Flashes of Incomprehensible Speed

It just rained and rained and rained today.  Some days I hedge and think twice about whether or not I should brave the precipitation and head out for a bike ride.  I checked the forecast a while back.  “Showers.  Rain.  More Showers.” Through on till the end of the night.  I spoke with someone outside of London a few hours ago and asked.  Characteristically, old Blighty was wet and soggy too.  I just got off the phone a few minutes ago with Portland and uncharacteristically they were bright and sunny.  The lawn needs mowing.  The grass is becoming thick and meadow-like.  No one is going to come and mow this lawn, with these slopes in this kind of weather.

 

I’m lucky for this week.  I got a double bonus.  Japan and China are both on holiday.  There is no point in having forecast calls.  There isn’t aren’t any updates to report on with clients.  A few polite calls here and there, but for the most part all my clients understand that it’s a dead week.  The Chinese National Holiday and the week of Lunar New Year are all dormant in China, but Japan soldiers on.  The Japanese have their Gregorian New Year holiday that China ignores.  But this week the socialist world’s Labor Day and the Japanese “Golden Week” both overlap and that works well for me. 

Not sure why but I’ve been visiting and revisiting the ‘virtuoso’ guitar work of Mr. everyman-looking Joe Pass over the last few days.  Subtle and full bodied, with flashes of incomprehensible speed and complexity, his arrangements are generally spacious and allow me the room to check in and out to my enjoyment in a way that’s less obtrusive from some of his count-em-on-your-right-hand, jazz guitar contemporaries.  “Simon Potter” the tune from a 1962 album “Sounds of Synanon.”  All the musicians in the octet were, it seems patients in that year at the Synanon Drug Center, there in California. 

I told everyone in the family to go easy on the little one this week.  She has tests and papers and her first SAT this weekend.  Immediately after she has to go and get the second, Pfizer shot.  Last night at dinner I transgressed my own counsel and pushed her preparedness.  Today, she came home and bounced in my room, answered my questions about her day and when she said she didn’t do well on her math I said, automatically, “you don’t want a “B” in that class, talk to the teacher to make sure you understand it.”  She stomped off saying “I know.  I know.”  More self control please, daddyo. 

 

 

 

Wednesday, 05/05/21