Friends

Not a Muna Concert Review or My Flat Tire Adventures

Normally I would have been writing my review of last night’s Muna concert at the Anthem. But as I never actually made it to the concert, I will share how I actually spent my Friday night. Right as we were getting off the Baltimore/Washington Parkway onto the highways that run through downtown DC my tire pressure light came on, and I thought that’s not good. It’s not cold out. There’s no reason my light should come on all of a sudden after driving for an hour unless something is actually wrong. I was just praying that we made it to the parking garage we were going to instead of my tire going completely flat or having a blow out on a highway where there is literally no shoulder or anywhere to pull over and is crazy full of traffic. Luckily we made it to the garage, but we were not quite so lucky after that.

I pretty quickly identified that there was a screw in my back driver’s side tire. I’m happy it was sitting right on top and didn’t swind up on the under side of the under side of the tire when I parked where I wouldn’t have been able to see it. While we could have just gone to the concert and dealt with the tire afterwards, I really didn’t want to be down in DC at 11 pm trying to change a tire and then having to drive home an hour after that, especially since I wasn’t sure I would be able to get tire off and then didn’t want to have to wait hours for AAA that late.

So my plan was to miss the opening act, change the tire and get the donut on, and then hopefully make it in time for Muna. My friend who was with me was the real hero and did most of the work jumping on the wrench to get the lug nuts free and then jacking the car up and down multiple times. There was a lot of rust and the tire was unfortunately seized on the bolts, so we could not get it off. This actually happened to my husband and I coming back from a late night flight into Dulles, and our friend who is a car guy recommended taking it off the jack and rocking the car back and forth to loosen it. That worked that time, so we tried that multiple times, but alas it did not work. So we called AAA, who said they wouldn’t be there for 2 hours, which was not ideal. I was also worried about AAA trying to get to us in the back corner of this very low and narrow parking garage with lots of pillars. I honestly have no idea how someone who needed a car towed out of there would ever be able to do it.

Since the Anthem has very limited and crazy expensive parking if you can even get it right near the venue, I usually park about 3/4 of a mile away at a Holiday Inn garage that I can get on SpotHero for $12. We wound up parked right by the elevator from the parking garage to the hotel lobby, so there were lots of people coming and going by us. Some guy tried to stop and help us, but he was not in great shape and mostly just wound up standing around watching us try to deal with it, but I appreciated the thought. Right after we had mostly given up and were just trying to decide if we were going to leave the car up on the jack while we went and waited outside for AAA because it was way too hot in that garage to wait for 2 hours, a huge group of Newark cops came out of the elevator. Four huge guys tried to get the tire off to no avail, and basically told me it was seized, which I already knew and that we were going to need someone with the right tool to get it off. One of them told me since the tire still seemed to be holding air that I should try and take it a fix a flat place or something. I forget what he actually called it, but I didn’t know what he was referring to. He pulled out his phone and found a 24/7 tire place called Mac’s that was only 2.5 miles away. So we decided to take a chance and make our way over there.

I have no idea what is happening in DC or if they’re expecting huge protests over something I can’t think of or what, but something is going on. There were tons of out of state police vehicles parked on the road by the garage, and we had to drive by the Capitol on our way to the tire place and there were just lines and lines of flatbed trucks blocking the road. At first I was like am I allowed to be driving here? Is this some kind of weird trucker protest again for some reason? But then it was eventually clear that what was happening was they were all lined up around the capital with those concrete barricades on their flat beds waiting for a crane to come by and take the barricades off and set them on the ground. Anyway, I’m glad those Newark cops were there for whatever is going on because I never would have come up with their suggestion, and it wound up to be the perfect solution. [Edit: My friend saw a post from her local county Sheriff’s page that solved the mystery. It’s National Police Week and there’s a bunch of events in DC for it this weekend including a memorial cycling thing that I’m guessing is what they were setting up the barriers for to block the traffic from the cyclists.]

After what felt like the longest 2.5 miles drive ever worrying about whether I was going to make it there before my tire went completely flat, we got to the tire place. I had no idea that these kind of places existed. I’m not sure there’s one in Baltimore, but I’m glad there was one near where we were. [Edit: There is one in Baltimore near the prison. I had no idea.] It was literally just one drive through bay lined with tires. You hopped in the line and waited your turn and then when it was your turn you hopped out of your car. They jacked it up and took care of your tire. You paid and were on your way. Or least on your way as soon as soon as the car in front of you was done. They could do 3 cars at a time, but you couldn’t leave if you were done and you weren’t at the front. They got the tire right off with this giant extremely long handled rubber mallet that was bright orange and looked extremely cartoonish. The guy gave it a whack and it popped right off. I got it plugged and was on my way all fixed up for $15 and change. I was very happy to not have to drive back to Baltimore on a donut and then deal with getting a tire fixed this morning.

Although, we were done with all that about an hour earlier than AAA had estimated they arrived, there was no point in trying to make it to the concert at that point. By the time we drove back to the garage, walked to the venue, and got in we probably would have been there just in time for the encore. So instead of going to a concert we drove all the way down to DC to spend hours trying to deal with a flat tire. The friend I was with was the one who got COVID at the Newport Folk Festival last year and resulted in us having to leave early, so we were joking that we’re even now because my flat tire made her miss this concert. Even though I wish we had made it to at least even part of the concert, I’m glad that as these things go it turned out about as well as it could save for us easily being able to get the tire changed ourselves. We didn’t get stuck in any dangerous places trying to change a tire, and got things fixed and made it safely home, which is the most important part.

Last Week Delight 4/17/2023

Buckle in. I’ve got a lot of delights for you this week.

