Month: April 2017

Three trips to downtown Dallas on three consecutive days this week.  Tiring in traffic but all worthwhile jaunts.  The first trip was on Thursday to catch the last days of the Spring Blooms event at the Dallas Arboretum.  

 There was a summer of love theme going with a VW bug and bus decorated with flowers and a flower power booth manned by “D”.  It was a gorgeous day and we enjoyed a picnic on the lawn by White Rock lake and a nap in the sun.

 

Friday’s excursion was to the lovely Meyerson Symphony Center for a concert by Alicia’s high school symphonic band.  Mort Meyerson was one of the original founders of EDS and has donated to several local causes associated with the arts.  The Boyd band sounded great in the hall – not quite as good as Carnegie Hall but very close.  Alicia had a solo to start off one of the pieces that had a Japanese sounding theme.  She did a great job of rising to the occasion as ever.  Here’s a clip:

After the concert we headed over to the eclectic Deep Ellum neighborhood for the annual arts festival – 3 days of music and food outdoors with hundreds of artists’ booths set up along the streets.

We picked up a metal sculpture of aliens carrying off a garden gnome as a gift for Patty and Brent who had been eyeing something similar at the festival last year.

The alien sculpture was delivered on Saturday night on the last of the three downtown excursions.  This time to the Kessler to see 10,000 maniacs.  We enjoyed dinner at Bolsa and then a great concert courtesy of the Wahbas.  So many fun activities around downtown Dallas but a bit too long of a drive in traffic to go as often as we’d like.

 

Oscillating between high winds, thunder, and warm sunny days this week was typical of spring in Texas.  Diana worked on organizing insurance folks to come and evaluate the hail damage from last week.  She also had a handyman visiting to work on all the “bits and bobs” that have needed fixing for a while and are beyond my skill set or patience level.

On Wednesday we drove over to Dan’s Silverleaf music club in Denton.  It was obvious that it had been a little while since we’d visited as we commented on all the new construction (including a large new High School) on the driver over highway 380.  The early evening music was “A Taste of Herb” – a Herb Alpert tribute band.  Here they are doing Simon and Garfunkel with a Herb feel.

This music took me back to riding in my Dad’s Renault 16 with his Harry Moss 8 track playing Herb Alpert and Tijuana Brass or Bridge Over Troubled Water.  Happy memories.

Dan’s now serves food from Texas Tapas next door and we really enjoyed green curry meatballs, mushroom tacos, and truffle parmesan tater tots (which are becoming a common item on menus these days).

 

On Friday afternoon we checked out the new Cowboys fit facility that’s included in our Cowboys Club membership.  They hope to open in late April and we’re looking forward to it – particularly the outdoor, heated lap swimming pool.  The facility was filled with lots of fancy new equipment that looks quite intimidating.

To recover from the exertion of the tour, we stopped into Pepper Smash for some of their delicious blistered shishito peppers, Calbrese flatbread (creamy basil puree, charred tomato jam, sausage, and arugula) and cocktails.  They have some very creative drinks, including the Cotton Candy Martini – which sounds way too sweet for either of us to try.  We walked across the street to the Angelika movie theater and saw T2 Trainspotting.  This is a very Scottish movie set in Edinburgh.  The language and content are a bit harsh but certainly lighter than Danny Boyle’s original.

Saturday brought a forecast of wind and rain that didn’t amount to much.  It was a lazy day since picking up Diana’s engagement ring was pushed to probably Monday.  I enjoyed the NCAA Final Four basketball games and Diana’s delicious sea bass.

Sunday brings more heavy rain and so I’m catching up on some overdue blog posts and enjoy the Sunday New York Times.  I just ordered up a couple of books that sounded good in the NYT Book Review.

New music that I’ve been enjoying this week include Grandaddy’s excellent new album “Last Place” and Father John Misty’s “Pure Comedy”.  They have similar keyboard driven melodic styles that I’ve been enjoying.  Just now I’m listening to Nick Spitzer’s American Routes show from the Baton Rouge Blues festival which has some great live Luke Winslow King songs.  Here’s a link to my posting on his latest album from December 2016:

Music Discovery – Luke Winslow King