“Penguin Out”
I’m back.
Did you miss me?
That’s very sweet of you to say.
Yes – with all this staying at home I’m capable of carrying on extended conversations with imaginary friends. With no concerts to attend or restaurants to visit, I wanted to wait until I had something interesting to report before writing this report. You can be the judge if there’s actually anything in here or not.
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.
And then… another package showed up in the evening. Guess what? Yes – a smaller version.
That has to be one of the more ridiculous sights in a while. Anybody have an entertaining onesie picture they’d like to share with us?
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.
In retaliation (maybe too strong a word) for running, Diana has me doing Zumba (who knew there were so many different salsa, sambas and the like?) and Yoga with her. I’m enjoying the variety and she’s getting a kick out of how silly I look doing it.
We enjoyed Easter Sunday video calls with both sides of the family. My Mum and Dad, Will and Christine, Campbell, and Alicia were first. The technology worked well and it was really nice to virtually see everyone. Then we had the extensive Campagna clan joining Clorinda. It took a while to get Grammie’s video working and then she had a great time chatting with all the grand kids. Marco started with a virtual treasure hunt, shared a video of Olivia’s choir group all performing together virtually, Giancarlo read a recent poem of his, and then we heard from each grand child. The lower IQ group joined from Puerto Rico, and had to leave the call to go and pack in hopes of catching the last flight off the island in the morning.
I’ve been using some of my extra time to take an online piano course. It’s by Willie Myette and I’m working my way through the Blues piano section. I highly recommend this course – it’s great to be able to start and stop and learn at your own pace. I’m working on “Frank’s Blues” just now and maybe I’ll post a video when I get it down. That reminds me – I had to come up with the trivia for our team virtual Happy Hour on Thursday, and decided to play the intros to some songs on the piano and guitar and see who could guess the song and artist first. Here’s some of the silliness on the guitar. I need to get back to online guitar lessons next.
It’s fun to meet families and pets on the video calls. Brad has two Irish wolfhounds – I’m very jealous. Here they are recovering from Happy Hour.
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.
Here are a couple of pictures that I enjoyed recently – my Dad’s garden planter and a view that one of our neighbours took from our apartment building – I like what the Fairmont hotel is doing in the distance with the heart of Texas.
And here’s a wee funny about the stress that isolation can put on relationships:
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.
We lost three amazing musicians over the last 2 weeks. Ellis Marsalis, patriarch of the most famous New Orleans music family that includes Wynton and Brandford passed away from pneumonia caused by Covid-19. Marsalis contributions to music are huge – particularly as a teacher. Here he is in the jazz tent at the New Orleans Jazzfest:
Bill Withers death was not related to the virus. He retired from music many years ago but a few of his songs have lived on – “Lean on Me” seems to be everywhere these days. Here’s “Ain’t no Sunshine” from the excellent Old Grey Whistle Test series:
Finally, and having the most impact on me this week, John Prine passed away from the virus as well. He is one of my all time favourite singer songwriters. Best known for “Angel from Montgomery” and the Bonnie Raitt cover, he has penned and performed numerous haunting and deeply insightful songs. There is an excellent show that he did for the Sessions at West 54th series several years ago – highly recommended. My favourite is “Hello in There”:
I also love the NPR Tiny Desk concert that Prine did recently:
Be safe and kind!