the end of summer...
D.W.Q.M.: "Sleep is for tortoises!" -the Fourth Doctor
Hmm...maybe I should have used that one for one of my Feast entries!! ;) With Sunday came the last gig for Italian band until Good Friday next year. I seem to be associating the end of summer with the end of the festival at St. Rocco's lately-after all, after Labor Day, everyone is back in school, so summer is essentially over (although not techincally until the autumnal equinox-sorry, the astronomer (albeit amateur) in me rears it's ugly (well not really ugly-i like astro stuff!) head every once in a while-thanks, Daddy! :) ) *heehee*
This was a rather weird weekend-didn't seem like a 'normal' St. Rocco's gig at all...except for the Zepolli-there was still tons of Zepolli!!! Yum!!! (basically zepolli is fried dough with powdered sugar-better than elephant ears-and must be eaten right away, otherwise they get kinda gross-they taste really awesome when they are hot!-if your tounge can stand the heat!) ;)
For starters, we didn't have many people Saturday night-and one of the missing people was our sousaphone player. Although we didn't sound too bad, it sounded kinda hollow without that bass in the background. Also, after our stand up concert in the courtyard, we decided to put our stuff on the bandstand that they provide for us. Our fearless leader, Nick, got up on the bandstand, and then stepped through the bandstand!! The middle plank was loose, and just fell through. We gave it a temporary fix, and since there were so few of us anyway, we decided to play on it for the night. The next day, as we were preparing for the procession, we noticed that the bandstand was taped off. The Church didn't want to fix it because they rent it from the city and felt the city was liable. No bandstand tonight! At least they blocked the streets for us, so we could play in the street. The procession didn't last long at all-we went down a street none of us remembered, and we only got through 5 songs (normal procession gets you through at least 9 or 10, and lasts 1hour, minimum) at first we thought it was because we were taking turns with the prayer ladies-they wanted to say 10 Hail Mary's in between each piece of music. But when we got back to the church, only 40 minutes had gone by! That was a new record!!
Then we did our annual Italian band trip to the Zoo (I think we might have been mistaken for Mormons ;) ) and most of the animals we saw were pretty active-normally they just lounge around as stare at us as we stare at them. LOL. We usually like to hang out with the penguins, since we're all dressed in black and white, but discovered that the exhibit with the penguins had been taken over by the dinosaur exhibit. aaahhh!!! Oh, well. Back at the festival, it started to rain a little, but not enough to cancel-plus it cleared up by our first break. (i lost a game of hearts during that break-and I was doing so well!! I didn't take a single trick until the second to the last hand...rats!) We almost made it to our second break when it really started to rain, and we had to run for cover. St. Rocco's is the only church festival where we don't have a meeting room to set up in and leave our cases-so we were running for cover underneath tents and the porch of the church rectory-some even ran accross the street to the funeral home for cover. We decided to wait it out, and then went out to play again. Around 10pm the rain started up again, and Nick told us to get out the National Anthems-so we ended up stopping a half hour early.
Now, although it may seem that the weekend was a complete washout (no pun intended. ;) ) it wasn't-I still had fun! It was just a weird weekend. On a brighter note, my Mom is here!!! She's visiting until Friday. Last time she was able to visit me was almost 4 years ago. She did come to the festival Sunday night and was able to hear us play before the rain came, so it's all good. :)
I hope everyone had a good weekend, despite the rain!
Hmm...maybe I should have used that one for one of my Feast entries!! ;) With Sunday came the last gig for Italian band until Good Friday next year. I seem to be associating the end of summer with the end of the festival at St. Rocco's lately-after all, after Labor Day, everyone is back in school, so summer is essentially over (although not techincally until the autumnal equinox-sorry, the astronomer (albeit amateur) in me rears it's ugly (well not really ugly-i like astro stuff!) head every once in a while-thanks, Daddy! :) ) *heehee*
This was a rather weird weekend-didn't seem like a 'normal' St. Rocco's gig at all...except for the Zepolli-there was still tons of Zepolli!!! Yum!!! (basically zepolli is fried dough with powdered sugar-better than elephant ears-and must be eaten right away, otherwise they get kinda gross-they taste really awesome when they are hot!-if your tounge can stand the heat!) ;)
For starters, we didn't have many people Saturday night-and one of the missing people was our sousaphone player. Although we didn't sound too bad, it sounded kinda hollow without that bass in the background. Also, after our stand up concert in the courtyard, we decided to put our stuff on the bandstand that they provide for us. Our fearless leader, Nick, got up on the bandstand, and then stepped through the bandstand!! The middle plank was loose, and just fell through. We gave it a temporary fix, and since there were so few of us anyway, we decided to play on it for the night. The next day, as we were preparing for the procession, we noticed that the bandstand was taped off. The Church didn't want to fix it because they rent it from the city and felt the city was liable. No bandstand tonight! At least they blocked the streets for us, so we could play in the street. The procession didn't last long at all-we went down a street none of us remembered, and we only got through 5 songs (normal procession gets you through at least 9 or 10, and lasts 1hour, minimum) at first we thought it was because we were taking turns with the prayer ladies-they wanted to say 10 Hail Mary's in between each piece of music. But when we got back to the church, only 40 minutes had gone by! That was a new record!!
Then we did our annual Italian band trip to the Zoo (I think we might have been mistaken for Mormons ;) ) and most of the animals we saw were pretty active-normally they just lounge around as stare at us as we stare at them. LOL. We usually like to hang out with the penguins, since we're all dressed in black and white, but discovered that the exhibit with the penguins had been taken over by the dinosaur exhibit. aaahhh!!! Oh, well. Back at the festival, it started to rain a little, but not enough to cancel-plus it cleared up by our first break. (i lost a game of hearts during that break-and I was doing so well!! I didn't take a single trick until the second to the last hand...rats!) We almost made it to our second break when it really started to rain, and we had to run for cover. St. Rocco's is the only church festival where we don't have a meeting room to set up in and leave our cases-so we were running for cover underneath tents and the porch of the church rectory-some even ran accross the street to the funeral home for cover. We decided to wait it out, and then went out to play again. Around 10pm the rain started up again, and Nick told us to get out the National Anthems-so we ended up stopping a half hour early.
Now, although it may seem that the weekend was a complete washout (no pun intended. ;) ) it wasn't-I still had fun! It was just a weird weekend. On a brighter note, my Mom is here!!! She's visiting until Friday. Last time she was able to visit me was almost 4 years ago. She did come to the festival Sunday night and was able to hear us play before the rain came, so it's all good. :)
I hope everyone had a good weekend, despite the rain!
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