A similar routine again this week to the last couple – Diana working in St. Petersburg, Florida Wednesday through Friday and me working at home. There were a couple of differences – Diana got stuck in Tampa due to a thunder storm around the time she was due to take off on Friday afternoon, and I had to drive to the Fort Worth office every day for all day meetings.
On the bright side, Diana was able to connect with Merry Lee and Jeff, have dinner at their country club, and then spend the night at their lovely new home in Tampa. She put a lot of work into making sure that her client presentation on Friday morning was successful and so it was good that she was able to relax with friends. She learned earlier on Friday afternoon that her Mum had been taken to the hospital by paramedics and was very concerned about being so far away from her – Jeff and Merry Lee were a welcome distraction. We just learned that her Mum could be discharged from hospital this afternoon and Diana will be in San Francisco tomorrow afternoon to make sure she settles in well back at home.
Meanwhile, I took advantage of being in Fort Worth all week to meet up with a colleague for dinner at the Capital Grille downtown. We walked from dinner to a jazz club called the Scat Lounge. On the way we passed by Sundance Square and downtown’s most iconic public art, the Chisholm Trail Mural which serves as a reminder of Fort Worth’s rich cultural roots. The three-story Richard Haas trompe l’oeil mural spans the 1908 Jett Building’s southern facade and was completed in 1988 to commemorate the Fort Worth segment of The Chisholm Trail cattle drives of 1867-1875.
I had been reading about the Scat Lounge for the last couple of years and was looking forward to trying it out. As luck would have it, a band named “A Taste of New Orleans” was playing on Wednesday night, and they were a real treat. Here are a couple of their performances.
The Scat Lounge is an excellent venue – just the right size and very reminiscent of a New York basement jazz club.
We met Patty and Brent for dinner and a movie on Saturday night. The movie was quite unique and different than you might expect – a true one of a kind dedicated “To Patty”. It featured Chad and his exploits over a 24 hour period. The version we saw was just the initial “rough cut” but a truly hilarious and very clever production.
After the movie, we enjoyed dinner at The Grape on Greenville Avenue (McD’s favourite Dallas restaurant). I enjoyed the Moroccan Rabbit “Tagine”, Brent the Crispy Pork Collar, and the ladies both had the Steak Frites. After dinner margaritas at the Blue Goose across the street put the ladies right off to sleep. What a lovely evening with great friends that we’re going to miss very much.
I finished a couple of very different books this week. The first, “The Sportswriter” by Richard Ford, is part of a trilogy that tracks the life of Frank Bascombe, a New Jersey based writer for a sports magazine. The book tracks his experiences over a long Easter weekend when he is 38 years old, having recently lost a child and been divorced.
I’ve heard Ford described as the poor man’s John Updike and particularly this trilogy compared unfavorably to Updike’s “Rabbit” trilogy. I found the writing styles quite different and, with several decades between the settings, the situation and scenarios quite different as well. I’m not ready to run out and read the rest of the trilogy but do look forward to catching up to them sometime soon. “Independence Day” from the trilogy won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1996.
The second book, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh, was completely different than anything I typically read, and it’s probably good to try new things from time to time. I had read a positive review in the New Yorker magazine and it was the book club pick at the Wild Detectives book store that I love in South Dallas.
The narrator is a young woman, living in New York in the year 2000, and determined to withdraw from life for a year in order to escape from or cope with her traumas. The book is incredibly dark but the writing is very good. I would not recommend this book to the faint of heart.
Here’s a song I heard for the first time this week from the Chris Duarte Group. It reminds me a lot of “Tin Pan Alley” by Stevie Ray Vaughan and has equally good sound and production.
My boss just sent this picture from the Toronto air show this weekend. What amazing precision and a great picture that he took.
