tangents

KALW celebrated it's 70th birthday last night with a concert at the Freight and Salvage in Berkeley. Our preferred Saturday night occupation is having dinner at home and listening to Dore Stein's Tangents, which comes on at 8:00 pm. We do occasionally enjoy having friends join us, who appreciate the eclectic mix, and will put up with us stopping all conversation to listen to the radio. But occasionally one must branch out, and since we basically could listen to a live Tangents, with the friends who also seem to enjoy the musical mix we went out. Now to picture the whole evening you have to first experience the Berkeley student scene at Jupiter Pizza, conveniently located within walking distance of the Freight to allow for seat getting and dining before the music. This is a loud, young crowd, many tattoos and piercings. But the pizza and beer are good. And my friend Liza and I are amazed at the height of heels some of the young things can wear. We both have bad knees, flat shoes are our life. So after the pizza we wander to the Freight, where the average age of the crowd must go up by 35-40 years, and almost all of the women are wearing practical shoes.
But now the fun starts. The evening features three sets, and opens with the very traditional Flatt and Scruggs Tribute Band. Peter Thompson, who hosts Bluegrass Signal, the program that comes on before Tangents, announces. He is a familiar voice, and low and behold he is a real person. I realize how much I enjoy bluegrass, after a verse or two the tunes are easily hummable. Then the second set. George Brooks and Kai Eckhardt with others, including a tabla player, doing, well, hard to describe. Bridging the gap between jazz and Indian classical music the program states. And that is what it is. This set is of course is announced by Dore Stein himself. Again a face to the voice. After cake, well it is a birthday party, we get the third set. If you have listened to Folk Music and Beyond, a Saturday afternoon program you'll recognize the voice of JoAnn Mar. I have to say I think I hear her and think of pledge drives. But the third band is Wake the Dead. And we get Celtic Grateful Dead music and more. This was a concept I would never have thought up. Surprisingly it worked. And the end of course had a sing along.
This was one of the friendliest, enthusiastic crowds I have ever been a part of, which made for a very enjoyable evening. And I was really struck by how wonderful it is to able to throw aside your concepts of music, and just listen and be open. And if you have never been to the Freight and Salvage, I recommend it highly as a venue.

shakers, movers, and big bo's

So the shakers is in honor of the Hayward fault wrestling around and waking me up, and then yesterday morning striking again while I was sitting in a rolling desk chair. I think rolling desk chairs amplify the shaking. I hustle myself back from World Headquarters (the office at John's house) to the shop so I can get back to finishing the key bushings on my Bo. I have a love/hate relationship with key bushings, they should not be that difficult a task but there are many factors. To name a few: the key pin size, the felt thickness, the glue consistency, the depth of the bushing, the personal preferences of the person who follows you. And the fact that I have never had to do the next step, I don't fully understand my actions. I'm "jonesing" for that task, which maybe a mistake. Anyway, I get to the shop and it is filled with extra people (not to mention we have more pianos than usual setup on the floor). And one of those people is John, who is extremely capable of diverting me in my pursuit of task completion. John has a new Iphone and he wants access to our wireless. And our wireless was setup by Steve, who was angry at ATT that day, and has no idea of the password and the clue for the password is "I hate ATT". Yeah, well so do most people. And the router is different from ours at home, and all others I have encountered in past lives, so I'm struggling a bit. I resort to the reset button. Giving the warning that if we loose all internet service, I am not responsible. Time passes, passwords are reset, and nada, the wireless will not connect. John gives up, Steve gives up and guess what it is lunch time?
Glue pot bubbling away for nothing.
Lunch, Chinese, not bad, back to the shop. And what's this? An extremely large full size moving van parked in front of the front door. What another piano? And these are furniture movers, not piano movers. Scary. And the piano needs to be setup. For those of you unfamiliar with moving grand pianos, they are put on skids and moved on their sides. This piano has come from Connecticut and the movers were two elderly black men from the south, who were extremely amusing, and had spent time in jazz clubs in NYC. So they had some good stories, but thank the gods Rhys supervised them in setup. Before they had completely pulled away, our usual movers, the Irish contingent were backing up to the door (our door is big, but not big enough for a convergence of movers). What is going on? My unused glue pot, keeps bubbling. Now a piano is leaving at least. But there needs to be a major shift, and we bribe (yes, money exchanged hands) to accomplish this. Okay, they leave. I bush maybe four keys (and remember Bo has 97, not 88) while listening to band saw, table saw, and grinder. Then the extra person in the shop has run out of work to do, so I'm called in to find something for him to do.Okay, four more keys, and guess what it's cartoon hour!
At 4:00 pm. I have actually completed my task, I think. When I find a key laying apart from the others. I think I was scraping the old leather out of the key button the day before when the phone rang and I put it aside. I now count to make sure I have 97 keys. I do. And I get the approval as to depth and thickness, and I'm not bleeding, although many fresh razor blades were used in this job. But now I have to corner the approver (that would be Steve) to give me more direction as to how to proceed with key frame cleaning etc, to move this project along, as he is leaving for a couple of days. And I am trying to consolidate key frame and keys before I loose or break anything.
Thursday morning
I arrive at the shop with Douglas playing the piano. It is just the two of us. I polish pins, and work on the wireless again. Quietly two more shop mates arrive, no panics, no movers. By 3:30 this afternoon, the Bo keys and keyframe are one unit, the wireless is working and I go off to yoga. Although we did skip cartoon hour.

everything is super sized

So the key set for Bo has come my way to remove the key bushings. I was given the task with warning that these usually turn to mush, as they are leather, not the standard felt. Undaunted (well there was a little trepidation) I took the keys out of the key frame placing them onto the frames we use to hold the keys when we work on them. Now there are 9 extra keys on this piano.

