The good life

I'm lucky. Life is good. I'm a busy teacher, performer, big-city girl. I haven't had time to tell you about it.

The gig at the loft was great. It was more of a party than a concert, but my songs went well, and the people who were paying attention said some nice things about my performance. Ben took amazing pictures and the party was a blast. Edited pics here; his whole set unedited here. Here's one of me doin' my thing with Chester in the background.



Ben was uploading the pictures to a projector during the party, and so people were having fun looking at them and then getting their pictures taken to be projected as well. It was awesome.

The next night Ben and I ended up at the Handlebar where for the second time we joined the staff in the construction of a beeramid made of Tecate cans. Once again, there was much rocking out to heavy metal, which progressed to Journey and Huey Lewis, and a lot of intense-faced singing with air guitar jumps off the bar and throwing of furniture. My knees were bruised the next day from climbing up to build the beeramid and dance recklessly on the barstools. Here is the first one we made. There are 95 cans in this beeramid. Also: note the hot waitress we are now totally friends with.



Our tab at the end of the night was a miracle.... We are IN now. We stopped by last night and got warm greetings from everyone working there and another huge discount on some food and a couple of PBRs. It is the greatest. We already loved that place with all our hearts and now we are part of its community.

I had Liz over for breakfast during the following week, when I learned how to make delicious scones. I love having friends over for breakfast. I love it so much that today I invited Meredith over, and I made scones again. Both times we had too much coffee and tasty food and a pretty table and nice music and good chatting and Adeline was really happy to sit on the guest's possessions.

Last Friday Ben and I drove to Rockford for Emily's CD release concert. Part of the concert was the projection of the music video Ben made for/with Emily. It is really, really good, and Ben worked really, really hard on it. Emily loves it and said from the stage, "You will all be telling people one day that you saw the early work of Ben Chandler." He is getting busier all the time and the stuff he is producting is getting better and better. Please enjoy the video here in best quality, or if that's not working on your computer try it on YouTube here. Click "Watch in high quality" if you watch the YouTube version... makes a huge difference. And then check out Emily's music! She is an amazingly talented friend. We had a wonderful night there at the concert, and getting drinks at food afterwards, and staying at the incredible house her parents' built with other folks who had come to the show. In the morning we shared a perfect breakfast that Emily made with our new friends and then headed back to the city. I hope next time we make it out to Rockford we can stay longer. I like those Hurds.

I played at Chicago Country Music Fest in the Kiddie Corrall. I played a bday party. I recorded vocal tracks for some more of Larry's songs. I had great rehearsals with It's A Girl, Come Sunday and the band I'm playing my kids' show with on Sunday. I have four concerts in the next 2 weeks with four different bands. Super exciting and overwhelming too. I'm subbing way too much in there and starting some new classes... I probably won't post again till that has past. Happy Halloween! See you in November! Vote Obama!