Spring Thing --> Hail Storm --> Tornado Watch --> Padriac's

The night began with the family rushing over to Mt. Bethel for a great big spring party billed as "Spring Thing".  Unfortuantely, storms were approaching and the whole shebang was staged indoors, which was too bad.  Actually, it didn't really make much of a difference to the kids.  They had a lot of fun activities with a DJ, hoola hoops, moonwalk/slide/climbing inflatable playgrounds, pizza, face painting, teacher dunking, and clowns making balloon animals.  It was hot and muggy and super crowded.  I let Jack stay a bit longer so that he could act up with his friends, which actually bit me a bit since when I went back for him, the sky opened up and it hailed like I've never seen before.  It poured hail for several minutes!  We still need to clean up the yard a bit - so what else is new?  We huddled in the basement for a spell while the sirens sounded.  Binnie thought my gig might be cancelled.  She ought to know better by now.

So we played our 2nd gig of the year at Padriac's last night.  Brent couldn't make it, so Martay got Sam Owen to fill in.  Martay was concerned about vocals, so I tweaked my vocal list and sent him a copy.  I ended up singing 2 requests that were not on my list: "Tuesday's Gone" & Free's "All Right Now".  I thought I did well & Martay liked it.  He would have anyways.  The guy who made the requests was tipping $40 per tune!  Cliff showed up & made it a fun hang on the break, which ran over an hour!  We did a very nice shot of tequila but we did it Cliff's way: with 5 sqirts of Tabasco!  ell, I liked it, but then I like spicy stuff.  I like the salt & lime, too, so I guess I added at bit of flavor on the backside.  I finally persuaded Martay that we needed to play a bit more.  We ened with some nice jams on "Oy Como Va", "Little Wing", & "Round & Round", of course.  A side note is that Big Ernie lost his father and had just come back to work.  I gave him my condolences and he was grateful to share a bit.  I miss my folks a lot and wish I could share some holidays with them like the good ol' days.