  • I had an upper endoscopy last Monday to try and find out what has been causing my relentless reflux issues. It originally wasn’t scheduled until 2:30, so I figured I wouldn’t really get to eat until around dinner time. For some reason they called that morning and asked me to be there at 10 instead. So I was home in time for lunch, and didn’t have to feel starving all day. It unfortunately didn’t shed much light on anything, but at least for right now all that acid hasn’t done any damage to my esophagus. So that’s good news at least.
  • I’ve had a very busy stretch of days. I think this is the most things I’ve done in a row since pre-pandemic. And even then 6 days in a row of activities was not the norm. I was already too old and too tired for that back in 2020. I kicked things off on Wednesday night going to see Lucius with Danielle Ponder at Rams Head Live.
  • Thursday night was a surprise baby shower for some friends from church. They were indeed surprised, and it was a lovely night to be outside and hang out with friends.
  • Friday night a group of us went out to dinner to belatedly celebrate a friend’s birthday. It’s nice that the weather is warming up again so that I can go out to eat at restaurants again, and I appreciate friends who make sure to make outdoor reservations so that I can join them. I’ve missed out on a lot of friend gatherings over the winter, so it’s nice to be able to be a part of things in a somewhat normal way again for a little while.
  • Saturday my husband and I drove down to the DC area to have dinner with friends who live down there and to celebrate one of their birthdays. We technically ate dinner in Maryland, but just over the line because we must have parked in DC as when we started driving home our GPS welcomed us to Maryland, so we must have crossed over the line at some point. The weather was rainy and thunderstormy all day, so we were very much keeping an eye on the weather to see if we needed to shift our plans. Luckily the weather wound up cooperating, and it was a lovely night to eat dinner outside. I was also very excited when we got dessert and they told me that the apple hand pie on the menu had been replaced by a strawberry shortcake with cardamom ice cream. I love cardamom and was immediately sold. It was delicious.
  • Sunday night we had tickets to see Hadestown as part of season tickets to the local touring Broadway shows. Hadestown was actually the last show I saw on Broadway before COVID happened. I had very much enjoyed it then, and I had seen it with the original cast and wasn’t sure how well the touring cast was going to be able to live up to it. They did a pretty darn good job. I was particularly worried about Hades because I didn’t see how anyone could come close to living up to Patrick Page. He wasn’t as good, but I will say that the actor whose name I unfortunately don’t know did a pretty good job. He had a similarly deep, booming voice which I think was key.
  • For my final night of sociability, I have book club tonight. We read the book Remarkably Bright Creatures, which I loved. It’s really type of book we tried so hard to find to read during the last 5-7 years when everything has just felt terrible all the time in the real world but that we so very rarely were able to find. Something that feels light and clever, but that isn’t just complete fluff that leaves us nothing to discuss.
  • It was also a beautiful morning for our first outdoor church service of the season. I’m sure it will get cold again before we really settle into summer weather and we’ll have a few mornings when we’re shivering with the breeze off the harbor. Yesterday was absolutely perfect though.
  • Speaking of church I was sitting near a couple of pregnant women yesterday, and a little girl who is probably around 3 and half came up and was looking at their baby bumps, so one of them asked if she wanted to say hi to the baby. The little girl then gave her baby bump an elbow bump. It was adorable. I’m like you can tell this kid has been raised during a pandemic.
  • I don’t know why it delighted me so much, but it did. A couple blocks away from church while I was stopped at a light one of the guys on our worship team zoomed by me on one of those electric scooters that are left all over the city for you to rent.
  • One of my friends on Instagram kept posting stories about how she was already doomed to be humiliated by her Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year, so eventually I DM’ed her and said I must know what you’ve been listening to. So she she told me she better not be in the top 1% of Shaggy listeners. I responded with this joke, which I am inordinately proud of. “You: It wasn’t me. Spotify: Caught you red handed.”
  • Ross Gay has written a sequel to The Book of Delights, which is what got me into doing these delights posts in the first place. It’s called The Book of (More) Delights, go figure. I got a galley copy of it and am in the middle of reading it. In one of the delights in the book he shares that due to his original book people send him lots of mail in which they recount their own delights. One of them shared about their friends cat whose names is OREO Speedwagon, which was also a delight to him, and something he thought we should also know as to bring us delight. It did indeed delight me, and now I feel compelled to extend the delight to you.
  • We have a craft table at work that is covered in brown butcher paper that people draw and write on all the time. This morning I spotted that someone drew a heart on the table and inside of it said, “A proud dad brought his accepted daughter here for a visit.” I thought it was super sweet, and it put a smile on my face.
  • And now for your musical delights. First up the song “Nina Cried Power” by Hozier featuring Mavis Staples. I adore this song. I heard it this week for the first time in a while, and it made me very happy. Seeing them perform it together live is still one of my favorite Newport Folk Festival moments, and it takes a lot to make it towards the top of that list because there are so many darn amazing things I’ve seen over the past decade there. I was also delighted to discover that Mavis Staples is featured on a song on the new Abraham Alexander record, which I did not realize until I put my new vinyl on while I was doing the dishes and all of a sudden Mavis was singing to me.
  • And also the song “Heavenly Day” by Patty Griffin. I don’t have anything to say about. It’s just a song I love and heard this week.

Last Week Delight 3/14/2023

This past week has been a rough one as you many have already surmised if you’ve been reading this blog. It was very sad and stressful with having to put my beloved cat to sleep. I’m just really ready for the world to stop piling terrible things on top of me. I’m tired of my body hating me. I was supposed to finally have appointment with a food and ankle orthopedist today, but they said he had a medical emergency and rescheduled me so that isn’t for another whole month now. I still can’t eat like a normal human. And the rest of my life is feeling more and more stunted and I feel more and more insane as everyone else has moved on with their lives and I’m still out here trying very hard not to get COVID because my body already hates me enough right now. The last thing I need is long COVID or it setting off all the autoimmune disorders I have that are thankfully under control at the moment despite my body making it’s best efforts to beat me down in other ways. But as always there’s some good with the bad, so let’s move on to better things shall we?

