Summertime
Since my return to Canadia this summer (aside: my kiddies at skool use this word with all sincerity), I don't think I've logged onto Livejournal once. This is kind of a damn shame, as I used to write often, having some small audience, which is always good for me. Long periods without writing, in contrast, make me feel a bit zombie-ish. The other part of the damn shame is all of the original folks who got me started on here having gone off to write their one-off Facebook status updates (a trend which I have sadly followed suit on, lately) instead of any sort of real reflection, with the exception of Jason & Cathy.
I now read only to stay in something like contact with the Americans, who I quite miss after more than a year (or is it two now?) of not visiting. I mean, I miss everyone across the pond when I'm over here, but with the summer I had I got my fix, as it were, to about the highest degree I could have, including visits with some people I haven't seen since they spawned minipersons, some I'd not seen in 2+ years, which always feels like a lot to me, and a small number of splendid new folks.
I don't know that anyone's particularly interested in a detailed breakdown of how awesome those five weeks were for me, but I'm grateful as hell that that life still exists for me over there. At the end of my first 9 days back I found myself recording -- listing, actually -- the things I had managed to get up to in that time, and to my delight I found it filled nearly a page of my book in my tiny handwriting. And it didn't slow down much over the following 4 weeks, to the effect that I managed to play at least 6 performances with 3.5 of the groups I had left behind, including:
1. a show on my birthday (a mere 7 days and 2 rehearsals after I got home!);
2. a double show (What The Folk and The Plain Steel) at the church (seems to be becoming a yearly event preceding a Ball brother leaving Hammytown - Grum in this case moving to Oslo for a year);
3. and, the most ambitious yet, an afternoon wedding AND evening double-concert (Euphonic and The Plain Steel), with a 3-hour drive between, on my last full day in the country.
That last will be a hard day to beat. Other than fukking up all over the place in the Euphonic set, I couldn't have imagined it going much better. I woke up to coffee and a bacon sandwich (not unlike my first morning back!) in my favourite environment in the world, to date: Northern Ontario. From swimming in the lake in the morning to partying hard through most of the night at Caroline & Ross's after the show back in Hamilton, I can't think of how I could have had much better of a send-off.
It has, pretty clearly in my mind, been the best summer of my life. Special thanks go to Ross and Caroline for housing & hosting Katelyn and I most of the time in their music studio (formerly my brother's room) and generally being awesome about everything.
I now read only to stay in something like contact with the Americans, who I quite miss after more than a year (or is it two now?) of not visiting. I mean, I miss everyone across the pond when I'm over here, but with the summer I had I got my fix, as it were, to about the highest degree I could have, including visits with some people I haven't seen since they spawned minipersons, some I'd not seen in 2+ years, which always feels like a lot to me, and a small number of splendid new folks.
I don't know that anyone's particularly interested in a detailed breakdown of how awesome those five weeks were for me, but I'm grateful as hell that that life still exists for me over there. At the end of my first 9 days back I found myself recording -- listing, actually -- the things I had managed to get up to in that time, and to my delight I found it filled nearly a page of my book in my tiny handwriting. And it didn't slow down much over the following 4 weeks, to the effect that I managed to play at least 6 performances with 3.5 of the groups I had left behind, including:
1. a show on my birthday (a mere 7 days and 2 rehearsals after I got home!);
2. a double show (What The Folk and The Plain Steel) at the church (seems to be becoming a yearly event preceding a Ball brother leaving Hammytown - Grum in this case moving to Oslo for a year);
3. and, the most ambitious yet, an afternoon wedding AND evening double-concert (Euphonic and The Plain Steel), with a 3-hour drive between, on my last full day in the country.
That last will be a hard day to beat. Other than fukking up all over the place in the Euphonic set, I couldn't have imagined it going much better. I woke up to coffee and a bacon sandwich (not unlike my first morning back!) in my favourite environment in the world, to date: Northern Ontario. From swimming in the lake in the morning to partying hard through most of the night at Caroline & Ross's after the show back in Hamilton, I can't think of how I could have had much better of a send-off.
It has, pretty clearly in my mind, been the best summer of my life. Special thanks go to Ross and Caroline for housing & hosting Katelyn and I most of the time in their music studio (formerly my brother's room) and generally being awesome about everything.