Good mornting....

I'm taking a long weekend. Won't be in school tomorrow, if any of you are looking for me. The boss will be out of town so I am taking some comp-time. It was perfect timing with Jolea in town. We are planning on going down to the new shopping center on the corner of Bethany and Hwy. 75 and check out all the newly opened shops.

Jeff called yesterday, he and Zack were waiting at the airport (I have no idea which one... ) for their flight. They flew out of St. Thomas to somewhere in South Carolina, Wednesday night. Then on to Orlando to visit a friend. I think they are attempting to fly standby the whole trip! So they will take what ever flight to where ever at the cheapest price just to get them from point A to point.... Q, R, S or T. So yesterday evening they were getting on a flight to Stockholm, Sweden for a little over $300. Their cell phones will not work once they get there so we may not be in touch with them for a bit..... I don't know if my mother-in-law's mantra of "no news is good news" will work for me at this time, I'm trying to not think about it too much. Jeff does have his laptop and will try to keep in touch with us that way. Moving on....

Jody is beginning to feel better, he still has some waves of nausea and gets tired very quickly but other than that we are moving into what should be a pretty good week. He'll probably go in for a blood test tomorrow and then treatment #4 on Friday (half way here we come!) So with him feeling pretty good we all scooted off to Garland last night. I know it was not quiet what Jolea was thinking it would be, I think she was hoping for more of a carnival atmosphere. But when you see a bunch of old people (and I do mean old... tottering in on walkers and in wheel chairs) dragging up lawn chairs, you know the excitement level will not be that in which a 25 year old is craving. This is about as much excitement as they can stand. We go for the music and we don't take lawn chairs... we're young enough to sit on the brick wall.

To start things off, most of the people we enjoy listening to were either at a Bluegrass seminar in Arlington or in Pearl, Texas at the monthly show there. But Mark was still here and he always draws a crowd. He is a professional instructor, so people like playing along with him because he readily helps people when they need help. He even tried to teach Jolea to play the Mandolin last night. He could probably have had her playing along with them in no time, but the mandolin is very hard on the fingertips, as much as Jolea plays the guitar, her fingertips starting hurting and she put Jody's mandolin away. Then he wanted her to sing as they played... she tried to tell them she didn't know any Bluegrass songs. Maybe she'll take one of Jody's guitars next week and play along... I really hope we can go next Saturday, I want her to see Lucas play.

She did manage to start a trend that probably stopped when we left.... she applauded after every song. I know that seems weird, it always seems weird to me, you would expect that the people listening would applaud for the groups, but they don't! Jolea, having grown up singing and performing always applauds... no matter how good or bad a performance may be. She knows that person got up there and gave it their all so she's going to show her appreciation. One of the first guys to come over with a guitar and start playing with Mark had written a song and he and Mark played it for us. It was a good song with a very catchy tune and I would hope someone famous would want to record it someday. When they finished playing Jolea started clapping and I started clapping and then the oldies in the lawn chairs started clapping, the Guitar Guy had a real puzzled look on his face, like what are ya'll doing? Most of the time the 'players' don't wait on applause, they just say, "hey, let's play Whiskey Before Breakfast" or "let's play Lonesome Ride" and fly right into the next tune, leaving little time for applause. Here are some of Jody's favorite musicians playing Whiskey Before Breakfast. It's such a catchy little tune.