“A Different Kind of Birthday”
Monday was an exciting day for me. The 2 week leg surgery follow up appointment went very well. Dr. Haslam was pleased to see good signs of the bones healing – apparently unusual at this juncture. He removed the staples from the incision and it’ll be much smoother for me to shower now. Next appointment is a month from now and I can put 25% weight on the leg until then.
Whew – it was good to get that behind me and feel that I’m on the mend again. Since I was over in Frisco I decided to try a visit to Taco Deli for lunch. I was the only person at a typically very packed restaurant. The only 
option was to park and order online for delivery to the parking space – so I worked through that seemingly overly complicated process. When my lunch was delivered to Penelope (enjoying her first outing in weeks) I learned that I could eat on the nice outdoor patio. What a treat this was – the tacos tasted much better than I remember – amazing what deprivation does to desire. The menu was a subset of normal and the “Space Cowboy” mushroom taco was not available. Not to worry, lots of other good options. All the tacos are very simple but quality, fresh ingredients really make these outstanding.
Tuesday was shaping up to be another exciting day – I had a haircut scheduled in the afternoon. After an all morning work strategy session – you know how those can be – Penelope and I headed over to the Boardroom at Watters Creek. We were foiled – the folks inside told me that they didn’t open until Wednesday and some appointments had been accepted in error online.
We repeated the process on Wednesday with success. The Boardroom had a good system down – temperature check on arrival, followed by mandatory hand washing and then utilizing every other chair. Check out these before and after shots – I might have lost a couple of inches.
While I was messing around with my haircut, Diana was undergoing a root canal. It seems to have gone very well and she got the permanent crown installed on Thursday. Such a process in the best of times.
Diana surprised me with an early Birthday gift on Wednesday evening – an excellent John Prine piano music book. I’ve been working my way through a couple of his classics during extended conference calls.
I believe it was on Wednesday night when Diana came across this camo moth on the patio. A bit intimidating with its 4 inch wingspan and coloring. A quick search reveals this to be Eumorpha pandorus, the Pandora sphinx moth, first discovered in America in 1821. Thank goodness it’s harmless and not some new strain of dangerous bug.
Diana had been telling me for several days to be ready for virtual Happy Hour with her girlfriends at 6pm on Friday. I was a bit confused about why it was necessary for me to be there, but we have to compromise to keep the peace in these times, so I was ready to go on time. This is the Zoom screen that greeted me – not the girlfriends.
What a lovely surprise – a collection of our friends from around the country AND Gordy and Ed from the Band of Heathens. From left to right and top to bottom we have: Damon and daughters in Philadelphia, Alicia in Arroyo Grande, D and K in McKinney, Ed in Austin, Anne in New Orleans, Vince and Lori at their cabin in the Adirondacks (with a huge Moose head behind), Patty and Brent in Corning, NY, Gordy in Austin, Kris and Cat in Del Mar, Adamo, Amy, Frankie , Massimo and Luciano in Pacifica, and Brad and Jocelyn in Austin.
We were all treated to 45 minutes of excellent music. This was a birthday gift to Alicia and me from Diana. What a treat! I enjoyed watching Alicia discussing the first time she saw the band with Gordy and explaining that she went straight home and learned “Hurricane”. That was a risk I took that paid off – I took Diana and Alicia on a surprise outing to see the Band of Heathens at Love and War in Texas. It was over 100 degrees on a Sunday afternoon and I wasn’t sure that Alicia would appreciate either the heat or the music. Fortunately she loved the music and bought a t-shirt at the end of the show as a souvenir. Whew! Here’s a video of the Zoom screen as Gordy and Ed shared “Abraham, Mark and John” – an excellent song from their cover of Ray Charles “A Message From the People” album. The hand off from Gordy to Ed is very smooth.
We hadn’t had much time to chat during the private concert and so jumped on another Zoom after that. We were able to introduce some of our friends to others that they hadn’t met before – always fun.
Birthday Saturday rolled around like another day at home on crutches does. I did take McD out to Taco Deli in the morning and we enjoyed our first meal out in over 2 months on their patio. Lots of fun FaceTime calls started coming in during the afternoon. We had a nice chat with Campbell as he organized his new apartment, and had video chats with Marco, Adamo and crew, Denny and Alex with cameos from Anne and Laura, Alicia, and others that I’m likely forgetting. Massimo was quite energetic during his call – that’s a “Tacosaurus” taco holder that he’s brandishing.