  • Although losing Scout was terrible, and my house feels very lonely with no furry companion in it, if she was going to go I honestly could not have asked for anything to go better than it did. When she was first starting to not eat well I tried to make a vet appointment and they told me they didn’t have any openings for two weeks. After the weekend when it was getting harder and harder to get her to eat anything, I called them on Monday to find out if I should go ahead and take her the emergency vet if they couldn’t see me sooner. Our regular vet was able to squeeze us in that afternoon. And I found out later when I got an errant phone call that the original plan on their end was for me to drop Scout off on Tuesday morning and just have her sit at the vet until the doctor could fit her in between procedures. Luckily the scheduling person found us an actual appointment on Monday, so Scout didn’t have to be even more traumatized spending one of her final days trapped alone at the vet. It was also a great week for all of this to happen because I was working from home, which I rarely do, attending an online conference. It meant I was easily able to jump at the vet opening, and I got to spend lots of extra time with Scout in her last few days. It also meant I was easily able to take off work Thursday when we decided it was time. I was a little stressed that she was going to hold on a few days longer into the beginning of this week because things happening at work this week would have made it very difficult for me to take off. I didn’t want to put her down even a few days earlier than I thought was necessary, but when she had been appetite stimulants and pain killers for two days and was eating only a couple of bites of food it was very clear the time had come. We used an in home pet euthanasia service called Peaceful Passage. I would highly recommend them if you ever need to put a pet down. We called Wednesday morning and asked about doing it Thursday. They said the vet was supposed to be out that day, but they would call us back and see if there was any way to get someone out to see us. Apparently there was since they did find someone to send over Thursday morning. Scout just got to spend her final time with us lying on her favorite spot on the sofa. I’m glad she didn’t have to spend it stressed out at the vet, and that we all got to go through this in the comfort of our home. I hate that she’s gone, and I miss her so much but I’m happy she’s not in pain anymore and got to have a death that was as peaceful as possible.
  • I’m also grateful for everyone who reached out via texts and emails and for people who sent flowers and cookies. It’s all very much appreciated. My favorite thing was something called a Warmie that one of my friends dropped off. It’s a little stuffed animal (mine’s a dinosaur) that is filled with flax seed and lavender, and you can microwave it to snuggle with or to use on your aching body. I’ve used it for both. It’s very soft and furry, and it was the perfect remedy for all the pain I was having in my shoulders, neck, and jaw from all the stress and crying. I’ve had similar things in the past that are just sort of pillow shaped. I do feel a little sadistic putting this adorable creature in the microwave and watching his little face stare out at me as he spins around.
  • I went for a walk on Monday night after finding out that our days with Scout were probably very numbered to sort of clear my head. There was a gorgeous sunset in one direction and a big huge looking moon in the sky the other way. So that was kind of cool.
  • I mentioned this in my post about going to see Into the Woods, but I was also very delighted that we managed to get to our seats just as it was time for the show to start and that we didn’t miss the opening curtain despite the horrendous traffic on the way there.
  • Every year the Newport Folk Festival does a slow roll out of the artists that will be at the festival that year. They don’t do a big poster announcement drop like most festivals. They don’t even announce who will be there until after the tickets are already sold out. Anyway, you may recall the other week when I wrote about new music by Abraham Alexander I said in that post that I fully expected that I would see him at Newport one day. Well turns out that day will be this year. Four days after I wrote that post, they announced that he will be playing this year’s festival. I’m definitely excited to check him out live.
  • And now for your musical delight I have the song “Spotlight” by Jennifer Hudson. This song was one of the Heardle answers in the past week. It’s a song I never hear, but at one point back in my iPod days I apparently bought that single from iTunes. So on occasion when I drag out my old iPod Nano this song always comes up on it. It’s part of the time capsule of music trapped on that iPod from back in the mid-2000s.

Last Week Delight 2/13/2022

  • Let’s start with a follow-up to one of last week’s items, circus animal cookies. My sister called me after she read my post last week to tell me that crazily she was in Target and bought some of the same cookies after not eating any for years and years just before reading my post. Like my nieces were asking her what they were because she never buys them. What are the chances?
  • The city fixed some of the sidewalks on our street last week. Technically property owners are responsible for their portions of the sidewalk, and my understanding is that if the city fixes it they will send you a bill. I don’t really understand how that’s okay since what if they fix your sidewalk and you can’t afford to pay for it. I also don’t understand how they decide what the city is going to fix since there are streets around here with way worse sidewalks than the ones on my block. Anyway, our next door neighbors section was on their list. They accidentally busted up one of the squares of our part of the sidewalk in the process and had to replace it too. I’m pleased about this because we paid to have our sidewalks redone years ago because they were super cracked up to and along the base of our house and I was worried water was going to seep into our basement. While the concrete was still drying some jerk wrote their initials + someone else’s initials in a heart in the wet cement. So I had to stare at that for years. I would bet a million dollars those people aren’t even together anymore. Well now that dumb heart that ruined my nice new sidewalk is gone because the single piece they had to replace where was where that was. I am going to be annoyed if the city sends us a bill for fixing something they broke. I will go fight it.
  • It was really nice outside several days last week. I went for a short walk after work one evening and there were just tons of people out enjoying. Kids were out playing on the sidewalks. Everything just felt very alive.
  • For the most part our neighborhood Facebook page is a pretty positive place. There’s always your random jerks who just have to try and provoke everyone and the occasional racism, but overall I find it a pleasant and sometimes even joyful place to be. This is in contrast to our NextDoor, which I had to leave. Not sure why the vibe is so different, but it is. Anyway, there were a couple of reminders of that this week. I saw a post with someone saying they found an abandoned upright bass, which they assume had been stolen and that they were looking for its owner. Then shortly after that saw a post with someone looking for their stolen upright base to which everyone responded with the first post. They were happily reunited. Someone also shared a post expressing that they had been feeling depressed and lonely, and the outpouring of support and suggestions for various groups to join and people offering to call him to join on walks with their dogs and just the general outpouring of support was really lovely.
  • I went to my first Super Bowl party since the start of the pandemic. It was really my first indoor party too. It was a little weird because I kept my mask on the whole time and ducked outside really quick to eat a plate of food, but it was fun to see a bunch of people I don’t see very often since my social life is still stunted. There were also people I haven’t seen since before the pandemic started as well. Quite possibly since the 2020 Super Bowl party. That included a whole 2 year old child who up until this point I have only met through Facebook photos.
  • I finished up my Invisalign treatment today. I feel like finished is a bit of a misnomer, since I still have to wear retainers all the time for what I think is 6 months. Eventually I’ll just be able to wear them to bed. But I literally have 4 different retainers plus a night guard I’ll be getting eventually. I have an Invisalign upper retainer I have to wear during the day. Then I switch to an old school retainer at night to fit with my night guard once I get it. I also have a permanent retainer on the back of my bottom teeth and have a different retainer I have to wear on the bottom at night until I get the night guard. So finished feels like a strong word. I feel like we’ve more just progressed to a new stage. I’ll really feel like I’ve finished when I can just wear all this junk to bed and my teeth can be free during the day. My orthodontist did give me a little bottle of champagne to celebrate. Since I can’t actually drink it, I sort of wanted to ask to trade it out for a prize from the wall of stuff kids earn fake money to buy things from. I refrained though.

Last Week Delight 10/10/2022

I am forcing myself to write this today. It’s the last thing I want to do because I’m feeling whatever the opposite of delight is. But let’s do it.

