Turtle Dove Completa

So let's catch up on the last two weeks. The week of March 5th was a fairly typical week. Band rehearsals on Tuesday/Thursday, aerials on Thursday. Friday Julia and I stopped by the Phoenix Asylum open house and then went to hear a bluegrass band at The Laughing Goat.

Saturday morning I roasted a chicken on my rotisserie. I got some new silicon bands to use for trussing which work great, and I watched some videos on how to properly quarter a chicken. It came out pretty well and provided feasts throughout the weekend. Saturday was a double header gig night. First Afronauts played the Mercury Cafe in Denver with Atomga. Our other saxophonist Stephen played the gig despite very recently shattering his foot. He had surgery to implant many pins and was still on heavy duty painkillers. That man in dedicated! I was inspired.

As soon as I played my last note at The Mercury I had to pack up my gear in a hurry and drive straight to Golden for the Turtle Dove gig at the Buffalo Rose. It was one of those, "in the front door directly onto stage" type situations. We played a good set. It's a nice big stage with a good sound system. The audience was very tiny, though. After Turtle Dove, Gort vs. Goom, the duo of Byron and Logan, played an awesome set. They play super-fast bass & drums punk. This time Byron wore a headset microphone and sang on a few tunes, including an awesome rendition of the Talking Heads' "Pyscho Killer".

That was the last Turtle Dove gig. The band is breaking up as Byron and Logan want to focus on Gort vs. Goom and a surf rock project they have been neglecting. I feel like we've essentially run a good course, although now that we're well-rehearsed and tight I would have rather played a bunch more gigs this Spring before throwing in the towel. The timing is actually OK though as my friend Jasmine from aerials is putting together a new band to accompany live performances at the Apogaea festival this summer. We are having the initial meeting this Wednesday in my studio. Still not quite sure what to expect, but it should be fun and I'll meet a bunch of new musicians.

Sunday was a bit of a killer. Out very late with Turtle Dove, then daylight saving time ended so I lost an hour, and I was working Sunday so I could ski the following Friday. Ouch. Tuesday I biked in to Boulder for Open Coffee Club. Great ride. I think my meet up mania period is about over. I need to stop going to meet ups that involve talking and not working on some particular project. I worked from Trada Code Space free co-working, which was fun for the variety. Their Internet connection isn't quite capable of handling the Sococo audio streams though, it seems. It's weird. I can stream music down OK, but the real time audio struggles. Wednesday was the "Designers and Developers" meet up which ended up consisting of 4 developers shooting the shit.

Friday I skied Copper with Leslie, Logan, and Lewis. It was warm spring skiing but the snow conditions were terrible. Large patches of bare grass and rock were exposed. Not sure if I will even use my 4-pack this season. If they don't get a few more dumps in March, surely not. After skiing I took a long disco nap and then put on a Russian/Pagan costume and headed to City Hall in Denver for the "Le Sacre du Printemps" Fantastic Hosts party. Now, for a music nerd, having a kick-ass Stravinsky ballet be the theme of a party is great. However, the results were underwhelming. Lots of folks not in costume. Lots of folks in random off-theme costumes. Mediocre DJs refusing to give us the damn steady beats we paid for. It was fun, but the Halloween one was far superior.

Again I was up super late but still got up early yesterday to put 2 chickens on the rotisserie for the AirCat picnic Saturday afternoon. I slow roasted them at 350ish for 3.5 hours. They mostly came out amazing, but the spit consists of several small sections that screw together, and that combined with the rotation of the rotisserie eventually completely unscrewed on section of the spit causing it to collapse in the middle. This didn't happen until well after the chickens were cooked so it didn't spell disaster, but I need to find a way to avoid it in the future.

So after open workout we had a very dessert-heavy picnic. Tyler made lemon meringue pie and there were lots of cookies and treats. Gala was pouring Arnold Palmers. Then I stayed in the rest of the day and night to pay down some of my sleep debt and get through my food coma. Did a lot of tidying up around the house and some small projects as well. I'm enjoying day 3 of a 3-day weekend today. Gotta do a Costco run, which I only sort of dread.