The daily rundown, April 26

I got up fairly early when my girlfriend went to work. I think I was actually up at about 8:30 or so, which is definitely quite early for me lately. Unfortunately, I didn't take as much advantage of the extra time as I really should have. I got the cat fed and such and then plunked myself down in front of the computer and checked my e-mail and all of that good stuff. I had thought about driving down to Flower Mound, which is where the nearest branch of my bank is, so I could close out my accounts there and move them to a new bank somewhere here in Denton, but my lack of ambition got the better of me.

Over the course of the morning, I did subscribe to a new Yahoo list, which is the North Texas Crafters list. I posted a little message to it, introducing myself and what I do that is crafty, but I haven't heard back from anyone else yet. The list at the moment appears to be comprised of myself and the list owner, but hopefully more folks will add themselves and we'll get a little community going. I also noticed that I got a reply back from my posting to Tribe.net, but apparently their e-mail notification system didn't choose to notify me, so I didn't see it until I logged back on and had a look manually. Oh well. I need to take some pictures of some of the stuff I've been doing and post it up there.

On the job hunt front, I did add a couple more items to my online resume on the WorkInTexas site, but that's about the extent. I got a notification from one of the agencies I'd sent my resume to that they'd received it and would be looking at it to match me with their potential job openings, which gives me incredibly little hope that I'm going to get anywhere from them. Which is sort of a shame, really, because the job I'd applied for with them seems like it would be quite a good match for me. But that's the way the cookie crumbles.

From the band standpoint, I sent off messages to two new ads on Craigslist. One was for a possible Pink Floyd cover band here in Denton, which is made up of college-aged players. Not sure about that one, because I'd be old enough to be the father to most of them, but we'll see. And the other listing was for a dance rock band that needs a bassist and guitarist. I don't know precisely what kind of "dance rock" they have in mind, but I figure that the worst that can happen is a wasted trip to talk to them and possibly a couple of other people I know in the local music community. Not a bad deal, either way. The guy who posted that second ad wrote me back, asking me to call him after 4 PM, but I wound up having other things to do at that time. Hopefully I'll get back with him later, and we'll see what kind of music they're really playing.

After my girlfriend got home from work, which was in the early part of the afternoon, we had a bit to eat for lunch and each had a drink to "lay down a base coat," as she put it, and then we walked down to the site of the Denton Arts and Jazz Festival, which was going on this weekend. I was pretty astounded by the size of the thing. I had sort of expected a little outdoor stage with some folks sitting around on the lawn watching the band, but this was the size of a small county fair, with five real stages, as well as one small stage like I had expected to see, and probably a hundred or more booths selling food and various arts and crafts sorts of things.

We wandered through a few of the booths and such before stopping in front of one of the stages which was apparently the one where most of the UNT bands were to be performing. We met one of the girlfriend's friends and chatted with him for a while as we listened to some nice Latin jazz. The band switched over to playing more of a standard jazz after a few songs, though, and we headed over to see what was going on at some of the other stages. We made our way through the crowds of people and over to the jazz stage, which was pretty much the main stage for the event. We got there as one band was finishing up what sounded like a pretty decent set. It was pretty crowded, but we found enough room to lay out the little blanket thing we'd brought with us. I wanted to see Delbert McClinton, who was closing the night, so we kind of figured that we'd stay in that spot for the remainder of the evening, which we indeed wound up doing.

My girlfriend called her roommate and some of her other friends to see if they were going to come down to the festival. The roommate and one of her friends said they were, and they showed up after a while. The roommate was actually sort of funny because all he did was sat with his back against a big 50-gallon drum they had as a trash receptacle, facing away from the stage, and played his portable game system thing.

The first act that we got to see much of was a lady who went by the name of Annagrey. I'm guessing that her actual name is Anna Grey, but I guess they thought that naming the band that way was cooler or something. In any case, she was a singer in the vein of Sheryl Crow or something along that line, only fairly mediocre, really. I think a lot of the audience was just waiting to see Delbert, so the occasions when she tried to get audience participation or anything going wound up with lackluster results at best. But it didn't completely suck, which is always good. The bass player was halfway decent, although for the most part he just sat back and handled the groove. No real flashy solos out of him, and even his one real solo spot was more just sort of a funk groove thing, not a whole lot of trying to play as many notes as he could in as short a time as possible.

When Delbert finally started playing, the roommate left. For whatever reason, he doesn't like Delbert McClinton, but he thought the somewhat less entertaining (in my opinion) opening act was good enough to sit through. A little backward to my way of thinking, but I guess it's a case of different strokes for different folks. My girlfriend, her friend, and I all had a good time watching Delbert play, although he didn't wind up playing the one song they both really wanted to hear ("Have a Little Faith in Me"). We nevertheless had a very good time, including the fun of watching some of the people who were in attendance. There were a couple who managed to get their own little nicknames, although they'll never know them: Turkey Leg Girl and the Stripper were the two that readily spring to recall.

Turkey Leg Girl was a little girl, maybe eight or nine years old, although I'm certainly not a great judge of that sort of thing. She looked like your typical little girl, but for some reason, when McClinton started playing, she decided that she had to stand up and dance while alternately holding and eating her big ol' smoked turkey leg. Of course, she was right in the spot where the girlfriend and I had the best view of the stage, and she was munching down these huge mouthfuls of turkey as she was turned facing back toward us. By the time that I thought about taking a few pictures of her just for posterity, she had already moved on to annoying some of the other members of her little group and was probably off blocking someone else's view of the show. On the plus side, she knew how to dance far better than I do.

Which is definitely not something that I'm going to say about the Stripper. This was a fairly attractive girl, probably in her early 20s, I'd guess, although I might be guessing a bit older than she really is. In any case, we noticed her dancing after the band had started. She was doing a fair number of moves that would probably not have been at all out of place in a strip club, but she had absolutely no sense of rhythm whatever. She was dancing very fast to a couple of slower ballads, and the faster tunes, which she seemed to be enjoying more, just caused her to be somewhat out of sync, as though she had the right tempo, but had started about a quarter beat behind everyone else. She continued dancing most of the evening, although we did notice that her mom was leading her back along the exit aisle at one point. Mom was looking none too happy, and we all figured it was because Stripper was rather wasted. Nonetheless, they returned to the scene a short time later. I'm not sure what became of her as the evening's entertainment came to a close, because the people were pretty much clamoring to get out, and it became difficult to see anyone not one or two people away from you.

Other fun events of the night included my first funnel cake, which was quite good, albeit very expensive. Not surprising, considering the carnival type atmosphere. We walked home after the show and then the girlfriend's friend had to head home to do some work on a school project. The girlfriend and I sat around and destressed for a bit before heading off to bed, looking forward to seeing another entertaining show the next night...