  • After 6 days of gloom and rain thanks to the remnants of Hurricane Ian lingering over the mid-Atlantic, the sun finally came back out at the end of the week and led to the perfect fall weather weekend. I am decidedly not made for living with so little sunshine. I would shrivel up and die in the Pacific Northwest.
  • Thursday was the first really nice day in almost a week, so my husband I went out to dinner at Tapas Teatro. The weather is starting to get a little chilly to eat outside, so it may have been our last meal at an actual restaurant for who knows how long. I usually get the salmon when I go there, but I’ve been craving lamb chops recently, so got those instead. They did not disappoint. They were perfectly seasoned and extremely juicy. Also, after my husband tossed most of our order of croquettes on the ground trying to pick up the plate, the waiter kindly replaced them without charging us even though we offered to pay for the replacement order since it was our fault.
  • Our plans were delayed a week because of the weather, but I went with my friend and her godson (his mom was also supposed to join, but wasn’t feeling great) to Weber’s Cider Mill Farm for some fall fun. I had been a number of years ago with another friend when her kid was little, but since it’s really aimed at children I hadn’t been any time recently. They had lots of little kid activities. He got to feed goats, mine for gems, ride in a barrel around a field, and go on a hay ride. We also got cider and apple cider donuts and picked out some decorative gourds. There were other activities to do as well, but we were working with a toddler here and he was ready to go, so he did not enjoy things like the hay bale maze, the boo barn or various climbing and sliding activities. Most importantly I got a dozen apple cider donuts and some pumpkin butter to take home with me.
  • Sunday afternoon I went to the viewing and musical tribute for the woman who has been the worship leader at my church for years, who as I previously mentioned passed away the other week. It started with an Omega Omega service with her Delta Sigma Theta sorority. It was not something I was familiar with previously as I was never part of Greek life and know even less about Black sororities. It was a tribute and induction for her into Omega Omega chapter, with Omega obviously signifying the end. After that there were lots of friends and musical colleagues sharing stories and providing musical tributes to her. It was a beautiful service that honored what a wonderful person she was and how many people’s lives she influenced.
  • While at the service I got to see a friend who moved to the Eastern Shore of Maryland last year after she got married. We only got to chat for like a minute because there were lots of people she was trying to say hello to, but it was nice to see her even for a brief second.
  • Driving home from the service my GPS took me a way I normally wouldn’t drive to help me avoid the traffic heading to the Ravens game. At one point I was driving east of downtown over a bridge that gave me a clear view of the city and last night’s incredible moon over it. I really wish it had been a spot I could have hopped out and taken a photo. After I turned off that street and started driving east the moon felt like it was huge and right in front of my car window. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it so big.
  • There’s a house I walk by that has two flat metal dinosaurs stuck in their yard. They used to take little hats that they made out of paper and laminated to them to celebrate various holidays. The dinosaurs had been sadly hatless all of this year though, but this week they got some Halloween hats. It made me happy.

And now for your musical delights.

  • One of my favorite hymns is “It Is Well with My Soul”. I first remember hearing it when we moved to Dallas and the church we attended sang it frequently. It’s been on my mind a lot in the last few weeks because of Paula saying “all shall be well” until the very end of her life. It was the first song they sang at her service last night, which seemed very fitting. There are lots of versions of this song on YouTube. I went with this one because it gave the appropriate emphasis to the final verse of the song, which is one of the things that I have always loved about the song. Not all the versions I tried out did that.
  • One of the very few good things to come out of the pandemic was that due to church moving online for many months at the beginning of the pandemic and then remaining as an online option after it restarted in person is that we now have lots of videos of Paula leading us in worship that wouldn’t exist if not for COVID. So I’m sharing one of those early online services cued up to her sharing her wonderful gift with us.

Last Week Delight 9/26/2022

I’ve got a lot of delights to share this week, so let’s get right to it.

  • I was walking to book club last week and passed a back hoe that someone had put giant googly eyes on. The back hoe part looked like a big nose or trunk. It really animated this piece of construction equipment. Thanks to whoever made something that most people would just walk by without a second glance into something that brings a smile to people’s faces.
Back hoe with googly eyes on it
  • Speaking of book club, I appreciate that we’ve been able to meet outside with the warmer weather. We might get one more in during October, but after that we’ll have to decide how we’re going to meet. I’m definitely not ready to go back to restaurants, but maybe meeting at someone’s house would be okay? Or we go back to virtual for the winter? I don’t now. Right now I’m just trying to enjoy being able to do things outside without trying to get too anxious about what the impending cold means for my social life.
  • Maybe 5 or so years ago (who knows how long it’s been with COVID time) I was heavily involved in a project at work purchasing new furniture for our library. In retrospect a lot of the chairs students said were their favorites they never actually use because while they are very comfortable, most of the times students want something more task oriented at the library. Thus no one ever sits in my favorite of all the chairs we bought. They have my favorite fabric. They’re comfy. They spin. But there’s three chairs clustered around a small circular coffee table type thing. Ideal maybe for having coffee, but not studying or working on a group project. I was delighted to walk out of my office the other day and see three students sitting in them all huddled over laptops and books piled on that tiny table. It didn’t look like the most comfortable spot to be doing what they were doing, but I was really happy that someone finally used those chairs.
  • Coming home on my morning walk recently there have been a couple days where I’ve seen a father and a daughter sitting on metal folding chairs on the sidewalk in front of their house with trays in their laps eating breakfast together. I guess they were getting out to enjoy some of the nice weather. I thought it was very sweet.
  • I walk by this house every morning on my morning walk. When it’s the time of year where it’s dark when I walk by it and they have a light on in the house, the way it glows through their shade into the dark sky totally reminds me of a Thomas Kinkade painting. You know the painter of light. He was very big in the 90s. They sold his paintings in malls. My parents have several of his paintings. He eventually became the butt of a lot of jokes I think, but the style of this house and that glowing light just scream Thomas Kinkade to me. This photo I took doesn’t do it justice because the camera picked up way more ambient light than I experienced when I was taking it diluting the effect you can see here. Does this photo not remind you of the painting at the top of this article?
House with light glowing from the windows
  • Someone in my neighborhood put up this really cute hand drawn missing cat poster that their kid made. There was a regular missing poster with an actual photo of the cat right next to it. I hope they got their cat back.
Hand drawn missing cat poster
  • I love a good black and white cookie. I used to always get one at Zaro in Penn Station to eat on the train home from NYC. Well I haven’t taken the train to or from NYC in at least three years thanks to COVID, so I haven’t eaten one of those cookies in a long time. My husband had to go up to New York for work on Friday. He drove up and his office is nowhere near mid-town, so he couldn’t get me a Zaro cookie. He did however seek a black and white cookie out for me and grabbed one from a diner near his office. It was actually not a very good black and white cookie. It was very dry, but it was the thought that counts.
  • Saturday was a beautiful fall day. I was desperately trying to find a friend to do something with me outside, but was having no success. Either people were out of town, had COVID in their houses, or otherwise already had plans. I also feel like my social circle is way smaller than it was before COVID and given all the limitations I have placed on my social life because of COVID it’s hard to reignite some of those more peripheral relationships from the before times. Anyway, I finally decided that I was going to walk over to RemFest, which is the neighborhood festival for the neighborhood just south of mine, by myself. Then it occurred to me that my coworker lives there, so I texted her and wound up meeting up with her and her husband at the festival and then going back and hanging out at her house afterwards. Normally I would have given up way sooner in my quest to find a friend, so I’m proud of me.
  • I feel like half my delights every week come from my daily walks, but hey a little reminder to get out into the world and try and find the little joys. Anyway, I was walking home the other morning and was coming up off of this little brick path that is canopied in trees that connects the upper and lower parts of this one road. It’s a very beautiful little spot. I’m not sure if she was new to Baltimore or just the neighborhood, but this woman came up to me and asked me if it went to Druid Hill Park. I told her no that is the complete opposite direction. So she asked me where that path went and I said just up north into a neighborhood. She very excitedly told me she was going to go explore it and went on her merry way. I appreciated the vibe.
  • Yesterday I went to the Orioles game with a bunch of friends most of whom I had not seen since before COVID as even in the before times it was mostly people I would see at parties but who I mostly didn’t hang out with on an individual basis. It was nice to see everyone again. It was quite the bizarre weather day. It was warm, but with a very stiff cold wind at times that eventually brought into some thunderstorms that caused a rain delay but that blew through very quickly. Then it alternated between cloudy and sunny. The O’s lost in 11 innings. It was a very long game. I appreciated the older woman in the next section over who was obviously humoring her husband who wanted to come to the game while she sat there and read a book.
  • And finally your musical delight for the week is a song by the 80s band Expose. I heard this on the radio the other day. I do feel like Expose is an 80s band that you don’t hear very much anymore and I don’t think every properly got their due. I still enjoy Expose’s music whenever I hear it.

