We do this every Tuesday. Signup before 7. I start at 7. 7112 Willow Avenue in Takoma Park, MD. robsopenmics.ilyaimy.com for more information.
Tonight w
- rob
- Bev
- Rob Gould
- David Potts-Dupre
- Sam Roth
- Jesse P
- Spencer J
- & Maddie
- Justin
- Bobby
- Zander
- Rebecca Berlin
- Dan M
- Brian Higgins
- Matt Dantas
- Juels Bland
Yesterday was madness. I’m avoiding my phone and communication for the moment, just because I can’t handle a repeat, but really I imagine it was just a fluke that lead so many things to hit all at the same time.
Don’t get me wrong. I feel sort of impressed with myself for fitting so much in one day, and maybe this is typical for people who have “real” jobs and … “children”… but for me it was a LOT of mental gear shifting.
Tuesday for me generally is just running my open mic down in Takoma Park. I’ll often use it as an errand day for anything I’ve got to accomplish betwixt Baltimore and DC, and usually that’ll mean work for Sandy Spring Museum, though that’s been dying out. It’s also the day for the Institute of Musical Traditions mailing list and social media blasts, and THIS morning it also had to get the FocusMusic mailing list and social media blasts as I’d put that off from Monday having landed myself in Facebook Jail after being too enthusiastic about advertising for… Sunday’s open mic in Catonsville, Monday’s VOM, Tuesday’s SPARK (through both IMT and rOM), Wednesday’s Live from the Lair (through ilyAIMY), Wednesday’s Local Cream Showcase (through Focus), Thursday’s show in Annapolis, Saturday’s show in Northern Virginia, and NEXT Sunday’s open mic (through rOM) and next Sunday’s Focus Annual Meeting Thing (through Focus). Additionally Focus has a show cancelation and a last-minute NEW show to advertise, and I couldn’t list that on their website till I could do it on social media soooooo… a bunch of stuff had been shoved to Tuesday.
Get up. 8.30am, go start the web stuff, spend about an hour changing the website, making announcements for Focus’ show cancelation, and go to do the social media side. I can’t sign in to Facebook and go through a good deal of panic over the fact that the app and the site are claiming my password doesn’t work. Unable to confirm anything else, I wake Kristen up and tell her to pull my admin credentials from all of our cross-credentialed Pages, only to find SHE can’t sign in either. At this point, Heather spots the news that Meta is down and I realize that it ain’t me, it’s them.
SO – I’m off the hook for social media, send apologies and explanations to the Board as to why half of Focus’ output is announcing a show cancelation and the other half is still advertising the show, and settle into the financials. For the next hour or so I’m chewing through refunds and PayPal receipts, with a number of them not matching up because people don’t like to use the same email for ticketing as they use for PayPal identification, which is frustrating as foretold. As I’m working through this I field a phone call from Dave Eisner who wants to get sound wired into the next room at Spark, I tell him what we’ll need. I field a call from my pharmacy to tell me that my drugz is ready, and I field a call from the guy I’m meeting at the museum on the way down to Takoma. I’m trying to keep it together as I’m also crossing off emails flinging in and FINALLY getting the social media side up and running, but I do inform him that if I have to talk to him about the stuff that I’m going to talk to him about in the meeting before the meeting I’ll probably be late for the meeting.
Okay – sort of the first Fail of Calm, but it ain’t too bad and he sees the point.
Text from Juels cause he wants to borrow some gear. Load gear. Text from museum because they’d like some gear. Load gear. Need MY gear. Load gear. Text from Annette. She’ll need checks tonight. Load checks.
Get call about sound at the Cherry Blossom Festival, but miss it. Call back about sound at the Cherry Blossom Festival but miss them.
Shower, all that good stuff. A slow moment to make lunch and then it’s out the door. I have 12 minutes of “extra” time before getting to my meeting which means I can pick up the prescription. That takes 8 minutes so I have four minutes of extra time. I pick up tequila because I think I’m going to need it, and now I’m EXACTLY on time, and roll up to Sandy Spring Museum just as my Guy is rolling up, and we discuss filming a history of the Sandy Spring Volunteer Fire Department to celebrate their hundredth year. After that, meeting about Japanese wood block prints. Sit in the car and return call to Institute of Musical Traditions to settle some accounting issues. Phones are amazing. But not THAT amazing. It’s determined I’ll have to check records on the morrow, and then it’s time to skedaddle down to Takoma Park. I’ve got 16 minutes to spare, but I’m pretty sure that’ll get et by traffic.
Surprisingly, I actually MAKE UP time and have EIGHTEEN minutes to spare by the time I’m sitting at a traffic light long enough to receive a call from my friend Annette. She’s hurt her back, can I drop off the checks rather than having to come out to the open mic to pick them up?
No problem. Sat at light JUST long enough to put new address in and turn left instead of right. Drop off checks and have nice chat. Unfortunately I’m at negative five minutes now but since I’m pretty sure that anyone else will be closer to half an hour to an hour late, I ain’t pressed.
I’m a couple minutes into setting up sound (an easy set up today, yay!) when my feature, Georgie Jessup, rolls in. She’s jovial and sweet and set her to testing the piano as I set things up around her. I’d been wanting to change up some settings on the mixer and that’s easier WITH someone making noise and WITHOUT Dave, so I work through that and am on to the safely neutral tasks of setting up chairs by the time Dave rolls in.
Dave brought the cable that we needed to get sound into the next room at Spark, I plug it in, reset the Blackmagic and the television and bam, there’s sound in the next room at Spark. He’s so impressed he starts asking me about Rokus and Verizon and even says “cause it’s probably your fault it’s not working” but then it turns out he’s talking to Bev who’s standing next to me, and that’s okay then.
And if Bev’s here, that means EVERYONE’S gonna be here soon. Clean board for list, set up cameras, welcome new people, welcome the regulars, get charming, or at least mildly-sarcastic, run open mic.
A wonderful night. Georgie was great, everyone was great. Hell, I was great, though my tuning wasn’t. Juels played Baliset with me and we all chatted about Dune. It was almost 11 by the time we got out of there and parking back home was … I’d say “atrocious” but not atypically so… and I was right.
I needed the tequila.
Cartoons, tequila, celery. Wind down.
That was a lot of day.
Shit, I’ve got to call them back about sound at the Cherry Blossom Festival.
