June 14, 1999

MONDAY June 14, 1999

Say Cheesecake!

The above photo is that of a "smurf drummer" I had taken years ago, just for fun.

I thought it would be neat to buy all the smurf figurines that played musical instruments, and so I ended up buying enough to create a "smurf band". I promised myself that I would take a picture of the whole band, and sooner or later I just may post that picture as well.

My wife ended up taking the day off today, and we spent the entire morning getting a lot of errands done. We managed to get caught up on a lot of things we weren't able to do over the weekend. So we were happy to have accomplished that much.

We made a final stop at the optometrist to order some new glasses for my older son, who had finished the spring semester last Wednesday and had a few more days off this week before starting summer school again this Wednesday.

After a late lunch, I spent some time on the computer catching up on email and updating the websites. Then I spent the rest of my time practicing on the practice pad before picking up my younger son from school.

I had also been trying to reach Crazy Trumpet Man today to see if rehearsal was on for tomorrow evening. It had seemed unlikely because Anthony, the new pianist was doing a gig in Aspen, CO.

I picked up my younger son at the usual time. His hair was still spikey from the mega gel. It was "weird hair day" at his school and everyone was supposed to fix their hair up in weird hairdos and such.

My son went for the punk look with the spiked hair. It was quite a sight, looking at all the kids whose parents remembered to turn their child's hair into some form of weird hairdo.

After taking my younger son home, I did some gardening... pruning, watering, fertilizing... and then I washed one of our cars... and more chores during the remainder of the afternoon. My wife took it easy, had been getting into a few good books lately and spent the afternoon reading and sunning herself in the backyard.

I pulled into the Fashion Valley Mall around 6:30pm, and turned the corner where the Cheesecake Factory was located. Right away, I spotted Jessica, Celine and Pat chatting right there on the corner and I honked my horn and waved.

Pat, Celine and Jessica are good friends of mine and fans of the band I was formerly with.

Pat was in town for a few days, here to attend some accounting classes, and thus, made the commute to SD from the L.A. area. He was going to be here for a few days and he wanted to treat us all to dinner tonight.

We chatted for a while outside and then checked on our reservations. There was a long wait and we were given this pager device to let us know when our table would be ready.

We chatted some more outside until Jessica felt the pager vibrate, our table was now ready.

We were seated at a booth, which was nice... cozy, private. And after ordering some mixed drinks, we got caught up on what was happening with each of our lives.

There was a point where the lighting in the room started to get significantly brighter, and I made the comment that it looked like the "mothership" had landed. Everyone laughed. But Pat explained to us that these automatic shutters (on the windows) had opened up behind us, allowing more sunlight to filter in. I guess that was the first time I'd experienced automatic shutters like that.

I said to myself that I was going to just eat something relatively light and opted for a Chicken Thai Noodle Salad, being that I had a late lunch today.

When we got our food we gawked at how huge our servings were. My plate looked like a mountain! It was huge and I could only finish half of it. The food was delicious, though. It was nice of Pat to treat us to dinner.

We split two slices of cheesecake between the four of us. Very rich, but oh so good! Our waitress was tré cool, and we had her take our picture. We finished up what we could of the cheesecakes, packed the extra food and then we left.

I really had a good time tonight, and it was reassuring for me to be able to talk a little about my being band-less and the whole situation that had transpired. I was also glad to hear that Jessica had landed a new job, that Celine had finally gotten her Masters in Psychology, and Pat was still traveling the world attending conferences and trade shows.

Anyway, after checking out Pat's nice car and its state-of-the-art stereo system, we hugged and said our good-byes, then we all went our separate ways...

MUSIC TODAY...

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