We ended the summer on a chill note for the long weekend. We’ve been doing alot of traveling the last few weeks, including our recent tour of Cape Cod and Boston, followed by a trip up to Buffalo a week ago to take Michelle to school.
This was our third trip up to Buffalo this summer (Jeannie’s fourth). We got a car for Michelle this semester, so she and Jeannie drove her car and I followed in mine. The move-in went smoothly and Michelle’s new dorm is quite nice. She’s in a suite with three friends from last year. Very much echoing the pattern of Lizzy four years ago.
Lizzy met us on campus and gave us all a ride in her new car, and took us thru the Delta Sonic car wash. I’d forgotten how much of a thing Delta Sonic is up there. It’s a fun ride but maybe could use an animatronic Johnny Depp in a pirate outfit at the end. Afterwards we went out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant that used to be a Denny’s where I worked as a dishwasher for a couple weeks as a teenager.
I also spent a bunch of time talking with parents, which is nice. One day I went for a walk around the lake with my dad, and he told me a bunch of stories about how his first few years living in Canada, how he decided to go to college at age 25, and what it took to apply and what happened when he got in. It turned out him and a German fellow named Siegfried got the two highest scores in English on the entrance exam, despite both of them being non-native speakers (English is actually my dad’s third language). When the professor asked him how could this be, my dad said, “Well, I studied.” Also something about the French being salty about the Concorde many years later.
Back home, we caught a show at the Blue Note last week, with Jeff Tain Watts on the drums and Daryl Jones on bass with members of the Rolling Stones touring band doing a tribute to Charlie Watts, mainly jazz and blues interpretations of Stones songs. Many were more enjoyable than the actual Rolling Stones versions to me. The great Randy Brecker was the special guest on trumpet. I haven’t seen him play in many years, probably since the Return of the Brecker Brothers in the 1990’s. He’s looking old and rotund and when he came up on stage maybe even not sure what he was doing there. But when he put the horn to his lips, he’s one of those guys who just lifted the whole band to another level. It’s like have Kate Blanchett in your movie playing and elf queen.
So after all that running around we decided to mainly stay at home over Labor Day and catch up on random tasks. We went on one day trip, out to Fire Island, condensing a whole beach weekend into a single day. It was cool in the morning, so we parked near the beach and went on a nature trail swamp walk up to an historic light house and climbed up to the top, which gave us an excellent view of Long Island and the ocean. The next leg of the walk took us to a quaint little town called Kismet, which feels like a real-life Hobbiton. It’s full of little beach cottages but has no roads, only sidewalks, because it’s only accessible by foot, bicycle or ferry. We had an excellent lunch of seafood and frozen drinks and lingered a while. When we got back the beach the weather had warmed up so we hung out and went for a swim in the ocean. The threat of sharks was gone, but there were some dead jellyfish floating around. I got stung by one, just a little on my arm. After that it was time to go.
For some reason I’ve been listening recently to alot early 90’s alternative metal and ska bands like Fishbone, No Doubt, Mr. Bungle, De La Soul, Soul Coughing, Cibbo Matto, and Soundgarden. Not all the same genre I know, but there does seem to be some kind of center of gravity there.