Clorinda wasn’t able to get out for a card so called to describe the art that she was creating for me on her new cabinet doors. Adamo went down and took a picture for me.
Not to be left out, Phoebe (Amy and Adamo’s pup) sent me a greeting:
Alicia had asked several friends and family to submit short videos to her and she played the compiled result for me on Saturday evening – what an excellent surprise.
Diana spoiled me all afternoon with New Orleans meat pies, a Bloody Mary, meat and cheese appetizer platter, and then a delicious salad, scallops, and grilled vegetables. And then the piece de resistance – a perfectly cooked pavlova with grapes that had been soaking in sherry for 2 days – all delicious.
Denny shared this picture of the High School graduation in New Orleans, with his friend Derek Houston playing Pomp and Circumstance as graduates drove through to receive their diplomas. New Orleanians always come up with a special twist.
I tested out my new double insulated french press cafetiere (thanks Mum and Dad) on Sunday morning with great results. It looks very cool, makes good tasting coffee, and keeps it warm on the patio for over an hour. I ordered up a kettle so that I can pour in water at the perfect temperature. This has given Diana an opportunity to reorganize the coffee station area in the kitchen. I think that activity is still in progress as I write this post.
Sunday afternoon is a good time to relax with the New Yorker magazine, and I enjoyed a couple of the cartoons this week. This one felt close to home as one of us has been enjoying the time to do deep organizing:
And I enjoyed this one – crosswords have been a good distraction for me in my less than mobile state:
I heard these two songs on an excellent playlist that Diana had going by the pool. Way too long since I heard Joan Armatrading’s unique vocal sound:
Sitting in the shade of the Magnolia trees I heard this version of J.J. Cale’s classic rumination on missing New Orleans by Poco. I never heard this version before. What do you think? Not too bad?:
Monday was a particularly grumpy day for both of us. Not sure what brought that on, but we moved through it and got on with things. It’s unusual for us both to be in sync with the grumps. The best I could do to cheer myself up was watch the Billions TV show and then listen to the podcast from the creators. There are so many clever references and nuances that I miss without the assist from the podcast.
updates. In the evening we enjoyed a couple of music live streams – Hayes Carll followed by the Band of Heathens, who commented that they were seeing a lot of comments from people jumping over from Carll’s show – similar musical styles I suppose. Hayes was celebrating his first wedding anniversary and showed an album he had purchased on eBay so that he could play his wife’s favourite version of “Stand by Me”. I hadn’t heard Mickey Gilley’s version – quite schmaltzy.
Saturday was a very wet and gloomy day that kept us inside. The magnolias enjoyed the rain and are opening up nicely today. As I write this, Diana is back from her Week 5 run – 2 x 8min segments today. I’m so proud of her for keeping at it – she’ll be doing a 5K very soon.
wonder why she couldn’t have provided those on the phone. Maybe she just wanted to see my reaction to the interesting news. What did it show that wasn’t visible on the x-ray from last week? A stress fracture of the left femur just below where it hooks into the hip. The good news is it wasn’t broken all the way through – only 75%. That explains why I was able to walk with pain and hadn’t gone directly to the Emergency Room. Before you all start telling me, I know the picture is of a right leg, but it was the one I found where I could draw the red fracture line easiest. How did this happen – I really don’t know – some combination of my body rejecting my attempts at Couch to 5K, Zumba, yoga etc.
Dr. Haslam and his team seemed excellent and recommended having a couple of screws inserted through my hip area to aid the bones in healing. They fitted me with a set of crutches and sent me off to get some blood tests that were required before having surgery on Tuesday morning. At this point I was getting a bit tired of driving around in pain. On arriving at Quest diagnostic testing at 4:31pm, they closed at 4:30pm, and explaining the reason that I needed the test, I was rudely sent away. They were very clear to point out that if I had arrived a few seconds earlier then they would have been happy to see me. Unbelievable lack of caring. Another call to the doctor and I was bumbling across the parking lot to a hospital that would do the blood test. I arrived home around 6pm, thoroughly worn out from the day.
Diana picked up her Mother’s Day brunch kit from Rye on Friday afternoon. She did a trial run for dinner on Saturday night, with my only real contribution (other than cheer leading) being the poached eggs. The pork belly and kale benedicts with hash browns turned out very well. They’ll be even better for Sunday brunch.
He’s one of the folks that has a tremendous feel for the music, coupled with ridiculous dexterity. I get exhausted just watching how hard his left hand is working. Joe started with “Classified” by the legendary New Orleans player James Booker. It sounds and looks to me like an incredibly difficult piece to play well. The credits at the end of the show indicated that Joe had a large part in organizing and producing the show.
