The Shallow End

Celebrating 16 Years

October 31st is the day when my husband and I met. When the girls were little, we used to celebrate the day by trekking them around the neighborhood, begging for candy. Those days are now behind us. Now, they abandon us in search of more exciting alternatives like costume parties with their friends and leave us to find our own form of humble entertainment. Foraging for free candy, while this sounds almost too good to be true...I love the old Seinfeld clip on this...is not it.

So, in our quest for fun and excitement, we went out for dinner last night (Wendy's, if you must know) and a concert (at the Knuckleheads Saloon). The dinner part kind of fizzled out on us. We got off work too late to fit dinner in before the concert, but we thought we'd make do on bar food at the Saloon. When we arrived, they said the kitchen was closed but we could help ourselves to hot dogs in the back. We ordered a hot dog and promptly spit it out. I have never not finished a hot dog before, but this one was awful! Possibly composed, not of the usual pig, cow, or turkey parts, but of digested wood pulp. It was mealy and chewy but with a certain squish that I've never experienced in all my years of hot dog consumption. So we left the building and drove down the tracks to the nearest fast food establishment, and enjoyed at least consistently so-so food, a chicken BLT salad for me and a spicy chicken sandwich for MBH.

With copius quantities of food in our bellies, we were prepared to enjoy an evening with Coco Montoya, blues guitarist, formerly with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. And while this left-handed guitarist is not bad to listen to, the last concert we went to at Knuckleheads was much better. I even closed my eyes and did that head jerk thing we do just before falling asleep, which is something I've never done at a concert before, not even at the symphony. Not that it was a bad concert, it just wasn't the rousing kind of concert I was needing to stay awake, apparently. But then came the rousing drum solo, that went on longer than medically necessary, and I was wide awake after that. We're looking forward to seeing Marcia Ball, blues pianist at the same joint this weekend...we may just become regulars (and if we do, we will insist that they get rid of those awful hot dogs). We saw Marcia perform at the New Orleans Jazz festival a couple years ago and she's a favorite. So the best is yet to come, as they say.

posted by Gwynne @ 8:43 AM