Weekend

  This weekend was quite a bit different from the other one.  (the one the blog entry about which has about 450 page views)  This weekend I went to an event I've heard tell of for years, and have now seen.  My friend Michael's got friends with a timeshare cabin in the Catskills in New York State, not far from Woodstock.  They have a weekend of pizza and beer and guitar jamming.

  After school I took a brief nap and then drove down, passing the usual time at the border talking about "Yeah!  It IS odd that a local felon would have my exact birth date including year, and the same first and last name!"  Got there in the wee hours and pretty much nonstop guitar jamming went on all weekend.  I am an indifferent guitarist, and there was no drummer there, and the bass player took naps at times, so I did a whole lot of drumming and some bass playing too.  I got a lot better.  It was pretty interesting.

  It was a not terribly little cabin, made of stone and wood, facing across the road from a winding river with a rocky bed, at the foot of some majestic hills, and forest everywhere.  We looked at YouTube to see the flooding during Hurricane Irene, which had, of course, abated by this weekend, but which had been pretty damaging to a lot of the neighborhood.

  It was a guys weekend, which sort of thing I almost never go to, but this was one for my sort of guys.  It wasn't about football or hockey, and everyone could figure out their own damn computers.  Talking into the wee hours of the night about philosophy, music and politics went completely unpunished.  I was awoken one morning by an acoustic jam with piano, banjo, guitar and voice doing "You're Cheatin' Heart."

  It was a long commute back home to be ready to teach children first thing in the morning, but I did it.