April Fools Extravaganza Part 1

Written on April 2, 2007.

We in the Abbott family have never been good at pulling off good April Fool pranks. I don’t know, it’s in the genes or something. We just never been successful at it. They’ve always been things like, “It’s snowing!” or “Hey! There’s a cow down the street.” You see, April Fool pranks of that caliber. Well, today was a landmark achievement.

We were all doing are own thing when suddenly, Ma says, “you know, I was thinking about telling John (not the persons true name but let’s say it is to make it interesting) about the party today.”
Now, one thing I have to tell you about John to put this in perspective.  He talks. . . a lot. It’s even beyond talking. It’s non-threatening verbal assault. When you are by him, he will start talking to you. Sure a little bit of chit chat wouldn’t hurt nobody but he will go on and on and you want to leave but it’s hard to find an opening. Even when he does pause to give you a chance to escape, he will follow you and keep talking! The only way it could get worse is if he grabbed your arm and pulled you in for the too-close conversation.

Now, I was shocked by Ma’s idea. I asked why in the world she would want to do that?  Then she said, “well, I was thinking about how mean we’ve been to him by ignoring him, I thought I’d make it up to him by inviting him over for dinner.” I almost passed out! “Wait! Did you send the letter yet?” I asked. “Yeah.” She said. For ten minutes I was reeling and said how by inviting him over, she dragged us into it and we’re gonna get non-aggressively verbally bombarded. (or ‘friendly-fire’ as we say)

Then, Ma started to chuckle and said, “Boy! This has been my best one yet!” I thought she meant that it was her best foot-in-the-mouth blunder or best “whoops!” moment. Just then, I realized that it was April Fools day! However, I had yet to realize that John-invitation thing was a prank so I came up with a brilliant idea and said, “Hey! When we see John, we’ll tell him ‘April Fools!’ and then we don’t have to eat with him!”  After that, to my relief, I finally realized the whole thing was a joke. whoo!

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The Attention-Grabbing Grapefruit: A Sociological Adventure

Written on March 30, 2007.

Hey folks,

So, Kyle’s been telling me for a long time that I should “sit in” on his blog and make “guest posts,” so I thought I’d post this here, seeing as he apparently missed this story. So, without any further adieu, I give you:

The Attention-Grabbing Grapefruit: A Sociological Adventure
(…or, “Everybody Wants to Be a Good Samaritan, Especially When It’s Easy.”)

Last week, Kyle, Papa, and I went shopping at Costco. If you’ve ever been to Costco, you know that the highlight of the experience are the loads of good samples… unfortunately, I burned my tongue on some cajun chicken pasta penne stuff, which pretty much ruined the remainder of my sampling. I hate it when that happens!

We also had hot dogs there for lunch — two dogs split among us three, a perfect amount. As we left the eating area, I saw a little puddle under our cart. I looked at the underside of our cart but saw no broken bottles or anything, so I figured it must have been from someone else…

Wrong. As we were loading up the car, we discovered that we had a leak after all. It was the grapefruit! One of the fruit at the very bottom was rotting, and leaking grapefruit juice! I didn’t want that thing in the car, but it was at the very bottom so it would’ve taken a while to get it out, so Papa put it on the roof! I protested at first, because a) I was afraid it’d fall off, possibly leading to an accident, and b) I knew we’d get honked at by lots of “good Samaritans” notifying us that we “forgot” to load up our fruit. But, we did it anyway.

As I was backing out, looking over my shoulder, Continue reading ‘The Attention-Grabbing Grapefruit: A Sociological Adventure’

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Musical Bikers

Written on March 25, 2007.

We went downtown to play (music) on the mall. It was going along pretty good. We had Phillis with us who really gets the crowd roaring. Pretty good having her with us today since we hadn’t played on the mall for a long.

So, we’re down there playing some tunes when suddenly this flock/group/head/herd of bikers came ridin’ by on their hogs. (Some also had motorcycles too) They found an empty parking space which was unfortunately right behind us. So, it took them a few minutes to park. How long does it take to park a motorbike anyway? They weren’t even parallel parking. Put me in a car, I’m parked in two seconds (and I don’t even have a license!). Not only that, as they were parking, they had there radios blazing. You know, I never knew how or even if a biker listened to or had a stereo on his/her hog. Well, I guess I know now. So, after smelling some lovely fumes while they backed-up, we got back to playing.

In about 45 minutes, they came back with their ice creams, lowered themselves back on their rides and puttered off.

Every year, there is a Heck’s Angels (if you know what I mean) convention at the Brookdale Lodge. That’s possibly where they were going after a quick stop to get some groceries in town.

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Another Shot At Dancing

Written on March 21, 2007.

As you may not know, while I am a fairly flexible guy, I’ve never been much for dancing. Physically, I’m a dancing god (I’m taking my own word for it ’cause I’ve never tried) but emotionally. . . ah, no.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to dance (Well, reluctantly at least). Before today, I had one other introduction into dancing, African dancing. Pa encouraged both Luke and I to go. He said that it would help us “loosen” up. Well, First going in, I could see that 90% of the people there were ladies and the other 10% were a little. . . not that there’s anything wrong with that. Aside from that, they were all “peace-y.” Now, I like my peace as much as everybody else, but when the dance teacher explained a dance move to the class by saying, “imagine you are pulling back an arrow. . . an arrow of love.” I groaned. Who am I, Cupid?! As you can see, it wasn’t a good start. Continue reading ‘Another Shot At Dancing’

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Finished Sao

Written on March 19, 2007.

Well, After about two months of practice and one month of making, I have finally, almost finished the Sao (neck) on my new shamisen. It’s taken me three months to practice/make the sao which is about the amount of time it took to make a whole shamisen last time. But, after lots of practice, I got the mortise and tenon skills solid enough to start on the real thing.

split

Now, if I made a one piece neck, I might’ve gotten it done in a week or so but having a three piece neck took a lot more time and patience. Especially for the second mortise somehow. On the first one, it only took me about 4 days to get it nice and flush but the second took weeks and weeks (all because I went off the mark a little when I sawwed the pieces).

It was a very interesting process. Progress was different, visual wise. Let’s take, for example, when I made the body. At the end of a day of lots pounding and chiseling, after seeing the dou pieces I had carved out, I felt I had made lots of progress. Well, it was different with the sao. With getting the sao pieces to connect flush, “progress” was at a much smaller scale. At the end of the day, I’d get the two pieces closer/flusher by a millimeter and I knew I had made progress but it didn’t have the satisfaction as carving out a lot of wood did. However, two months later, (last week) I finally got the neck rounded and planed. It’s very tight too.

Whole

Since all that fine mortise work took lots of concentration, I never got around to blogging for a long time (since there wasn’t that much to blog about either) Hopefully, now that I’ve finished the intense part of the making the neck, I’ll be blogging a lot more.

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