Jon Cleary, an Englishman who plays piano like he’s a 3rd generation New Orleanian, is another one with a great feel for the music. Jojo Herman, of the jam band Widespread Panic, was a revelation – he clearly has spent a huge amount of time listening to James Booker and Professor Longhair. He had spent some time learning from Dr. John, who passed away earlier this year, and shared a personal video of Mac performing “Tipitina” at the end of the show. “What is a tipitina?”, asked Jojo of the Dr. “Fess (Professor Longhair) told me it was some kind of bird, but I never heard of such a thing.”
The show finished up with my all time favourite, Long Tall Marcia Ball. Excellent as always with a rare performance on a grand piano – we typically see her with her electric keyboard, legs kicking in time to her beat.
our future. We attempted to finish watching “Ford versus Ferrari” after dinner. One of us finished and the other only made it for a few minutes. I really enjoyed this movie and found Christian Bale and Matt Damon to be excellent – particularly Damon as Carroll Shelby – quite different than some of his more typical roles. The tug of war between the GM “suits” and the entrepreneurial and freewheeling Shelby/Ken Miles collaboration was well depicted. What beautiful cars Shelby made.
My first book this week was “Travels with Charley (In Search of America)” by John Steinbeck. I hadn’t heard of this work until it was cited by Stephanie Land as a big reason for her desire to explore Missoula, Montana. I thought maybe the descriptions of that territory may convince McD to give it a try. Or at least that overly optimistic child living inside me thought so.
All the time at the pool this weekend allowed me to finish another book – a fast paced mystery set in Paris during World War II. “Three hours in Paris” by Cara Black tells the story of an assassination attempt on Hitler when he pays a quick visit to attend a mass at Sacre Couer in Montmartre. The sniper is actually an American from Oregon who is recruited while living on a UK Army base in Stornoway with her Scottish husband. Her attempt fails but she does kill the leader of the German Navy by accident as Hitler ducks. The cat and mouse pursuit of Kate through various Parisienne neighbourhoods by the German forces is well written and keeps the pages turning fast. I recommend this as a good pool or beach read and a good one for those that have visited Paris to reminisce over.
After our Week 4 Day 3 run on Saturday I had some muscle pain and didn’t think too much of it. It subsided on Monday and so I did 30 minutes on the elliptical – bad idea. Now it’s pretty painful and as a result I haven’t been able to run or do much exercise this week. Don’t worry – McD has made up for it with very consistent and vigorous workouts. Maybe I should try the universal cure recommended by our Commander in Chief this week:
We grilled the rib-eye steak from Rye on Monday evening – the first nice day we’ve had in a while. Diana did a lovely job since I wasn’t up for moving around too much. The perfectly cooked steak and grilled vegetables were a real treat. And we have plenty of leftovers to enjoy all week long.
The Tuesday New York Times puzzle made me laugh with a clue “__ Gatos” next to a clue with the answer “Elroy”. How does that happen? I’m always pleased to finish any day of the NYT puzzles in less than 20 minutes.
A text from the Ogans on Thursday morning alerted me to “Jazzfesting in Place.” This would have been the first weekend of Jazzfest in New Orleans (canceled for 2020) and the local radio station, WWOZ, put together a line up of broadcasts from prior years in the same schedule format as the real deal. Apparently the food vendors are set up all around town offering to go treats. I wonder where my favourite Mrs. Wheat’s pies is located? Nothing to worry about – they have a website and I’ve ordered up a sampling of pies for weekend 2 of festing in place.
Snooks Eaglin was the stand out for me on Friday. I was reminiscing about seeing him at the original Rock ‘N Bowl with the Ogans and Sean a few weeks before he passed. Those crazy fingers flying over the fretboard. I set up some jazzfest photos on the patio to put us in the mood. Diana enjoyed the show from her “home office”. Anne is setting up a festing in place party on their courtyard. We laughed when she said Denny would only go on Friday or Sunday because Saturday was too busy.
My book this week was “Maid” by Stephanie Land. This seemed particularly relevant as we see so many low paid workers struggling to survive in an economy mostly closed down. My eyes were hugely opened by Land’s story of survival as a single parent and house cleaner.
Music on Monday night came from Eric Lindell. It was Sheri’s birthday and she and Sean were also watching from California. It felt very vaguely like going to a concert together, as Lindell performed in his bathroom (he noted that, as is typical, that’s the room in his house with the best acoustics). The show was good but not anywhere near as much fun as seeing him at One Eyed Jacks, Carrollton Station, or the Kessler.
