Catching up - Saturday & Sunday

I was so exhausted Friday night that I didn't blog that night; instead, I blogged about Friday on Saturday night. So tonight I'm going to try to catch up & will blog about both Saturday & Sunday.

Saturday, Brian & I "slept in" until about 10. "Slept in" is in quotes because 10am Eastern is 7am Pacific, so it didn't really feel like sleeping in to me! After a good breakfast at Denny's, we headed to the store to pick up some things we need for the trip, things like scotch tape, index cards, toe bandaids (I seem to have developed an ingrown toenail - ouch!), and an eyeglass repair kit.

When we arrived at the airport Thursday night, I bent down to reach into my luggage for something and my glasses fell off! I'd lost a screw!

This is not good.

I didn't have any way to fix them at the airport, so I just balanced them on my face.

Stylish, no?

Until we made it to the hotel, where I could get a safety pin out of my luggage.

Rockin' that '80s look. What's that? The safety pin is supposed to go in my EAR?

I wore my contact lenses on Saturday so I wouldn't have to walk around looking all dorky, then fixed them after we bought the repair kit.

All better!

After the shopping trip, we went to the church to check out all the bells, make sure they were all in good working order, and to mark them so we know which set of bells is which -- this is very important when you've got 3 sets of bells and 2 sets of chimes! On the suggestion of Martha Alford, I got several colors of rubber bands - the kind that kids make the bracelets out of nowadays. I put a band around each bell handle, then tied some to the case handle, too. After each concert, when it's time to pack up, we can easily sort which bells go in which cases. Yay!

Red band goes in the red case.

After we were done marking all the bells & chimes, we re-packed Susan's office...

Still a lot of stuff, but more organized now.

Then went to Jo-Ann Fabrics to buy some foam. We are borrowing foam from all of our venues, but we use wooden triangle pieces to flare out our tables into a "flying wedge" shape instead of just a plain U or L shape. We feel this opens us up more to the audience, allowing us to engage them more, while still being able to see each other so we can play together. All of our venues have 4" thick foam, except for one which has 3" foam. We have been using 4" foam at home, but a lot of people have 3" foam and since we're going to be traveling more and more, we thought it was time to invest in some 3" triangle and 2-ft rectangular pieces. We bought enough 3" thick foam for our needs, and also got some 1" thick foam so that we can use them when we're using 4" thick foam on the rest of the table. (Don't ask me how we're going to get it home; I haven't figured that out yet. I've got another week before I need to know for sure!) I'll get some pictures of the foam and wood pieces tomorrow.

Of course, once we got the foam, we had to cut it and we didn't have an electric knife, so we went to Kohl's and got one. It was on sale for $17.99 - regular price $44.99, PLUS I had a 15% off coupon. SCORE! We went back to the church & Brian cut the foam into the pieces we needed.

From there, we went to Susan's house for dinner - wonderful lamb gyros and chicken souvlaki from a local Greek Festival. YUM! Then back to the hotel for some shut-eye because...

... Sunday was an early morning. I had volunteered to play a solo or two (or three) for Susan's church & she took me up on my offer. Yay! I played Arnold Sherman's "Grazioso" for the Prelude, "Slane (Be Thou My Vision)" arr by Kevin Holsinger and me for the Offering, and Christine Anderson's "Be Still My Soul" for the Postlude. People came up to compliment me after the service & I think some people will now be coming to the concert who otherwise might not have come. Double yay!!

After church, we went back to the hotel, so I could dye my hair - my pink was a bit faded & needed a refresher. I'll have pics tomorrow if I can get a good pic in the sun, where my hair just GLOWS! - and to separate out our concert things from our general items to make it easier to get to the venue tomorrow.

Then it was out to dinner with Susan & Mike. They took us to the Red Line Diner in Fishkill - diners are a Thing here in New York. I mean we have them in California, but not this dense on the ground. They are *everywhere* here. This place had really excellent food - Brian had jambalaya & I had mac & cheese. 

While out driving yesterday, we noticed this sign near our hotel:

OCC? Hey! We know who they are!

... and so today, we drove over there to check it out. It's less than half a mile from our hotel! BTW, did you know they have a Café over there now? Serving lunch & dinner every day, plus "Biker's Breakfast" every Saturday & Sunday. The main showroom was closed & we had just had dinner, so we just did a drive-by photo shoot:

The Café - I gotta wonder why it's not called a Diner??

ooh, pretty!

Maybe someday we'll get a chance to come back & actually look around inside!

In a few hours, the rest of the band will be arriving at airports in Los Angeles and Oakland and flying to the East Coast. Barbara & Tracy will meet them all at La Guardia and then they'll all drive to Poughkeepsie. I've been sending last-minute things to them for the past couple of days - "Don't forget your costumes!" "It's been raining, so if you have a brolly, bring it!" etc - but they'll be on their own very soon. I hope they all have a great flight and arrive safely and have no trouble getting here tomorrow. Bon voyage, mes amis! 

-Michèle