Stacey Earle and It's A Small World

Last night we had our Irish friend Kieran over for dinner and then the three of us went to see Stacey Earle and Mark Stuart perform at a nice little venue in our neighborhood. Stacey and Mark you Rock! Thanks Chris and Andy over at the Listening Room for the great job you guys do.

For dinner I cooked chicken paillards coated with seasoned bread crumbs sautéed in olive oil and finished with a lemon butter sauce, colcannon and carrots and peas. It was a very tasty somewhat Irish dinner. I still have all the dinner dishes to wash. It was way too hot to hand wash dishes last night. Even with air-conditioning and a ceiling fan the kitchen gets really hot when I cook. I just don't like living in the hot sticky south; having Kieran over last night just reinforces my desire to live in Ireland where the weather is doom and gloom most of the time. Perfect.

We hung out at home for a bit after dinner and then went to the concert. Since there were three of us we had an open seat and Andy asked if it would be okay for someone to sit with us and we said sure. So this woman sits down and we introduced ourselves; her name is Val. The conversation mostly started off with the obligatory chit chat and then Val asked us if we attended Magfest and Suwannee Springfest and we said that we did. She commented that she would not be in town for the next Suwannee Springfest because her niece was getting married in Kentucky. I asked her what city and she said Lexington. I told her I was from Lexington (although I haven’t lived there since 1964) and she said she was also. Of course, we started comparing notes and found out we lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same elementary school; however, we were not in the same grade. She is three years older than me and I mentioned my siblings’ names and she said she remembered my older brother and had recently come across a picture of him taken when he was a teenager climbing a flag pole. Val said when she found it she sent it off to her friend because she remembered her friend had a crush on my brother. Val told me she remembered my brother as being a "hood". I said yeah that would be my brother. I couldn't believe this stranger knew my brother over forty years ago and had just recently come across an old photo of him. It's a small world. We also talked about going to the neighborhood park during the summer when there would be park directors and organized activities for kids. We both remembered one park director named Joe Miller she said she had a crush on him and I said all the older girls did. I told her I never liked him because when I was 10 my friend and I wrote "bad words" on the wooded bridge with crayons and he made us wash it off. I didn't write anything too obscene, something like Joe Miller can go to Shell and take off the S. Okay that was a pretty stupid thing to write but I was only 10 and I don't think I knew any really bad words.

I guess I will go wash dishes now. Damn it! I want a new dishwasher.
r.m.