Music continued with the regular Tuesday night Band of Heathens Good Times Supper Club show, from their homes in Austin. Gordy and Ed trade off on songs, the rest of the band shares cocktail recipes, favourite albums, a classic Grateful Dead show archive recommendation, and even reads a portion of Shakespeare. Quite the eclectic hour and a half of entertainment.
With all this time on video calls, I decided to spruce up my image with behind camera lighting and an adjustable tripod for my webcam. Diana finds it all quite entertaining.
Week 4 of Couch to 5K concluded on Saturday morning. Diana was really pushing me, pulling ahead on several occasions. I had to wait for a “hill” to catch back up again. The picture of our route is a bit fuzzy, but we covered a solid 2.2 miles – our longest yet.
The quail turned out well. I’ll make a slight adjustment with the next batch to make the quail meat a bit rarer – I think 8 minutes instead of 10 in the oven. The black cherry sauce set off the quail perfectly. The meal kit is for a family of 4 and we always seem to get about 2.5 meals out of it.
We may have created a monster out of Clorinda, Diana’s Mom, this week. After a few years of trying, she’s now sufficiently bored that FaceTime is appealing to her. She ends the session each day with “See you tomorrow”. We’re practicing patience as she wanders off for several minutes at a time, returning to be surprised that we’re still there. That’s Andy, her amazing neighbour, photo bombing. He was helping Adamo to install a new vanity.
My book this week was “Deacon King Kong” by James McBride. Set in a public housing project in the late 1950s, this story features a crazy bunch of characters. McBride was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama in 2016 “for humanizing the complexities of discussing race in America”. There’s certainly plenty to reflect on in this novel about the struggles of citizens living in public housing and working low income jobs. I enjoyed the story and particularly the development of a number of very interesting characters as the plot unfolded.
Let’s start out with some humour. I agree, something we all need just now. I received a package with a card reading “Thought you could penguin out while in quarantine. Love you from A, A, L, M, & F”. Those initials are Amy, Adamo, Luciano, Massimo, and Francesca, and we know now that Amy was behind this. She had a great giggle at this picture, as did Diana.
Our couch to 5K running program continues. I’d like to say it’s going well and it’s pretty hard work at the same time. McD continues to join me and is doing very well. We finished week 3 and are nervous about the jump up involved in transitioning to week 4.
Rye, our wonderful little downtown McKinney restaurant, continues to keep us well fed with their meal kits. We enjoyed some redfish ponchatrain – an excellent New Orleans style sauce – and the best asparagus I remember tasting, last week, and then steamed buns (bao) with pork belly and all the fixings this week. It’s really nice to be able to support this great restaurant this way.
I really enjoyed “The Adventurer’s Son” by Roman Dial. This is a true story of Dial’s search for his son who goes missing hiking solo in the Costa Rican rain forest. The book starts with great stories about Dial’s adventure exploits prior to kids, continues into describing the trips and activities that he completed with his son, and ends with his search for his son. There are a lot of twists in the search with a great amount of misinformation and story telling from the Costa Rican authorities. I have recommended this to the “Manly Book Club” in Austin. The descriptions of hiking in the jungles of Guatemala and South America were really interesting. It’s amazing what some folks are willing to undertake.
The other way we’re getting exercise is with C25K (Couch to 5K). This is an application that coaches you from sitting on the couch to being ready to run a 5K. It’s an 8 week course with three 30 minute sessions each week. The duration of runs versus walks increases each week. I never expected McD to do this with me, but she’s doing really well and we completed week 1 successfully.
People have been trying hard to stay connected with everyone working at home, and I shared my Wednesday dinner creation and asked my team what they’d been cooking. Sole meuniere ended up being much easier than I anticipated – I added a bit too much lemon juice but otherwise it tasted quite good. Nick responded with a picture of one of his favourites – mixed cheese stuffed bacon wrapped jalapenos – don’t those look amazing?
nother way we’re staying connected is with virtual happy hours. Here’s some of my team participating in the Thursday night version. Michelle on the top right lives on a boat on Lake Travis – a great setting but very tight quarters to be cooped up in. We were treated to an excellent version of “Rocky Raccoon” by Will, a very talented colleague who is leaving us this week for a new opportunity.
We’ve been doing whatever we can to support our local businesses – the restaurants, music clubs and artists that we enjoy most. The Kessler, an amazing venue in Oak Cliff, south of downtown Dallas, started selling t-shirts to support their staff while closed down. I think they came up with a great design.