Last Week Delight 9/22/2022

I am way late with my delights post this week, but work and life have been really busy so I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write anything until like 9:30 at night and my brain is too tired to write anything coherent at that point in the day. I’m finally getting a little bit of time on my lunch break today, so let’s see if I can knock this out really quick even though I actually have a lot of delights this week.

  • Obviously if you read my previous post you already know about last weekend seeing Amos Lee in concert, going to the Xponential Music Festival, and getting to see an old friend, so I won’t say more about that now but it was definitely a delight.
  • Related to going to the festival, there were lots of families with small children there. That meant I got to see lots of babies and toddlers wearing big old noise canceling headphones, which I love. I like that they’re having their hearing protected, that they’re getting indoctrinated into live music early, and that they look adorable in giant headphones on their tiny heads.
  • I’ve seen several cars around the area recently with Seniors painted on the windows with shoe polish or whatever kids these days do that with. In my day it was shoe polish. It delights me that kids these days are still doing that.
  • I only go to Starbucks a couple times a year. I don’t drink coffee and all their drinks are sugar filled and expensive. I do like to enjoy a pumpkin spice creme frappucino once a year though. Since I don’t like coffee, I don’t like pumpkin spice lattes. There’s also only a short window between when they release pumpkin flavored drinks and it gets cold enough that I don’t want to drink a frozen drink. So mid to late September I usually try and treat myself to what is essentially a pumpkin spice flavored milkshake. I did that on my way to work last week. Now I won’t drink another one until next year.
  • We’ve had some nice weather such that I’ve been driving home from work with my windows down a lot of days. I appreciate days where the temperature is just right to do that. Baltimore doesn’t have too many of them.
  • My neighbors have a bunch of sunflowers growing in their front yard. The other morning as I turned onto my block coming home from my morning walk I saw a guy taking a video of a squirrel running across the fence with a big old sunflower in his mouth. He told me his neighbor wanted to grow sunflowers and he warned him about the squirrels and now had video proof to share with him. It amused me.
  • I feel like I must have mentioned Maillard Patisserie here before. If not I have been remiss. It’s a fairly new bakery around the block from my house. I have already spent way too much money there, but everything is delicious. Sometimes if they don’t sell out they will have mystery bags of 4 items the next morning. I’ve never snagged one before, but last Friday I managed to get the last one. I was a little worried that I would wind up with a bunch of ham and cheese croissants because I don’t like ham and my husband is a vegetarian, but I appreciated that she had the bag labeled as veg so I knew that I was only getting items with no meat in them. I wound up with an almond croissant (my favorite thing there), an everything croissant, a fig and plum galette, and a maple walnut scone. A wonderful bag of mystery indeed.

And now for this week’s musical delights

  • For sure my musical highlight of last week was Allison Russell’s NPR Tiny Desk Concert. So much joy and love. I adore her and the wonderful band of women, the Rainbow Coalition of the Loving. If you need a pick me up and something that will put a smile on your face this is the best 22 minutes you’ll spend all week.
  • I heard the song “Shimmer” by Fuel on the radio the other day. We won’t talk about how it was playing on the Classic rock station and how old that made me feel. It’s a song I literally forget even existed and yet there I was singing all the words to it while driving to work. I always like when radio reminds me of music I didn’t remember even though it was obviously once something I heard all the time.
  • I was trying to listen to the new Marcus Mumford solo album last Friday and accidentally just put on some playlist of his songs on Spotify instead of actually just playing that album so all of a sudden I was listening to the Ted Lasso theme song. It took me a second to place it, but then it put a big smile on my face not because I particularly love that song but because I love Ted Lasso and the song reminded me of it.

Live Music Weekend

I packed a lot of live music into this past weekend much to my husband’s chagrin since he got dragged along for all of it. I have been a long time member of WXPN, the University of Pennsylvania radio station. I get free passes to their annual music festival, the XPonenential Music Festival aka XPNFest, with my membership level. However, until COVID happened the festival was always the same weekend as the Newport Folk Festival, so I was never able to go. Back when we were all young and naive and thinking COVID would be a thing of the past by fall of 2020, they pushed the festival back from July to September. Of course the festival didn’t happen that year, but they announced that they would be keeping the September date permanently because it would offer better weather anyway. They did have the festival in September last year, but I was still leery of large gatherings even outdoors so I didn’t go. I finally took advantage this year.

