My Hand Hurts Like Hell!

So, I played a show with the Celtic band tonight at Connor O'Neils in Fort Collins. The show went pretty well. There were lots of drunken frat boys danicing around to our cheezy pirate medley, so I count that as at least a small measure of success. I didn't drink too much (my mother was there and I had a stomach ache) but I still had a fairly good time. Eddy and I played a couple of tunes by ourselves, which I thought was the highlight of the night.

Anyway, I'm tired and my hand hurts. I've got to work in the morining which is keeping me from writing much more. Please disregard and grammer or spelling mistakes I may have made in this post. Also, it probably doesn't make much sense, so sorry for that too. I'll leave you with the most interesting tidbit I learned tonight:

Murphy's Irish Stout is a great cure for a stomache ache.

Unseasonably Beautiful

Today, the weather was absolutely gorgeous here. The high was probably somewhere in the low 60’s with very little wind and only a few scattered clouds. I just got back from playing a gig with the celtic band and the thermometer at the house says it’s 53… at 11:00 PM!! I wish everyday in December could be this nice.

As I was bringing my gear into the house I happened to look up in the sky and see the stars. There were absolutely no clouds and the constellations were shining down as brightly as I can remember. The stars here are much different than they are in St. Louis. For one, there seem to be a lot more of them. The constellations actually kind of look like the objects they’re supposed to represent because there’s less air and light pollution here; especially as far outside of town as I live. You can also see the Milky Way on nights like tonight. I can’t believe that for the past four years I’ve been without skies like these.

But as nice as tonight is, there is one thing that could make it better…

I hope the weather is still this nice when Barb gets here.

"Stubble Duck" for dinner

So, I just finished eating my first pheasant.

When my mom told me she was fixing pheasant for dinner, I was a bit surprised. Isn't pheasant something you get at fancy restaurants where you get 15 forks and everything costs more than what I usually spend on meals for a week? Needless to say, I was excited by this rare treat. Unfortunately after eating it, I am sorry to say that it really wasn't all that special. Sure it was tasty enough, but nowhere near as exotic or decadent as I was expecting.

First of all, pheasants are small. Ours was roughly half the size of an average chicken. When you take into account the amount of bone and tendons present on a typical bird , that translates to even less meat. Now for the taste. While I would say that I think it was a little better than chicken, chicken would probably require about the same amount of preparation work and yield a much larger amount of meat for your trouble. Basically imagine eating slightly dry, but slightly more flavorful chicken and you'll come pretty close to imagining what pheasant tastes like.

Along with the pheasant came the familiar story of my great grandmother and "stubble duck." My mother's side of the family comes mostly from poor peasant stock. As such, they didn't have much to eat around the house. To remedy the situation, my great grandmother would sometimes have to poach pheasants to keep from starving to death out on the prairie. To help keep secret what she was doing, she would refer to pheasant as "stubble duck" to all of her children and grandchildren so that in case they told the wrong person (such as a game warden) what they were having for dinner, they would not arouse suspicion.

Well, all of this worked fine until one of the kids happened to invite the game warden in for stubble duck one evening. Great grandma served it up to him, as she had nothing else to offer. She knew she was caught, but there was nothing she could do now but wait for the inevitable. When the warden finished, he wiped his mouth and stood up. Then, he kind of winked at her in a knowing way and told her that it was certainly the best "stubble duck" he ever had, tipped his hat and went on his way.

It's kind of amazing to think that a dish that is now considered fine cuisine used to be illegally cooked up by my poor great grandmother when there was nothing else available.

New Look

So I've spent a few hours now updating the look of this site. Templates are ok, but I don't find that they are entirely compatible with my personal style. Anyway, I hope you guys don't get too annoyed by the background... :)

Dennis loves leopard print!

The Things I Do for Money and Beer

Friday night I had a guest bassist gig with Dave's band. Now, normally this sort of thing would be something that I would enjoy, but this band is a special case. While I love Dave dearly, there is a certain other member of this band that I am less than fond of. Normally I wouldn't play with people that I think are jerks, but the promise of money and free booze was enough to entice me set aside my principles, at least for the night.

To make a long story short, I ended up getting fairly drunk off pints of stout and cider and dancing around like and idiot on stage. Intoxication, and the fact that I had to concentrate very hard to play through the fuzz in my brian, allowed me to ignore any unpleasantness I might have otherwise felt. Everyone at the bar seemed to enjoy the show, so I figure it went well. I also got hit on by a 30-year-old married woman. (What the the hell!? Do I look like I want to stick my bussiness in 30-year-old married woman business!?)

I crashed at Dave's for most of the rest of the night, drove home sometime in the very early morning, and proceeded to sleep in until noon.

Ah, the life of a musician!

Hello World

Well, Hello World! This is my brand spanking new Blog. Not much here yet, but hopefully more will be coming soon. I wish I had some sort of profound message to start off my bloging carrer, but sadly nothing is coming to mind.