I finally finished “Christmas in Austin” – it’s been a while since it took me 3 weeks to get through a book. Nothing much happens in the book beyond what I reported over the last two posts. The family did climb Mount Bonnel this week, reminding me of when Diana and I dragged Alicia up the 99 steps to see the terrific views of Austin.
The word of the day from dictionary.com this week sums things up nicely – “Stir Crazy”. After three days of both working from home in our Austin apartment, we decided that some more space would be a good idea, and so drove up to McKinney on Thursday. The roads were quiet, particularly through the log jam that is typically Waco on I-35, and we made good time.
I particularly enjoyed Nathaniel Rateliff and highly recommend his new solo album. Then the finale by Willie and his sons, Lukas and Micah, was quite something. Here are a few jittery videos I made from the TV since this particular live stream wasn’t saved for future viewing. Thanks Amy for letting us know this concert was on. We had been watching a different stream from Gordy Quist’s (Band of Heathens) kitchen table and then switched over to watch this one. Such a great way to be able to contribute to the musicians while they’re not able to perform live.
were so fresh and delicious, and I learned a new brunch recipe. Oh, there was a langiappe from the Rye visit, Diana ordered me a quart of their excellent barrel aged Vieux Carre cocktail to go, and surprised me with one as I was cooking. Thanks McD! This cocktail was originally created at the Carousel Room of the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans around 1930.
What a difference a week makes in our situation and our outlook. We knew that SXSW was cancelled but didn’t expect Austin to become a ghost town over the course of a few days. This time last year the city was absolutely hopping with scooters zipping around everywhere and amazing pop up music shows on every corner. Today there’s nobody on the streets and the restaurants and clubs are very empty. Gatherings of more than 250 people are banned and I think the city will be in full lock down except for groceries and pharmacies in a week or so.
For the last year we’ve been looking forward to the Sun radio sessions that happen during SXSW. Those looked like the one thing that might proceed amidst the cancellations. They were canceled yesterday. Look at this amazing lineup on Thursday and Saturday in particular. We had both cleared our calendars to spend Thursday afternoon with the music.
We made the long drive to Austin on Thursday in order to attend the Curtis Stigers concert at the Parker Jazz Club in the evening. We first saw him by chance at Birdland in New York a few years ago and loved the shows. The show at the Parker was equally great. What an amazing set of musicians Stigers has playing with him, particularly “Scrapper” on trumpet and the piano player. Stigers covered Nick Lowe’s “What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding” on the Bodyguard movie soundtrack. That album sold 40 million copies and made him a lot of money and fame.
Things started to change pretty dramatically on Friday, with a lot of cancellations and closures. We walked to Antone’s blues club for a music charity showcase and concert, including a performance by Western Youth, only to find a notice on the door that the event had been canceled at the last minute. Apparently Antone’s isn’t familiar with the concept of emailing its patrons when events cancel. I got this cool picture of two Wonder Women on the walk over. The Linc hotel has a very large mural to celebrate the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote.
pleasant jazz with less than 10 other folks – starting to get weird. Swift’s Attic, one of our favourite restaurants, is right upstairs and so I checked to see if we could get a reservation. Weirder – wide open for any time I wanted – and you usually can’t get in on Friday unless booking at least a week in advance. We enjoyed an excellent meal with a less than half full restaurant and an empty bar – very weird. Swift’s had taken the smart proactive step of moving their tables further apart. Squid fries, brussel sprouts, pork belly baos and those perfectly cooked scallops (I took D here on her first night in Austin and she fell in love with them).
On Saturday I finally got to try the Discada food truck in the Rosewood neighborhood of East Austin. Discada is a style of cooking, also known as cowboy-wok cooking, that has been used in Mexico for generations. The food truck serves only two things – their signature tacos and elote (Mexican style street corn). The first bite of our tacos was underwhelming, but then all the amazing flavors caught up with us – delicious all around, and such a fun experience sitting at the picnic tables enjoying the day.
We passed Saturday evening with Chuck Prophet and his band at the Continental Club. A few years ago, at Dan’s Silverleaf in Denton, there were only a handful of folks in attendance for Prophet’s show. There was a good crowd on Saturday although far from sold out. This was a very good, high energy, and interactive show indeed. I think Prophet is a very underrated songwriter and under appreciated performer. Charlie Sexton, Austin guitar royalty, waltzed in around 9pm and joined in with the band. Here are a couple of videos:
