LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

omaha

The home of my future.

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We did quite a lot in Omaha before ukulele night:  I bought some St. Patrick’s Day goodies at Nobbies, snooped around Whole Foods (where we bought lunch), walked around the Old Market, and then it was time to go to Confluence.  As we drove down 13th Street, we saw some crazy-cool looking buildings.  “What are those??” I gasped.  We turned the car around to go see them, found out that they were new condos being built, and ironically – this is the sign by their entrance:

pull

They are the Rows at Soma, incredibly hip urban townhomes with shocking style for Omaha!  Best of all, the floorplan is TINY!  Have I gone on and on about my obsession with tiny living spaces yet?  These were just fantastic – the model home had a 2-car garage/half-bath on the first floor, kitchen/dining/living room on the second floor, two bedrooms & a bathroom on the third, and a rooftop deck. (Click that link to see the awesome floorplans.)  It was decorated so beautifully, but all our interior pictures are blurry.  (I’m having camera troubles that I can’t speak about without getting a stomachache. Please don’t ask.)  Here’s another from the roof:

rooftop

The only drawback – besides the fact that I don’t live in Omaha, and also that I don’t have enough money, and also that I’m not cool enough to live there – is that my creaky old-lady knees couldn’t take going up and down all those stairs. *sigh*

Ukulele Night, from my perspective…

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Lauren has told you about Ukulele Night before, but I don’t think you’ve heard the real story yet. First of all, I have to tell you, that except for the ukulele bit, it’s a hella good time, and the people are really neat. It’s unfortunate that they’ve all contracted ukuleles.

We get together in Omaha at 5:00pm for dinner. The food’s always top notch, and it’s always the same three people working at the Bistro. They know to stock up on the beer we like, and that turns out to be a key part of enjoying ukulele night: Make sure you stock up on beer.

Regis is the man

We had another person from Seward come this time. His name is Jack Clark, and I was disappointed to find out that he was not a former 1st baseman for the Cardinals. It turns out he builds ukuleles, and so we made him sit on the side of the table with the other instrument builders. It turns out that they can have “interesting” conversations about glue.

Then we go upstairs and play some songs. I only know 4 chords, so when any other chords come-up I just sing louder. My main purpose in the group (in as much as this can be considered a purpose) is to comfort new people who join us, “You’re already better than Lloyd, and he’s been playing for two years.”

Mark is also the man

After we play, Mark usually teaches a little lesson on how to play better or music theory or something that I pretend to listen to. Then the people who can really play play what they’ve been practicing, and that’s fun to listen to, but they don’t even ask me anymore.

Way nice

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Holy cats. Did you realize that tonight is Daylight Savings? It’s too soon! Hope we wake up on time tomorrow.

We had uke night tonight, and boy do we have a nice place to meet! It’s at a bookstore/bistro/business center, and it’s pretty swanky! I took some photos, but of course they are blurry. Here’s Lloyd looking at some books, and yes – that’s wine behind him. We had some beer with dinner at the bistro, and then we played. Beer makes us sound awesome!

reading and alcohol - a dynamite combination!

Super geeky

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When I was growing up I had two Star Wars action figures: R2-D2 and a stormtrooper. That’s it. Personally, I find it hard to believe that that was it, but I’m pretty sure it was. Boys of my generation and particular mental bent spent a considerable amount of time thinking of Star Wars and how everything fit together. Thus it was with considerable interest and later considerable disappointment that I saw the last (first) three star wars films. It bothered me a bit that they didn’t make sense.

I didn't even know they had these guys

A few months ago I stumbled upon this little essay that links the two sets of movies together in a rather clever manner. It made me not hate the second (first) movies 3% less. Warning, it’s super geeky.

Heart Update:
I talked to a nurse at my cardiologist’s office (I thought it might be a few decades before I had to day that) and she talked to a nurse practitioner who reviewed my file (I’m resigned to the fact that it is only on TV that regular people get to talk to doctors) and said that it would be fine to go back to work on Monday, but I shouldn’t do anything to raise my heart-rate (only moderate walking and no more than 5 parenthetical comments per post). This is good news, because it is a pain in the butt to make a DVD of/for a lesson. It would be fun to do if I had a staff or, say, a week for each lesson. As it is, it takes about 5 hours to put a 20 minute lesson together. And they are not necessarily very good. They are certainly not the type of work that I would give a student in my Video Editing class an “A” for. But they are pretty good for 5 hours of work.

In other News:
I went with Lauren today to Omaha. She needed to pickup a few homeless ukuleles for unsuspecting teachers to use at her conference presentation on Saturday, and she said I could sit around in the car just as well as I could sit around on the couch. It was an uneventful trip except that I found out that my favorite sandwich from Subway is the highest in sodium that they sell.

Rockin’ in Papillion!

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Last night I got this e-mail:

  • WHAT: First Nebraska ukulele club get together.
  • WHEN: Saturday, November 4th at 5pm ’till the cops shut us down.
  • WHERE: The upstairs stage area of D/Rocks Music 147 N. Washington Street Papillion , NE .
  • WHY: Because ukulele is too much fun to not share with others!

Oh, yeah!!! So after a hard day of cleaning up my classroom for Sunday’s Open House, Lloyd and I headed up toward Omaha. (Lloyd said he had to come along because he wasn’t comfortable leaving me alone with possible ukulele geeks because he was fairly certain I would be the hottest (a.k.a. ‘only’) girl there.

As it turned out, there were FOURTEEN ukers there, and six of us were girls! It was crazy fun. Lloyd took pictures because he said people wouldn’t believe that I knew that many people in Nebraska with ukuleles.  He was a great sport and even played along! Perfect score!

If you like a ukulele lady, or lad.....
(We’re meeting again next month if anyone wants to come along.)

P.S. Happy Birthday to Macy G!