The festival is a half day Friday, a really full day on Saturday, and then a shorter Sunday. The only band I was super interested in for Friday was The War on Drugs, who I had already seen back in May, so we skipped out on Friday so that we didn’t have to take off work early and didn’t have to pay for an extra night in a hotel. It also meant that on Friday night I could drag my husband down to Annapolis to see Amos Lee in concert. He was playing as part of the inaugural Annapolis Songwriters Festival, which had a mix of over 70 paid and free concerts throughout the week. The concert was outside on City Dock. Madison Cunningham opened for him. I really want to like her more than I do because I keep seeing lots of people talk about her including critics and artists I am generally in alignment with musically, but I just can’t get into most of her music. She was fine, but even live I couldn’t get super into it. Oh well.

I have said it here before and I will continue to say it that Amos Lee’s Thursday night Instagram concerts during the first year of the pandemic really got me through that time, so I relish any chance I get to see him live. It doesn’t happen very often because he never plays in Baltimore. I saw him play a solo acoustic show last summer at Wolf Trap with a half capacity, socially distanced audience. I had tickets to see him play with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center back in April that was rescheduled from pre-COVID, but it was too close to our trip to Hilton Head for me to want to go and risk our vacation. So I was happy to finally get to see him play with his band. I will admit that it was not my most favorite of his sets. I paid to watch his shows from the Ryman and at Red Rocks on this tour and I liked those set lists more. I still enjoyed it though and will happily jump at the chance to see him again any time.

After getting home late Friday night from the Amos Lee show, we got up bright and early Saturday morning to drive up to Camden for XPNFest. We had a hotel booked at the Hilton Garden Inn, which is in walking distance to the festival. You’re pretty much not near anything else, but since we were essentially only going to the festival that was fine and it worked out well that we could just park over there and walk to everything.

I was kind of annoyed at both XPNFest and the Annapolis Songwriters Festival because of all the rules that differed across the 3 different venues I was going to be at and the fact that they didn’t enforce most of them. I think Freedom Mortgage Pavilion is the only one that actually enforced their annoying rules. I don’t consider it freedom to not be able to take my stuff into places anymore for security reasons, but I guess only gun owners freedoms count these days. The security at the other two venues was pretty lax though. I’m used to Newport where they literally do go through every little bit of your stuff thoroughly. In Annapolis and at Wiggins Park they barely glanced at anything. In Annapolis people had bags much larger than were supposedly allowed, and apparently they changed the no chair rule at the last minute I guess because they sold way fewer tickets than expected. I don’t know how other people found this out, but it would have been nice to know so we could have brought ours. Speaking of chairs, the chair height rule at XPNFest was way lower than at Newport, so I spent a bunch of money to buy us new chairs that fit their height requirements and so many people had tall chairs. We could have taken in whatever we want. Why have the rules if you’re not going to enforce them. I’m just mad because I spent so much time and money trying to make sure I complied with everything at each venue and then it mostly didn’t matter.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect at XPNFest as the set up is kind of funky. During the day they have shows in Wiggins Park on the waterfront, but then the big headlining shows at night are next door at Freedom Mortgage Pavilion. That holds 25,000 people, but I gathered that they sold additional tickets to those shows beyond the festival and that the Wiggins Park capacity was smaller than that, I just wasn’t sure by how much. Turns out the answer is A LOT. I have no idea what the capacity or attendance actually were, but I know the Newport Folk Festival caps at 10,000 people per day, which is tiny for a music festival, and XPNFest was definitely just a fraction of that. It was a teeny, tiny little baby festival. It also skewed very old. Most of the people there were my parents age. I only saw a handful of people in their 20s and then there were middle aged people, some with kids. I guess it’s because it’s a festival put on by a radio station and kids these days don’t listen to the radio. I did appreciate feeling like I’m not the only old weirdo that’s still into new music, and doesn’t just want to listen to what I enjoyed in high school. I’ve got a long way to go to catch up to most of the people at that this festival.

There were two stages at XPNFest. The River stage is the main stage overlooking the Delaware River and then the Marina stage that is sort of behind it and off to the side a little overlooking, well the marina. They are very close together and you can totally hear the music from anywhere, but the topography of the park means you can’t actually sit at one stage and turn around and actually see the other. They music basically just flips back and forth between the two stages. While they change the sets on one stage music is playing on the other. It was kind of nice not to have the Newport problem of always feeling like I’m missing out on something because there is music happening in too many places at once.

We set ourselves up at the Marina stage both days because there was better shade. I was amused because at most venues people fill in from front to back, but at the River stage people filled in from back to front because that’s where the trees were to provide shade. The Marina stage had more trees that were larger, so there was better shade overall. My husband just stayed put and I just walked over and stood in the back to watch the sets on the River stage.

On Saturday we left the shows at Wiggins Park a little early so that we could go have dinner with one of my oldest friends. We’ve been friends since I moved to Massachusetts in 7th grade. We stayed in touch even after my family moved again right after my Freshman year in high school. Since Baltimore and Philly are fairly close, we have usually been able to see each other once or twice a year. Then COVID happened and we hadn’t seen each other in 3 years. So I wanted to make sure to see her while we were up there. We met up for dinner and got to catch up for a few hours, which was nice. Then my husband and I headed back to the headlining part of the festival in Freedom Mortgage Pavilion.

I’ve talked a lot about the setup but haven’t actually said much about the music. I won’t bore you with an in depth look at every artist. I will just point out a couple of my highlights. I was happy to finally see Lo Moon, who I had tickets to see at a small club in Baltimore back in May but that I didn’t use. I think their music fits better in a dark club at night, but hey if what I can get is a bright stage in the middle of the day I’ll take it. Bartees Strange was definitely the highlight of Saturday. His new album, Farm to Table, is definitely going to be on all the best of 2022 lists. He also has an incredible stage presence. His set was a lot of fun. Sunday was my highlight day though. I was excited to see Buffalo Nichols, who I had been looking forward to at the Newport Folk Festival before we had to abandon ship. I was happy to get a second chance at seeing him. The set I was most looking forward to all weekend was Kathleen Edwards, who I have never seen live but have wanted to for awhile. She was my favorite set of the weekend, and I immediately wanted to go see her live again. So I’m hoping that will happen at some point. Jenny Lewis was the Sunday night headliner, and she also gave a really great performance. I was extremely happy that she played “She’s Not Me” as her second song in the set because it’s my favorite and she doesn’t always play it.

