love too. Plus being single means you never have to say you are sorry that a stray marimba “jumped” into your car. My percussion class at RSMC just got more interesting. Thank you John and Young. And Ben Titus for texting back “Damn, that’s a nice haul.” #friendsenablefriendslol
\
I put things away from the Wednesday night move, took a phone call from a friend in Nashville about Spector basses. Go to work early. Leave work early and take two students on a “field trip” to Herndon to see Incendio play.
(This footage is from the Sculpture Garden concert in DC).
The traffic on the way…just flawless. Unexpectedly and surprisingly so for DC. A 90-minute commute took 60 minutes. The concert was great…they did a really nice “acoustic” set (ie no electric instruments…just acoustic-electric guitars).
And, then I adopted a cat. At 11:30 pm or so.
See, a few weeks back I got contacted about this beautiful Russian Blue cat who needed a home. I was already prepping to adopt a cat or two from the local hoarding case, so this wasn’t an impossible thing to do.
The crazy thing was I was so busy with Forte closing/moving/communicating with clients and some other items that had to get priority (stay tuned on what that might be…) that I completely forgot about the cat needing to be adopted. Because my living room currently looks like a loading dock. 🤣
So I took off work to go to Herndon because very cool friends who are musicians were in from LA to perform. That put me in direct contact with Chris Welborn, who was at the show. He knew the owner of the cat and Chris had been trying to help facilitate the rehoming.
One of the students who went with me; she is a lady who runs a cat foster. And she took in some of the kittens from the hoarding case. So, Chris’ phone went off mid-concert; the cat had to be rehomed by tomorrow. It’s an emergency now. In a highly improbable turn of events, all the right people were in the right place to talk about adopting this cat right there.
Once the concert was over and we said good bye to our friends, I texted the owners of the cat. They lived 15 minutes from the venue. 😳 Synchronicity. The cat’s “dad” also a bass player. #basscommunitytotherescue
Thursday night, I adopted the first boy cat at Lady Bass Music since Maxwell left us. His name is Lieu. Short for Lieutenant Dan. 🙂 He’s chilling on my bed in the master bedroom while I work on the “loading dock” of items from my Forte office that’s in my living room.
*looks left, looks right, smiles*
Bring it.