LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

ukulele

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.

I am an idiot.

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It’s bonus ukulele night!   Tonight I came to Omaha to see Lil’ Rev in concert, and then he had a ukulele workshop afterwards that was very inspiring!  I will be trying to play rolls, triplets, tremelos and chord solos.  ‘Trying’ is the key word.  He was really, really good, and I was really, really impressed.  (Yes, we were in a retirement center.  He plays a lot of ol’ timey music, and says that he’s really big on the nursing home circuit.  Seriously, check out his website.)

Lloyd couldn’t come because it’s the weekend before Valentine’s Day and he’s busy working on the Buddy List for school.  (Sidebar: I just did a search to find a post about Buddy Lists, and there isn’t one.  Get on that, Lloyd.)  Anyway, I Pricelined a hotel for myself so I could stay overnight and then toodle around Omaha and visit my shops.  Yay!  Lauren’s day of fun!  It’s about time, I say.

I got home from school, grabbed some cash to pay for the concert, tossed the rest of my stuff into the truck and was merrily on my way.  A hundred miles later I pulled into the venue, grabbed my uke and my purse…… my purse…….. my purse?

Show the good people where my purse is, Lloyd.

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Crap.  Guess I’ll just be window shopping.

What happened Saturday

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Okay. Um. Tap. Tap. Is this thing on? Lauren said that I can post something on Sundays, because no one reads this on Sundays anyway. Yesterday was longish. We got up early and drove to Fremont. The Republican State Central Committee meeting was there, and I was representin’ (fold arms over chest and say, “yo yo yo”). It was mostly boring with a lot of speeches and elections.

It turns out the Republicans in Nebraska are very upset with the second congressional district and want to go back to a “winner take all” system like most of the rest of the US (big shout out to Maine to also keepin’ representational democracy real). I had to speak out against the idea, because (a) it looks desperate, (b) it’s better to be right than to go along with the crowd, and (c) if you have better ideas they should stand on their own in all three districts.

Evidently I was not very persuasive as the motion passed something like 90 to 30. But lots of relatively important people (governors, congressmen and such) had to listen to me, and that’s what’s important.

Oh, and it was also Ukulele night. When we were done with our meal we were talking about beets with the chef (the greens thereof were part of the special) and he mentioned that he had a beet salad and asked if we wanted to try it.

can you name all the ingredients?

It just goes to show you.

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So, even though it was bitterly cold today, we went to ukulele night. I had already RSVP’d that we’d be there, and it was just cold – not snowing or anything. The interstate was as clear and dry as could be, but getting into Omaha I slid a little bit at a stop light. We knew to be careful leaving.

The evening was great. There were seven of us, and we ate delicious food and played Christmas songs for a couple of hours. I say ‘played’ because my voice was shot. (The other girl, Beth G., also had a cold.) Lloyd was very happy because we played two Elvis songs – Blue Christmas and Mele Kalikimaka. He really hammed it up!

Finally it was time to go. We loaded up the truck, started it up, started it up….. I said “STARTED IT UP”. What???? No start.

The weather was just too cold, and our battery is just too old. God bless our ukulele friends who spent many chilly minutes trying to jump the engine (which didn’t work) and eventually push-started us! It just goes to show – uke people are the nicest people you’ll ever meet!

I didn’t really sit in the driver’s seat. I have no idea how to push-start, so I just pushed.

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!

Dealy

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Ha! That was supposed to be ‘delay’, but I’m leaving it.  The dealy for not having a good post is that when we got back from ukulele night last night, I had my arms full of stuff from the car, and what do you think the only thing I dropped in the snow was?  Yep, the camera.  I decided to let it dry out overnight, and there’s no time now or we’ll be late for church.  Maybe later today.

Then I’m taking over

Lauren doesn’t like it when I post political stuff here, but, what with her being so busy and all, I don’t think she’ll notice for a while. I’ve always sort of thought that the newspapers in the U.S. did a pretty good job of just reporting the news. Sure there might be a little bias one way or the other, but you could pretty much count on what you read being true (don’t tune out yet, I think you’ll find this interesting).

Some of you probably know that I’m hopeful that Ron Paul will be the next Republican party nomination for President. I’m hopeful, and I’m doing my part working toward that goal, but I don’t really expect it to happen. On the other hand, Dr. Paul just came in second in Nevada ahead of McCain, Huckabee, Thompson and Giuliani. He is ahead of Giuliani and just two behind Thompson in the delegate count. Over 90,000 people have voted for him so far in the primaries. And he has probably raised more money, and definitely from more donors in the forth quarter than any Republican candidate. But the New York Times doesn’t list him as a candidate.

Not even on the page. Please don’t tell Brad, this will only make him mad.