While Camille is at riding camp and Peter is in class, Stefan and I have all day to play tourist. We went to the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum one day and another day we all went to the Kennedy Center to hear a Hawaiian slack-key guitarist. Our nation's capitol is a great town.
Author: place2place
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dc report and i do mean david cook this time
The Idol show was about ten blocks down the street from where are in Washington, they're stalking me. Stefan and I had some free time, (what do we have besides free time these days?) so we headed down to see if David Cook would come out and talk to us. In the cab on the way there I wrote out the lyrics to The World I Know, the Collective Soul song he covers. I've been trying to figure out the chords on the guitar, and even with the tabs on the internet, still can't quite get it.
David Cook was out for about an hour. Stefan gave him a Hot Wheels car, "Thanks, I need a car!" (he gave the one he won on the show to his brother.) And he wrote out the chords to TWIK for me.
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dc report and I don’t mean david cook
There's Camille in the long pants, walking to Trader Joe's. From where we are staying in Washington DC I can watch her go door to door.We were suppose to leave for Moscow on Sunday, but because visas to Russia take not seven days but thirty days, we are here until mid-September. Once we wrap our minds around this concept, it's okay, it just took a few days to get use to. I feel the most for Camille, a new country, a new school, and three weeks late.To make up for it, Camille is at Rock Creek State Park everyday this week for horseback riding camp. -
mr. martin meets art lutherie
Peter went on a guitar scouting mission for me and found a beautiful line of Canadian guitars called Art and Lutherie. I went and played some, they had a great tone, but were kind of expensive and I wanted to shop around. I played some Yamahas, some Ovations, which is what I thought I wanted until I heard the Martin and felt like, why even get a guitar if it's not a Martin? I'll just wait and someday get a Martin. Then we went to a used guitar store, Trade Up Music. I was goofing around on the Epiphones and Ovations there, and Peter found the Martin behind the counter waiting for us.Last weekend, Helen brought her dulcimer. Let me tell you, we were killing on 'Shortenin Bread,' we'll save it for the encore when we go on tour. Helen loved my electronic turner–me too, I always thought the hardest part of playing guitar was tuning it, back in the day when I was trying to tune it by ear. We wanted to get her a tuner like mine so we headed to Trade Up Music. We spent an hour in there, Elliott on the banjo, Stefan on the the ukulele, me playing the Epiphone Hummingbird I didn't get and started thinking that maybe I somehow need. Nina was playing away on a used Art and Lutherie. The more we listened to it, the more we loved it, it's high notes sound like chimes.So we bought the Art and Lutherie. Peter thinks we need an extra set of strings, but we are afraid to go back to Trade Up Music, we don't need three guitars. -
pdx report
Peter found us the best house on SE Salmon with hydrangeas blooming all around. After spending so much time walking down nearby Hawthorne Street, I really feel like there is something wrong with us because neither of us have a tattoo. I can't get one because I could never decide on an image or where to put it–remember it took me three years to choose a sofa. And when it comes to his own body, Peter is needle-phobic. For the first time we visited the Chinese Garden in Portland. Camille reminded me of her joke about people who get tattoos written in Chinese, how do you know what it really says? "Truth, peace, trust, or 'I let someone write something in a foreign language on my body and it's permanent'?'" -
Mt. Shasta report
Sat under the stars and pine trees of Mt. Shasta drinking wine and Amuk cooked, of course. Biggest laugh: me and Tanya almost wet our pants because we couldn’t figure out how to make their bed. Or maybe when Serge told me “If you have one watch you know what time it is. If you have two, you never know.” Abe taught me four new guitar chords, which doubled my repertoire. Thanks to Jeremy and Milla who provided a great venue for four-day house party, and they weren’t even there.
Isn’t my husband the cutest thing ever? -
am i dreaming?
It’s like the dream I had one night in Niamey last year: I’m at Peet’s in the Pearl, and I’m wearing my cowboy boots and I’m walking to Powell’s. And then I wake up.
But it’s real. After two fabulous weeks with my sister, we came to Portland. Peter stood in line for four hours and bought us new iPhones. I got to hang out with David Cook for half an hour, it was like a party and then I went to the American Idol tour concert twice. I sat between Mom and Peter and David Cook poured a bottle of water on himself and sang; does it get any better than that?Today in the Pearl district of Portland, I went from Imelda’s shoes to Rich’s cigar/magazine store, to Anthropoligie (ahhh) where I tried on clothes for six hours and bought the cutest pants in the world, and a vintage-looking apron. God, I love vanity sizing. Then I went to Powell’s looking for my own copy of that perfume book, but they didn’t have it, although they did have at Anthro, and why didn’t I just buy it there? But I did find another fabulous-looking book about some perfumer during the time of Louis XIV and I bought that, “now a major motion picture” it says on the cover. Then I went to Buffalo Exchange and looked at cowboy shirts with abalone shell snaps for Peter.The one moment that actually brought tears to my eyes? The soup bar at Whole Foods.After that, I went to Safeway and bought a bottle of Ravenswood Somoma County old-vine Zinfandel, then drove down 39th to SE Salmon Street, to our litttle blue house with all the windows and the birds chirping.And Peter bought me a Martin guitar and then I went to the Woodstock branch library and checked out a song book and I’m learning to play ‘Here Comes the Sun’ and tomorrow Amuk is coming from Seattle and we are walking to Bread and Ink for dinner, and then on Saturday we drive to Mt. Shasta to see Mike and Tanya and Abe and Serge and Mrs. Issakov.It’s the best dream ever. I love you, Portland, Oregon. -
1.41 seconds eating into my 15 minutes of fame
http://fox40.trb.com/ click on the video titled “American Idol Tour, the fans.” There I am, talking for a LONG time, and Camille too. Notice my adorable nephew and niece Dave and Natalie in the background. If their adorable baby had been with us, I’d have gotten no screen time.
And it wasn’t A bottle of water, it was HIS bottle of water.
Don’t be jealous honey, I love you more.
twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?" 