welcome to the ville
so, thursday. here's what's up:
the ac unit in the attic slowly started filling up the giant evaporation pan underneath itself several weeks ago, probably, but faster than it could evaporate. it overflowed, and water started coming down through the attic at a slow trickle. bad news and a pain in the ass. imagine bailing out a 6' x 4' pan that's only about two inches deep and having to reach in between two pipes to get to it. that means you bail roughly a centimeter at a time.
mestre panão is here. he's as far as I know the first mestre to come to Richmond, ever. he's very young for a mestre, only 37, but he's an absolute badass. an amazing capoeirista. two nights ago he taught a beginner class and it whupped my ass good. last night he taught a class that was half maculele (stick fighting) and half music. he showed us a lot of toques on the berimbau and played the pandeira better than probably anyone I've seen. the class had about fifteen students, two more atabaque players, and a few observers, mostly other Brazilians, who sang along with us even if they didn't take part in the class. so we had about 25 people in a small room singing loudly and playing music and playing maculele. the whole thing has been seriously inspiring.
so I come back to my car, which I've left along for only a little over two hours and only about a hundred yards away. and it looks like someone threw it top first through a bat cave. it looks like a flock of ostriches exploded on it. It looks like it's been tarred and feathered. the tree I parked underneath is apparently the portalet for all the pigeons in town. gross.
and the oddest, most surreal thing to happen the whole day? nope, not the zenlike task of bailing out a huge tray a centimeter at a time. nope, not a world renowned mestre coming to Richmond and teaching a first rate, wicked fun workshop. nope, not the friggin guano explosion that took place on my car.
Imagine you're unloading the dishwasher. and you're taking the knives, forks, etc. back to the drawer. you walk across the kitchen. you open up the drawer. and there, inside, atop the cutlery, is a bigass king snake. yep.
I took that drawer out and three others along with it before I could get to the snake. it raced me across the kitchen floor and was half way into a tiny hole in between the underside of two cabinets before I caught it and tried to pull it back out. no dice, though. it was in there but good. so now, there's a crawlin' king snake loose somewhere under the kitchen cabinets. awesome.
the ac unit in the attic slowly started filling up the giant evaporation pan underneath itself several weeks ago, probably, but faster than it could evaporate. it overflowed, and water started coming down through the attic at a slow trickle. bad news and a pain in the ass. imagine bailing out a 6' x 4' pan that's only about two inches deep and having to reach in between two pipes to get to it. that means you bail roughly a centimeter at a time.
mestre panão is here. he's as far as I know the first mestre to come to Richmond, ever. he's very young for a mestre, only 37, but he's an absolute badass. an amazing capoeirista. two nights ago he taught a beginner class and it whupped my ass good. last night he taught a class that was half maculele (stick fighting) and half music. he showed us a lot of toques on the berimbau and played the pandeira better than probably anyone I've seen. the class had about fifteen students, two more atabaque players, and a few observers, mostly other Brazilians, who sang along with us even if they didn't take part in the class. so we had about 25 people in a small room singing loudly and playing music and playing maculele. the whole thing has been seriously inspiring.
so I come back to my car, which I've left along for only a little over two hours and only about a hundred yards away. and it looks like someone threw it top first through a bat cave. it looks like a flock of ostriches exploded on it. It looks like it's been tarred and feathered. the tree I parked underneath is apparently the portalet for all the pigeons in town. gross.
and the oddest, most surreal thing to happen the whole day? nope, not the zenlike task of bailing out a huge tray a centimeter at a time. nope, not a world renowned mestre coming to Richmond and teaching a first rate, wicked fun workshop. nope, not the friggin guano explosion that took place on my car.
Imagine you're unloading the dishwasher. and you're taking the knives, forks, etc. back to the drawer. you walk across the kitchen. you open up the drawer. and there, inside, atop the cutlery, is a bigass king snake. yep.
I took that drawer out and three others along with it before I could get to the snake. it raced me across the kitchen floor and was half way into a tiny hole in between the underside of two cabinets before I caught it and tried to pull it back out. no dice, though. it was in there but good. so now, there's a crawlin' king snake loose somewhere under the kitchen cabinets. awesome.