Random November stuff

Before Thanksgiving we visited with my friend Lynne in her cool old house in Tilton, then went to see the Asylum Street Spankers in Franklin. What a blast. They did play my song, the Lunch Box song (You only love me for my lunch box, baby!). We went skiing on Thanksgiving, and yes, it's pretty cool to be able to ski on Thanksgiving. However, the ghost town I was expecting on this most sacred of holidays was filled with opening day lunatics, so all the pitiful man-made snow was all scraped off by 8:30 am. What ski area has opening day on Thanksgiving? My Day, when I get the place all to myself! We lasted a whole hour and a half. But that meant more time to spend making dinner, which comprised: broiled duck breast with cranberry-orange sauce, squash with maple syrup and nutmeg, sauteed green beans with almonds (that was the best!) and stuffing, just for fun. We had blueberry apple crisp for dessert; I made too much topping (what a surprise) so I sprinkled it on top of blueberry muffins I was making. I over-filled the muffin tins so they became blueberry volcanos in the oven, the billowing smoke setting off the smoke alarm every few minutes as the lava batter overflowed and burned. The muffins were still damn tasty.

I'm heading for BC for skiing on real snow and Christmas soon; my in-laws always manage to pull my most hated holiday out of the dumpster for me, each and every year, like magic. Now that I'm an orphan, it will be particularly difficult, but I'll get through it with some movies, dim sum, sushi, panforte, and sour cherry pie. 100 inches of snow at Mt Baker doesn't hurt, either.

Chest...pains...

Saw this over at Slice.

Easy to forget

I went to see the Tab Benoit show in Franklin this weekend. Tab's a fabulous performer and a gracious son of Louisiana: funny, good rapport with the roudy crowd, great voice, great guitarist. Bombarded by requests, I think he managed to play almost every one. The still tragic plight of New Orleans is obviously his mission in life: he spent most of the time between sets talking to people about it, and at one point between songs he spoke about the ongoing disaster. At first I was a little miffed, as I prefer to keep politics and musical performance separate, but what he said has stuck with me since. There are still dead bodies in houses, and still large areas of wasteland, homeless people, and people who are never coming back. If you want to support New Orleans, do something, even go there for your next vacation, go out to eat, hear some music, and spend some money! Anything will help. Thanks for the reminder.