In case anybody was worrying about it, I did indeed get in to see
the barber on Tuesday. People no longer say “Scooby-dooby-doo” as a
walk by.

I hate getting haircuts; it’s time consuming
and inconvenient. I invariably need to stop at the bank first to get some
cash, because the barber I go to doesn’t take plastic; then I need to
wait my turn; then I need to wait for the barber to cut my hair. I
suppose that doesn’t seem like such a big hairy deal…but the problem
is, after work I want to go home. I don’t want to deal with all of that.
And the penalty for procrastinating is very small.

A digression: you might ask, why don’t I find a barber that takes
plastic? Mostly because I’ve been going to Tony’s Barber Shop since it
was Chuck’s Barber Shop, and before that I’d been going to Chuck’s Barber
Shop since before I could read. I’m a creature of habit.

Anyway, I’ve evolved a process for this. When I finally do get my hair
cut, I get it cut nice and short; and then I don’t get it cut again until
it’s getting in my eyes and annoying me. This usually works fairly well,
as no one expects me to be a fashion plate anyway.

But this time, I’ve let it go too far. I can pull a lock of hair down
until it touches the tip of my nose–far past my eyes. And things are
beginning to conspire against me. I was going to get it cut last week;
and then I had to go on a business trip. That took out two of the
possible week days. Thursdays are bad because Thursdays are Recorder
Day; I don’t like leaving my recorders in a hot car for any length of
time. Friday, well, Friday was Friday. The last two Saturdays have been
busy from one end to another. And, being a traditional barber shop,
Tony’s is closed on Mondays. So I finally got to the barber shop today.

Tony is on vacation this week. He won’t be back until next Tuesday.

Go figure.

There’s a Mongolian Barbecue restaurant we like to go to.
Jane and I like it because we like the food, and the boys like it because
they get to eat won-ton chips and jello, and little Anne likes it because
we’re all there. Plus, they’ve always been very friendly when we come
in, despite the fact that we always bring in a troop of messy little
kids. So we enjoy ourselves, and tip well.

The last time we tried to go there, they were closed; the sign said that
they’d be closed for a month, as they were on vacation. So we waited;
and tonight we tried going there again. Lo, how the mighty have fallen!

They looked at our kids with disdain. The table wasn’t particularly
clean. The beef hadn’t been trimmed well, and was full of gristle. The
steamed rice and pocket bread arrived when I was almost halfway through
eating, instead of when I got back to the table with my barbecue. The
rice was dry, with crunchy bits. Jane
had to ask for water repeatedly. We asked for a booster seat for James
repeatedly, and never got one. Plus, the Diet Coke tasted off, though
that can happen to anyone. The pocket bread was better than usual; that
was the sole point of light.

So happens, we didn’t recognize any of the servers. My suspicion
is that it’s under new management; or perhaps a new branch of the family
that owns it came out to run it; or perhaps there’s a different team on
Sunday. But however it came to happen, we weren’t impressed, and I doubt
we’ll go back any time soon.

Sigh.

Thursday is Recorder Day. Every Thursday morning I gather up my bag of
recorders and sheet music, and the separate case containing my bass
recorder, and lug them in to work. At lunch I meet with three other
people (on a good day), and we play a variety of things ranging from
Early Music to relatively modern klezmer.

For those who aren’t familiar with them, the recorder is the ancestor of
the modern transverse flute. It’s played differently; instead of blowing
across an opening, you blow into a mouthpiece. It’s similar in that
regard to a tin whistle. They come in a variety of sizes, and on a good
day we’ll play four part music, Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass. The
ranges aren’t the same as the choral parts of the same name; I believe
the overall tonal range is about half that of a choir.

A bass recorder is a thing to see. Picture if you can
a small bazooka, about four feet long, turned out of exotic hardwood and
festooned with metal keywork. But if a bass recorder is a bazooka, today
we were graced with the presence of a howitzer–Dave (Dave my co-worker,
not Dave my little boy) was able to borrow a “great-bass”. This beast is
almost half again as long as a bass and speaks half-an-octave lower. You
blow into a long metal tube called a bocal that curves up from your mouth
about eight inches and disappears into the top of the recorder; you rest
the bell of the recorder on your shoe–and you have to start blowing
earlier than everybody else in the consort in order to have the note come
out on time. It’s heavy as all get out, and it doesn’t sound nearly as
good as it ought to.

Or that’s what Dave keeps saying. But we all know he’s trying to prevent
himself from wanting one of his own.