It’s been getting chilly recently. In the beginning, when I was going to volleyball, I would bring a jacket ’cause biking there would be rather chilly. Well, one time I accidentally left my jacket at the beach and somebody took it. Well, I didn’t want to risk doing that again so I just don’t bring a jacket. It’s freezing biking there but once I’m on the court, I’m hot from running around. Since I only need the jacket biking there, I think a few minutes of chill is worth it.
Monthly Archive for October, 2005
Page 2 of 5
We played on the mall with Billy, Sarah and Annie (Luke’s girlfriend if you didn’t know already [for giving you that gossip, I expect a little donation!]). When we played, there was this old bum totally dressed in purple with a purple beanie and a purple sweatshirt and he just cracked me up! He would dance by waving his hands horizontally below his waist like greasing a pig (I don’t know how that came to mind) and then he would do a “horn-blowing” motion (you know, that hand above head pulling motion as if pulling a chain of an old comode) and then he would do all these winks with his eyes and wingling his fingers. Man, I don’t know how else to describe it but it was one of the most funniest things I have seen that day! I just couldn’t stop from laughing and I think he enjoyed it!
Boy, I’ve been mainly playing guitar for quite a while so I’m now used to holding this big instrument but on the mall, I played the mandolin and it felt so akward to be holding that little thing, my arm was kinda cramping (well, I’m not sure if it was technically “cramping,” but it sure didn’t feel nice). Afterwards, this guy dressed up as a pirate asked all of us if we wanted a flyer for some halloween store. I don’t know why I took one but I took one. That bum who I got a kick out of came by and was mumbling stuff to us and winking so I gave him the flyer. He refused it which I found odd so I gave it to Billy.
We went into the Marrinis ice cream store to count the loot. Luke wanted to count the money outside (where the patio chairs and tables are) but I disagreed (not like that changed anything) ’cause not only a breeze would blow away the money we were counting but somebody could just come right up and pluck up a stack of bills right. Fortunately, none of that happened. We made 170 bucks and it sure seems like a lot more when it hasn’t been split up five ways.
I sure learned something about oil today! I was making a stir fry and before cooking the veggies, I thought I’d fry the tofu first (to kinda make it like popcorn) so I put in two TBspoons of olive oil.
Since I didn’t want to be splash with hot oil and I wanted the oil to be hot, I put a lid over it. I put in the tofu a few 1″ cubes at a time so they’d all get cooked evenly. The first batch was good. By the time I took them out of the wok, the oil had got really hot and when I put the tofu in, it cooked like *snap* that and I kinda burned them! By this time, the oil was really looking all black and dirty and obviously way too hot. Of course, at the time, I didn’t realize that I should’ve turned down the heat. It was odd, when I put in the next batch, the corners got kinda blackish but it never got crispy. In fact, it didn’t even seem like the oil cooked into the tofu at all! (and I left it in a while) it was just squishy ‘n all. Finally I decided that something was wrong so I poured out the sooty oil and put in some fresh oil. It cooked much better and even the bubbling sound when the tofu was put in sounded better.
So, lesson to be learned . . . well, what would that be? I’ll let you decide
Boy, the weather has been quite a hot flash! It’s been pretty foggy for a while and then it warmed up yesterday almost all day and today it’s cloudy again. Whoever’s in charge of El Weathero needs to make up his/her mind.
So, since Andy was in need of a Mandolin lesson, I decided to give him one in exchange for food. Last year, I gave him a lesson following our Playing By Ear Method but I didn’t really know it. I mean I knew it word for word but I didn’t know know it. Basically, I could give the class but if somebody asked a question or if I started to go off the script, I was stuck. And that’s how it was a year ago. It was worse ’cause Andy kinda complicated it ’cause when I asked him what a tone was (and I knew the answer, I was just quizzing him), he went over to the piano and gave me a lesson!
But this time, there wasn’t gonna be any theory, it was just gonna be technique. He needed more power and confidence in his playing and I was gonna fix that.
Yesterday, we scheduled a class for today for right after Volleyball and I thought I wouldn’t have time to make an outline or cheat sheet for myself but when I came back from Volleyball, Andy wasn’t here so I whipped up something. 30 minutes past and he didn’t come so I gave him a little call. He thought the class was gonna be tomorrow we sorted things out and ten minutes later, he came.
I went over some extremely, very, and most very valuable stuff. I was gonna first play the song (Shady Grove) with him before I told him what he was doing wrong but when we started the song, I couldn’t stop smiling and/or laughing ’cause his strum was . . . interesting in a funny way. I decided to skip the “playing the song first” step and went on to tell him how to chop (that’s a mando term for ’strum’ for all you musically declined folks out there) which made a HUGE difference.
After the lesson, we planned on where we’d eat. We were gonna go down to the mall to look but Andy had to make a call and he forgot the phone number so we went back to his house to make the call. He said the moment he went in the house, he remembered the number! I know that feeling! After he made the call, we drove to Upper Crust Pizza. We went there last year after I gave him a lesson so it’s kind of a tradition. You can get a whole 9″ pizza and it’s so thin, you can eat the whole thing and be comfortably full. . . and that’s what I did. I ordered some garlic on mine. I thought it was gonna be garlic powder but they put on good, fresh garlic!
On the way back, I thought it was Thursday and I went to Sylvan to pick up my banjo. Well, Al said that it wasn’t ready and he said I was supposed to come on Thursday. Then I realized it was Wednesday! OoPs!