All in all it was a nice little music festival, and I look forward to going again in future years. It’s not the Newport Folk Festival. Going to this just reminded me how special that is. The sense of history and the collaborations that happen there can’t be beat. This was a festival where artists played music and it was enjoyable, but it was each artist doing their own thing. That was not what Newport is about. I will go back to XPNFest and enjoy the music, but Newport is home and where I get to commune with my folk family.

OBX Vacation

One of my friends has been going to Corolla in the Outer Banks with his family for a long time, but they stopped doing the family beach trip a few years ago. He missed going down there with a group of people larger than just his wife and their two kids, so he suggested to the rest of the group of us who religiously did Saturday night virtual game night for the first two years of the pandemic that we get a house together and do a beach trip this summer. Surprisingly enough it actually came together and happened this past week.

There were a total of 8 adults and 5 kids ranging from ages 6 to 9. We had a 6 bedroom, 4 and half bath house. So it worked out for every family to have a dedicated bathroom plus a half bath in the room the kids slept in. There were some let’s say cleanliness issues with the house, but as far as the set-up it worked really well at least as far as I was concerned, and it was the most well stocked rental kitchen I have ever seen.

It was on the sound side of Corolla with the closest beach access about a half mile away. That was completely fine for my morning sunrise beach walks, but when we dragged all our stuff and the kids down to the beach we drove and parked. That worked out fine until the last day we were there when the beach access we had been using was flooded out. There were crazy thunderstorms on Wednesday night that caused crazy flooding around Corolla including the house next door that was lying just enough lower than ours that water was three quarters of the way up the tires on their cars. The entire block from the parking lot to the boardwalk where we had been accessing the beach was under knee high water that didn’t recede before we left. It was gloomy and occasionally drizzly on Friday so we never went to the beach to hang out there, though I still did my walk. When we tried to go back Saturday it was still under water so we made a quick pivot to another beach access, but some people had problems finding that access and parking since we hadn’t planned it ahead of time and not everyone had phones on them, but eventually we all made it there.

I’ve never been to the Outer Banks, but I was not expecting that the water would potentially be cold this time of year. Apparently it’s very dependent on how the jet stream is moving. A few days before we got there it was apparently quite warm, but that brought in a jelly fish swarm. By the day we got there the water was only about 60 degrees, which was freezing, but at least drove the jelly fish away. It was quite hot outside, so the water didn’t feel too bad as long as you didn’t stay in too long and after you got over the initial shock getting in. It’s been a long time since I’ve really played in the water at the beach, so that was kind of fun. It did get warmer as the week went on and by Saturday we were starting to see jelly fish pop back up again, so I wasn’t sorry to miss out on that.

Mostly I just went to the beach while we were there, but we did take a trip to the Corolla lighthouse and walked around the little historic village which didn’t have that much to offer but now I can say I’ve been. Friday since it was gross out we decided to play mini-golf. My husband and I have been to a specific chain of pirate mini-golf in several locations and we thought the one in Corolla was part of that chain. It was not. It was part of a different chain of pirate mini-golf, and it was lame. I am terrible at mini-golf even though I love it, and I was getting lots of ones and twos. At the other chain we’ve been to they always have two different courses you can play, so we had anticipated playing both. This one only had one, so we were going to stop and play at the real grass mini-golf course, but we were there an hour too early. However, it turns out most of the rest our friends were going to go to that course later after it opened, so we all went together. That course was hard, and was not made any easier by the fact that it started raining on us halfway through. We persevered though.

Much of my non-beach time was spent doing this ridiculous Lego minifigures faces puzzle that was crazy hard, but just easy enough to keep you going. There were probably 4 of us that worked at it pretty diligently and a couple of other people who would pop a piece in here and there and it took us six days and approximately one billion hours to put it together. We did have a good time doing it though and joking about how awful it was. You should go read the reviews on Amazon. They contain real gems like 5 stars, one of the dumbest things I’ve ever bought on Amazon.

My husband also set up a screen and projector one night so we could do a movie night outside in and around the pool. The kids watched from the pool while the adults decided we preferred deck chairs. We watched Lightyear, which was meh, but it was a fun activity and the kids enjoyed it.

This was my first time in the Outer Banks ever, so I can’t compare Corolla to any other part. However, I have a feeling it would not be my preferred place to go. The fact that you have to basically drive almost an hour south past it to get to a bridge to cross the sound and then drive back up on a two lane busy road that is super trafficy does not make me think that it’s better that some of the more southern parts you would already be very close to once you got across that bridge. Also, it seemed too crowded for the amount of stuff that was there. I surprisingly never felt that way at the beach, but like we couldn’t get all the groceries we needed for like 3 days because the shelves were decimated by everyone arriving on the weekend and wanting to buy food. And there doesn’t seem like very many restaurants for the number of people that are there. We ordered pizza at 5 pm on Sunday night and still had a two hour wait. Luckily we planned to cook most of our meals since I think eating out for dinner every night like my husband and I normally do when we go on beach vacations by ourselves would not have worked out unless we wanted to eat dinner at like 4:00. I’m not sure how it would be in any other part of the Outer Banks, but probably not worse anyways.

So long story short, the trip was a lot of fun. It was super nice to get away for the week and really take a break from all the stuff I normally worry about. I think we all traveled together well, and I would totally love to do it again, though maybe at a different beach if I can convince my friend to abandon the place he’s been going his whole life.

Last Week Delight 7/25/2022

Writing this post this week is real hard because I feel anything but delightful, so indulge my whining for a few moments until we actually get to some delights. It’s kind of weird to be writing a post about delights while crying, but here we are. If you know me at all, you know that the Newport Folk Festival is my favorite weekend of the entire year. It’s the thing I most look forward to doing and really fills my soul to get me through the next year until we go back and do it all over again. But it was all snatched away from me because of stupid COVID and the fact that I’m a responsible human. For the first time ever we had a friend with us driving up and sharing an AirBnB. Unfortunately, she tested positive for COVID on Saturday morning after only the first day of the festival. So we basically quickly packed up all of our stuff and drove home with N95 masks on and the windows open despite the 100 degree heat. Let me tell you that was a long, hot, unpleasant drive. We could have not cared about spreading it and sent her home on a plane and then gone to the festival ourselves knowing that we could be incubating COVID, but we are not those people so we missed out on two days of the festival. I’m just so annoyed because literally I can count on my fingers and tell you the exact times I have spent time with anyone besides my husband unmasked indoors since COVID started and one of the few times I attempt it, it blows up in my face. I’ve missed out on so much in the last two years while everyone else has just gone back to living their lives, and one of the few times I actually try and let myself live a little despite COVID and it gets destroyed. Saying it’s not fair is a really dumb thing to say, but well it’s not fair and I’m mad at the world right now.