So now I have to deal with 97 keys instead of the usual 88. And the keys themselves are longer, and heavier, making them more awkward to move. Ah, but the gods were kind to me, and the leather, upon wetting with water and alcohol, did not dissolve, but separated with encouragement of my trusty exacto knife and hemostats. It does take patience, and vigilance, but not an unpleasant task. As I worked away, completely absorbed in my task, I was smiling to myself, realizing that a few months ago I had no idea what a key bushing even was.

big bo

This is the latest piano to grace the shop. I think there is suppose to be some secrecy about this. Not sure how you keep a secret about a 9'6" concert grand. Actually we all will be glad to have it gone and out of the way. This is not a Steinway, but a Bosendorfer, Austrian made. And so shiny we are all afraid of scratching it. Rhys and I covered it with blankets yesterday because we were sure we going to bump into it with something.
But it has been a good week at the shop, for me, at least. Somehow I seem to manage to keep straight what pianos we have, what we need to order, and deadlines. Considering I am the worst person in the world at note keeping, this is pretty amazing. I've realized that if I do make notes, they are either so cryptic I don't understand them, or I can't read my own handwriting. I do greatly admire good note keepers, but some how it's just not in my personal makeup. It was decided I was no longer the "FNG", which I will leave up to your imagination as to what that stands for. I have taken over the job of cleaning the espresso machine weekly. I think I may be able to add barista to my resume soon, I can now crank out an espresso in short order. I made one this afternoon for a new Fedex delivery guy. Not every stop on his route that will do that.

a gate between gardens

Our backyard was filled with party goers last night, a 40th birthday party. The birthday girl, a good friend of the Michaels, is someone who shares the honors of being half of a two Leo couple, like Mike and I. The gate was open so people could come have their fortune told, visit the tree of mystery, and eat fried chicken and potato salad.

This was a kid's party for adults. People were wearing mustaches, glow rings, and emergency bow ties removed from the tree. We were visited by Marga Gomez, who had us all laughing as a comedian should do. And Mike and I are trying to decipher what having the "wheel of fortune", "the devil", and the "high priestess" on top of three cup cards really means. The parade of pies was a major success. And we stayed up until almost 1:00 am, something very unusual.
Raccoons and possums visited, seeming to enjoy the party too. Some people find it unusual that we have a gate between our gardens. I find it completely natural. Doesn't everyone have joint garden parties with their neighbors?

field trip, the Rettie way

Now many of you, if choosing a day in San Francisco, would probably do something like go see the Stein exhibit at SFMOMA. But we are the Retties, the people who go to London and don't see the changing of the guard, spend five days near Milford Sound, New Zealand, but never see it, we've yet to go to Alcatraz, or see the new Academy of Sciences. We tend to shy away from the usual adventures. But we do like the ferry ride into the city, and began our trip on the 9:30 boat. Our first stop was the Municipal Railway Museum. Free, donation a nice idea. And well worth the time. We then wandered our way to our favorite part of San Francisco.

 

North Beach, yes the location we dream of retiring. Since all we probably ever will be able to afford is a small dark studio apartment, with no parking, we have decided that we we will just have to start frequenting on a monthly visit basis. We have found the perfect lunching spot, Cafe Puccini, on Columbus. Perfect for us at least. Since it was Mike's birthday we decided to celebrate and had a glass of wine with lunch. The spaghetti carbonara was more than good, as was the minestrone, and my antipasto salad. The window seat gave us a view to the world, and who needs to go to Italy. Traveling to Italy, while desirable, is about as likely to happen as our actual moving to North Beach.
So given that we were completely stuffed we wandered back to the ferry via Grant Avenue, taking in all the sights along the way. A stop at some of galleries on Geary, and then a brisk walk to catch the 2:00 pm ferry back to Alameda. We do fit a lot in a short period on these trips.

getting comfortable

Today at lunch, Ann said "anyone want my croutons"?  Rhys said "yeah, I'll eat them". And I realized how comfortable we all are with each other. Last week Steve ate Rhys' soup. I've been known to consume the fried grease, the rice cracker type things that come with various dishes at our Vietnamese restaurant. And Douglas will eat the other fried grease, or wontons officially, from our Chinese dining establishment, that are passed up by someone. I'm not sure if we are family, or just hungry, but we seem to make sure all food is consumed.

Six months plus, I am also gradually getting a little more comfortable with the piano work, tools, the building cat, the espresso machine, and the ins and outs of Quickbooks Online. And the view, even with fog, continues to be enjoyed.

sun and shade

Often after lunch we wander over "yummiegort", which actually is Yummy Yogurt, but the sign is hard to read. Be careful of typeface selection when posting signage. However, name aside, I recommend the mint chip, which is not frozen yogurt, but good old regular ice cream. There are those of us who like to pull our chairs into the sun, and those of us who prefer the shade. The plastic loveseat here, is carefully straddling that sun/shade divide keeping everyone happy here.

I spent the weekend on Tomales ridge, also straddling that sun/shade, or sun/fog divide. A large part of West Marin seemed to be populated with spandex encased bicyclists, and vehicles carrying plastic kayaks on roof racks. I had neither spandex or a kayak with me, choosing cotton and my feet instead. Ice cream was consumed however. And the bbq'd oysters tasted good even as the temperature dropped. The locals tell me the economy is keeping people from going to Europe for the summer and instead choosing Point Reyes. Sure seemed like that. If not exercising everyone seemed to be shopping. I will admit to buying a t-shirt at Point Reyes Books.