Another Summer Almost Gone
Well, that summer sure disappeared in a hurry. Tempus fugit.
Just returned from our 2010 trip to Pancake Bay on Lake Superior. It was full of all those wonderful unexpected happenings, such as 10 days of camping with 7 days of rain and 3 days of sunshine, being chased off the beach by WWC wasps, having our car battery die while on site. Now the wonderful things..we had 3 days of sunshine ....YEAH!!!! We sought the aid of a couple of fellow campers, Fran and Jamie, to provide us with a boost for our dead battery but the unit was fried and would not hold a charge. Checked through all our roadside assistance coverages but we were too far out of range to qualify. As we considered out next move, towing the car into The Soo, 70 kms away, Jamie and Fran insisted that they drive me into the Soo to pick up a new battery. Now that's why they call it God's country!!! Jamie and I had a great conversation as we travelled there and back and discovered we had some mutual friends. Small cosmos!! We also made the aquaintance of a group of "Deadhead" (as in Grateful Dead) campers who have been coming to Pancake Bay from the U.S. and Canada for over 20 years. There were Noel and Kristin and Ian and Mike and Lise and a whole lot more, about 20 in all. Wonderful bunch. And the wierd thing is I never caught the scent of Mary Jane once.
Spent time with the inlaws, Gina and Claudio.....enjoyed Gina's wonderful homemade pasta and played a couple of games of Bocci.
Crsitina is back to work at the university today, Natasha is refurbishing and refurnishing her apartment in Toronto and Sofia and Daniela are enjoying there last 10 days of play time before school resumes.
I have always loved this time of year, with Fall in the air, the abundance of local produce, the sense that the chaos of summer will soon wind down and "normal life" will return.
I must admit that I can only take so much "free" time as the summer offers. I seem to function better within the boundaries of a routine.
I have various gigs lined up for the fall, mostly cover gigs with a few singer-songwriter shows sprinkled in there. Check my SHOWS tab for details. Working on some new songs which I intend to showcase at next round of local songwriting contests, starting early in the new year.
I also have another songwrting workshop happening: Hit songwriter and teacher extraordinaire,Steve Seskin, is returning for a 2 day session on October 23rd and 24th. I hosted Steve last year as well and he is a wonderful and inspiring songwriting coach. All attendees were in agreement on that one. More details to follow on that.
(posted Friday August 27th)
Latest
Well i have just wrapped up 2 months of songwriting contests and managed to place in 2 out of 3 of them.
I was 4th in the Grad House (Waterloo) contest
3rd in the Cambridge contest and
2nd in the Fergus contest
Now if there had only been one more I could have had a 1st in there ;-)
It was a great experience to be out there playing my original material and getting to meet lots of other wonderful songwriters.
There were around 80 entrants, covering all genres.
Life has been busy with regualr gigs and some work in the schools. Check my SHOWS page for my schedule.