I don’t know what is in store for the festival as I write this on Sunday and it’s probably better for my mental health if I never find out what awesome surprises I miss out during the closing Sunday night show (update: it was Joni Mitchell who hasn’t performed a full live set in decades. I’m devastated to have missed it), but I know a bunch of amazing things that I missed out on Saturday and my heart is already broken. Paul Simon showed up as a surprise set closing the festival on Saturday. When he announced his farewell tour a few years ago, knowing that he had somehow never played Newport, I was so sure he was going to be a surprise guest that year. Then he wasn’t and I figured well that’s it. It’s never going to happen. But it did happen and I missed it. Sob!

So I’m sitting at home instead of the festival today wallowing in self pity and wondering if I’m going to test positive for COVID in the next day or two and hiding away from my husband and wearing a mask in all common rooms lest one of us test positive while the other avoids it somehow. Of course I got a big reminder this morning that this self pity I’m sitting in is pretty mis-placed because there are people I know dealing with much bigger challenges than me missing some live music no matter how much I love it. So I’m sending some prayers up for her and giving myself a reality check. So let’s end this pity party and try and find what good we can.

First up a few delights from earlier in the week pre-festival.

  • We record Jeopardy on our DVR and then just watch an episode whenever we have time, thus we are weeks and weeks behind. So in relation to what’s happening on the show currently I don’t know, but two episodes in a row that we watched this past week I got the final Jeopardy answer and none of the contestants did. I always feel super smart when I know it and they all get it wrong and to have it happen two nights in a row made me feel even extra super smart.
  • Cicadas. I’m not talking about the crazy overwhelming number of 17 year cicadas that we experienced in Baltimore last year. I’m just talking about your run of the mill cicadas that come out every year during the heat of the summer. We’ve finally hit that part of summer when they’re out, and I love hearing their hum early in the morning on my walk or in the evening. It’s totally the sound of summer to me.
  • The Mark and Sarah Talk about Songs podcast is just starting a season where they rank 40 songs to determine the most Lilith Fair song of them all. They switched up their format to exclusively do these ranking seasons, and this is their second one. I miss the original format where they used to just talk about a random song each episode and then do a ranking of songs from a particular album every 10th episode and then in March do a larger ranking tournament on a topic, which is what they are doing all the time now. Even though I’m less into the new format, I still like the podcast and am particularly looking forward to this Lilith Fair season that starts for real on the day I’m posting this. They had one short intro episode to the season last week, but this week’s episode starts the actual rankings.

And now onto a few delights I experienced at the extremely short time I got to be at the Newport Folk Festival this year.

  • I made sure to get my lobster roll right away this year. Last year I missed out because the little sandwich shop/ice cream place right by the ferry we take to and from the festival where I used to grab a late dinner from some nights after we got back over on the ferry closed during the pandemic. There’s more like a real restaurant that just opened in that space this year. There was some temporary sandwich place in there last year that didn’t have a lobster roll. I refuse to eat a lobster roll at the actual festival because it seems too dicey to eat something like that in the hot sun. Anyway, this year after we got in on Thursday night, we got dinner from a place that is down the road from where my sister-in-law used to live because I know that they have a lobster roll I enjoy. So I checked that off my list right away.
  • Every year we have gone to the festival there has been this other couple that sets up their blanket and chairs in very near proximity to us. In the 10 years we’ve been going, we’ve never actually spoken with them, but I always see them and they have been my secret festival friends in my head all these years and it makes me happy whenever I see them. I spotted them for the first time this year waiting in the merch line where I made a beeline as soon as the gates opened while my husband went and snagged our normal spot. When I got there he told me the empty chairs in front of us were indeed those of our festival friends who apparently saw him setting up and were like oh it’s you. We sit by you every year. So then I chatted with them when they got back and told them they were my secret festival friends and it made me so happy to find out that we were their secret festival friends right back. She told me I’m always dancing with her at the end of the night even if no one else is. I’m sad I won’t be there to dance with her at the end of this festival. I hope they don’t think we ran away and sat somewhere else instead.
  • Speaking of merch, I’m very happy that I was smart enough to go ahead and wait in line for merch on Friday as well as make it over to the Newport Festival Foundation membership tent to renew our membership that guarantees us the ability to buy tickets for next year’s festival because it’s real hard to get tickets these days otherwise. I would have been devastated if we didn’t have that guarantee and then failed to get tickets next year. So I’m glad I didn’t put that off thinking I still had two more days to deal with it.
  • The festival is held on the grounds of Fort Adams State Park, so there is obviously an old fort there. My friend and I were at the stage that is set up inside the fort watching a set and were sitting up against the fort wall where there was a little bit of shade still. There was a family next to us with two little girls I’m guessing about 6 and 3. The older one came over to us first and gave us little rubber band bracelets that she made. Then her sister came over and gave my friend a sticker. I guess I wasn’t cool enough for a sticker. Then she started telling us all about the ghosts and skeletons that live in the fort, but that we shouldn’t be afraid because if they tried to come out and get us she would kick them for us. It was very adorable. I love that the festival is so family friendly and you see newborn babies to senior citizens.
  • We stayed at probably the best AirBnb I’ve ever stayed in. The property itself was great and really well stocked. And she was super awesome when I told her about having to leave early because of COVID. She refunded us a little bit of money right away and then said that if the guests who were supposed to check in after us on Monday said they wanted to come a day early now she would refund even more of our money, which she just did. So in total we got one of the two nights we didn’t stay refunded. Obviously, she was not required to do any of that, so that fact that she did was super awesome and above and beyond since it meant she lost some money on our booking on a prime weekend. There were some other details that I would mention that would let you connect this post to her booking if you went looking, and since she asked me not to mention the refund in my review I’m going to leave it at that here. But I’m definitely planning on rebooking her place for the festival next year.