“Double Birthday Celebration”
We enjoyed a few quiet days before things became quite busy later in the week.
“Inside Bill Gates’ Brain,” a three part series about the Microsoft founder, was our entertainment on Tuesday night. This was a fascinating look at the life of an interesting character. In 8th grade (13 or 14) he had the best score in math across all students of all ages in the state of Washington. I enjoyed learning about the projects that the Gates Foundation has undertaken with funding from Warren Buffet – competitions to create innovative toilets and sanitation plants for African nations, eliminating polio in the last place it exists in the world – Nigeria, and many other amazing activities. I definitely recommend giving this a look.
The flowers and magnolia trees are in full bloom in the back garden after so much rain over many days.
We spent a happy Wednesday evening trying to arrange some ornaments in the light boxes on top of the cabinets. I’m quite sure there’s a lot more adjustment and rearranging coming in the future.
We flew to San Francisco on Friday and enjoyed dinner with Amy, Adamo and the crew that evening. Saturday was a busy day getting ready for the big party on Sunday – setting up tables and chairs, rearranging furniture, arranging flowers, trips to various stores for supplies and on and on.
I think the ladies did a lovely job with the flowers.
We met Will, Christine, Campbell, and Molly for dinner at LV Mar in Redwood City on Saturday night. Will had given me the choice of several 
kinds of food for dinner, and I chose Spanish tapas. That turned out to be a good choice as all the food and drinks were excellent. Clorinda and Alicia joined us – Clorinda entertaining us with her question, “When shall we order entrees?”, right about the time we were all getting quite full from sharing so many yummy tapas plates. The pescado pastor (seared halibut tacos) and empanadas were my favourites.
Sunday was the big 21st birthday party for Alicia, hosted at Adamo and Amy’s house. What an amazing party! Great turnout, yummy food all afternoon, an excellent live band – what more could you ask for? Here are some pictures and videos that tell the story of the party much more effectively than my words can:
I really enjoyed having Will, Christine, Campbell, Molly, and Ollie on Gypsy Hill for the first time. Ollie was very relaxed around so many people, a band, and several other dogs.
The dancing didn’t stop because the band finished playing. We put on our “Wedding Dancing” playlist:
Adamo and Amy, along with a lot of help from Diana and several others, threw an excellent 21st birthday party.
Down in New Orleans, the Ogan twins were busy graduating, with Mason off to Alabama and Jack to Tulane for college in a few months.
I really enjoyed “Ask Again, Yes” by Mary Beth Keane. Here’s how Amazon reviewers describe the story:
“In Mary Beth Keane’s extraordinary novel, a lifelong friendship and love blossoms between Kate Gleeson and Peter Stanhope, born six months apart. One shocking night their loyalties are divided, and their bond will be tested again and again over the next thirty years. Heartbreaking and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes is a gorgeous and generous portrait of the daily intimacies of marriage and the power of forgiveness.”
Peter describing how he feels when his mother, Kate, suffers a depressive episode and hides out in her room:
“The quiet of the house when she kept to her room was not the peaceful silence of a library, or anywhere near as tranquil. It was, Peter imagined, more like the held-breath interlude between when a button gets pushed and the bomb either detonates or is defused. He could feel his own heartbeat at those times. He could track his blood as it looped through his veins.”
Kate’s father, Francis, vouching for Peter as he applies to the NY police department:
“‘I told them none of it was his fault, what happened that night. I told them that he’d gone on to do well in school and all that. What you told me that time, when Mom was in surgery. Running and getting a scholarship. They already new that, of course.’
‘So you forgive him then? You don’t blame him?’ She wanted to throw her arms around him like she was ten again. ‘You don’t blame me?’
Francis turned. ‘I never blamed him. He was fourteen years old. Why would I blame him? And why in the world would I blame you? You’re not understanding the problem here. You’re not even near understanding it.'”
Peter finally agreeing to see his mother Kate after many years:
“She’d gotten a haircut. Her clothes looked freshly pressed. She reached up and patted him on the back, so he patted her back. They didn’t embrace. They just kept patting each other, like a person might do to an upset stranger. Kate narrowed her eyes and could see that Peter was fighting like hell not to cry, his chest rising and falling. When he turned he had an expression on his face that she’d never seen before.”
The title revealed on page 376:
“‘So you don’t regret marrying me, you just regret the way you asked? Oh, Peter, I can think of so many other things you should regret.’
‘Yeah.’ He looked down at his empty plate. ‘Probably.’
‘Hey. Come back.’ Kate covered his hands with hers. ‘If you regret it so much, ask me now. Ask again. Properly, this time.'”
I’m trying something new this week on the music front. Let me know what you think. I’m going to select an album from my collection and share some of the tidbits about it I find through research, some of the history of how I came to own the record (if I can remember), and my thoughts on the music.
Since I’m separated from my collection as I write this post, I’ll select the one that sits at the end of the stack I see each time I walk into my office – ZZ Top’s “First Album.”
I bought this album somewhere around my third year of University. We had become familiar with ZZ Top via their hugely commercially successful “Eliminator” album with the videos that played regularly on MTV. Then we heard some of their older, bluesier material, with the rhythm of “La Grange” from the “Tres Hombres” album being the way we would tap on our flat doorbell to let each other know it was us and not an annoying solicitor. And finally I came across this “First Album”.
I would play the fourth track on side B over and over again in my room in our flat in the Maidens – “Just Got Back from Baby’s”. The blues guitar sound, opening riff and solo are excellent. I was hooked in the first 10 seconds. So different than the commercial ZZ Top.
Billy Gibbons is such an excellent blues guitar player. We enjoyed him recently (a couple of years ago), performing with Jimmy Vaughan at Eric Clapton’s Blues Festival – a real treat. Dusty Hill on bass and Frank Beard (the one of the trio without the long beard) on drums provide a very solid backing.
Gibbons said of the album title:
“We called the record ZZ Top’s First Album because we wanted everyone to know that there would be more. We weren’t certain if we’d get another chance in the studio, but we had high hopes.”
He also said of the music:
“We had been together for about six months and were knocking around the bar scene, playing all the usual funky joints. We took the studio on as an extension of the stage show. The basics were all of us playing together in one room, but we didn’t want to turn our backs on contemporary recording techniques. To give our sound as much presence and support as possible, we became a little more than a three piece with the advantages of overdubbing. It was the natural kind of support – some rhythm guitar parts, a little bit of texture. That was about it.”
The album was recorded at Robin Hood Studios in Tyler, Texas and released on January 16, 1971 (yet another example of all the fantastic music released in 1971). Bill Ham, the band’s manager, produced the record, as he did with the majority of their catalog – up to and including “Eliminator”. Here’s something from that – how much their sound changed:
Stay safe and kind to everyone.