All-American Ford, Tallahassee | 04/24/04

Nathan called me at 9:30 and woke me out of a very sound dream. I tried to play it cool as though I had been up and being productive but I'm sure he was able to figure it out. Jamie and I went to visit Jamie's dad at his Habitat for Humanity project house, conveniently located in the ghetto of Frenchtown, usually a place where they don't even allow White-Out or white bread. Everyone there was really friendly. Jamie and I were in charge of the menial task of hammering the cripples in. Those are the inner door frames. We were told how to do at least a dozen times, even though it could be explained once like this: hammer this board into that board with none of the edges sticking out. Some "good Samaritan" decided that I wasn't holding my hammer low enough and gave me a ten minute lecture on "physics". Normally I would have kindly explained to him that my method was giving me a 100% accuracy rate and not leaving huge hammer-gashes in the wood but I just nodded since he was undoubtedly either an Episcopalian or worked for All-American Ford. All-American Ford? How do they have the time to do community work? Oh that's right, because they're supposed to be fixing cars. At least they're not out killing babies. At least on Saturday mornings. Even though Jamie and I collectively only hammered in about a dozen of these boards, we still got the requisite painful blisters. See, now *my* hammer technique could have avoided this...oh wait! I know it's not a competition but my method could hammer a 12 gauge nail in six strokes, whereas his took no less than ten, so I have double no idea what this guy was talking about. Whatever. Anyway, we got some Chick-Fil-A for lunch and then I took a shower and got ready to go play with Jara and Nathan. We found out on Thursday that they were moving the time from at night to the afternoon to accommodate the guest--a Florida cosmetologist turned legistalture(ess). This was an extremely conservative group, complete with her thanking her husband for "allowing her to do this [running for Congress]". This woman apparently does not have a college degree yet is the head of Education. Cripes, no wonder FSU doesn't have enough money to hire me, she could barely put a sentence together without ending it with a preposition and on those rare occasions she was able to do this, it was because she was so busy spewing negative things about the current guy in D.C. that she forgot they're bad things to end sentences with. :D It was out on this farm near Havana, a really beautiful place deeply saturated with old money. They paid us well, though and gave us an extra $20 tip. We gave away all 15 of our fliers and had to write out contact information on a bunch of napkins for the rest of the people. I figured 15 would be enough after our last gigs but apparently they couldn't tell that our Ornette Coleman, free-jazz versions of Bacchanal Lady and Margaritaville were not intended to sound that way. We did manage to end in the same measure but the egg-shaker was too small to be able to played slowly and Jara's part being all upbeats made for a wacky "beat". Now that I know that the lobbyists were paying for this and not the couple I should have asked for twice as much money, but live and learn. They had this rooster running around as their pet as well as as some Guinea birds, apparently used as watch-birds because they go crazy when strangers are around. They also had some really great golden retrievers that followed me around and demanded petting time. I graciously let Jara and Nathan go home and unpacked all the crap by myself. And by all the crap I mean the congas and my pan. I'm so gracious. Jamie said Mike's recital went well and was well-attended. While inconstant with my running for Bastard 2004 campaign, I planned on going but the times of the gigs changed and I had already agreed to play. We had some pizza for dinner and then set to work on selling tons of my crap on eBay. As of yet, there have been no bidders but I started everything at a dollar in the hopes of just getting all this crap out of my house before I have to move. We borrowed Jamie's Dad's digital camera to take pictures of the crap so I took a couple of Chompy today. I disturbed her from slumber and she wasn't particularly happy about it. Below is a picture (of a picture) from when Ab was a wee pup and would insist on playing with Chompy even though she wanted to sleep. The title of the photograph is "You stupid bitch, let me sleep."

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