Random

So I was just at Jon's pub that he bartends at, and on Sundays they have some live music. Today they had a Kora player and I was all "that's so cool. I love the kora. I should go talk to that guy during a break and say hello and see if I can try out his kora." So I did, and I asked him where he was from: Gambia! Oh, brilliant! And you play Kora so you must be Mandinka- so I said the greeting phrases (the only bit of Mandinkan that I know) and we got to chatting. Hey, I've been to Gambia. It's a small country, I thought, I wonder if he knows my kora teacher-

"Do you know Mamadou Souso?"

"...he's my father."

Woah! You know how people are always like oh, the world, it's so big. They're just wrong.

Don't Drink Tea at 8:30pm

I don't deal well with caffeine. Or maybe I deal very well with it...depends on how you look at the situation I suppose. In any case- there was a tea break during the rehearsal tonight and so I had a big warm mug of tea, and it was delightful. But it means that is is 2am and I am AWAKE! WHEE!

Which is kind of a problem because I need to wake up and go to work tomorrow morning.

Anyhow- since I am AWAKE! WHEE! I figure I might as well use my time well, right? So I've made my lunch for tomorrow.

I've been trying to make my lunch a lot more recently- mostly because I have to make sure that I'm carrying around enough food to take me through a big long day of teaching when I'm out of the house for 12 hours at a time in an expensive part of town.

I find that I do better with some protein-- I stay more awake and engaged and what not-- so as a half-assed vegetarian who has trouble with dairy this means I have been making a lot of egg and tuna salad sandwiches. Um. Apart. Not together. Because, weird.

Anyhow- I just finished tomorrow's tuna salad and thought I would share the "recipe"

1 can of tuna
1 hand full of flat leaf parsley- superfinelychopped
(use a big knife, it's more fun that way: You can rock it back and forth and pulverize it)
1 hand full of green olives- superfinelychopped
(see above)
2 stalks celery-- chunkily chopped
1/8th of a red onion--chopped however you like
1 T Dijon mustard
2 T mayonnaise


Mmmmm.

Put in a little Tupperware container to put in your lunch bag along with some rye bread and carrot sticks.

Ponder whether to add salt and pepper

Decide that probably the olives and the parsley will be flavorful enough

Stop farting around on the Internet and go to be already! It's a quarter after 2 in the morning!

Rhythm Play

I'm sitting here doing some mending while sitting on the floor of my room and listening to Internet radio and I just realized that I was dipping the needle into the fabric along with the beat of the song I was listening to. So then, because this is just what you do, I started sewing in triplets against the beat.


Just thought I would share.

Unexpected Workshop

Today I was wandering through the foyer of the main building on my way to return an overdue library book when I stopped and started chatting to Salima, another American bassist that I often run in to at various cross arts events. She's fun times and so I went and said hello. She was super bouncy about this project that she had just signed up for courtesy of gig-arts.com So before long, I was too a part of this.

I had to miss the beginning of the workshop due to my doctor's appointment, so instead of telling you what their mission is- I'll tell you to go check out their website. They seem like a cool organization. In any case, our mission for this afternoon was to create a show. We had three teams each with their own theme: Salima, Laverne, and I ended up with "equality." And Equality just screams 'carrots' to you, right?

Yeah, me neither, but for some reason that is what I came up with when we were told to come up with a character- "What about a giant talking carrot?" Fortunately, Salima and Laverne were cool enough to not only go with it, but to also get excited about making a piece about a giant talking carrot.

I think our finished product ended up missing the boat a bit on the whole equality thing- the carrot, which is a "walking, talking, gargantuan carrot" is due to some magic fairy dust. The hungry bunny rabbit singing the blues spies the carrot and wants to eat the carrot after the carrot's initial introduction song (la, I'm a carrot; la, I'm a carrot) but eventually the carrot convinces the hungry bunny that he is also a person (?) and so the hungry bunny has a change of heart and they leave the stage searching for food together as best friends....(?)

So maybe we need to work on plotting a bit more.

But I had SO MUCH FUN making up the random songs. And I made up nearly all of the random songs, lyrics and all. So here's what I want to do: I want to work on a children's show, or in a children's theatre, or in a children's band or something like that so that I can make up ridiculous songs all the live long day and hang out with tiny tykes. Sound like a plan?


Also, we put bunny ears on Salima's bass. It was awesome. (Sorry there are no pictures!)

I hugged Jerry Springer!

Last week I walked through Hyde Park on my way to Wigmore Hall to see Peter play with the English Concert. On my way there I stopped by Speakers Corner, which I had read about, but never managed to actually go to before. Mostly it is a bunch of crazy, incredibly angry people yelling at tourists who mostly don't speak English. It's weird.

But! There are a couple of dedicated folks who come out every Sunday and stand with signs saying "Free Hugs" which pretty much makes my day. I got to talking to them and they invited me to join them this week- so I did. And it was fun- I'm now in many, many tourist's holiday photos. My favorites were when whole families would see us and then egg each other on to get hugs.

At one point there was a huge crush of people and as they left Nigel (Nigel and Stuart are the two who are there every week) realized one of them was Jerry Springer- who promptly got mobbed by other people who recognized him.

So the headline might be a lie- I know Nigel hugged Jerry Springer, but I *might* have- maybe. My first celebrity encounter in London...