Night and day

Amazing the difference a week makes. Bent on fixing the electronic portion of my show, I felt a lot more confident at the mic than I did on opening night a week ago. There was a nice crowd and a few tables were there for the complete session. The change to sitting from standing alleviated most of the upper back pain I got when I spent the first week on my feet. I bounced around my set lists and played a number of songs from a new section I added called Prime, where I put what I believe to be my most familiar numbers for gringos.

I organized the crap differently in our second bedroom so the junk did not monopolize the space therein. Rebe refused to let us pay for anything under our protestation. Next week we will eat there since other people are attending who we invited. Weeks after that we will eat before we come and have drinks and maybe avocado pie on the house, if he so desires.

We went to a clinic near the foot of the hill yesterday and were told to come back today. They had run out of vaccine. We tried the door but it had turned out to be locked. Someone inside heard the rattle and was kind enough to tell us this news. Should be interesting to see if they have a new supply and if some is left when we arrive. We will head down there about 10am with hopes high that we will succeed in getting the flu shit.

Other plans for today involve a trip to Arcadia for beverages followed by dinner at Rufo's. His place seems busier when we walk by than it was earlier in the season, but nothing approaching the crowd we are used to seeing there. As we have learned from past experiences there, we will try to sit back from the music which has a tendency to be loud enough there such that it is hard for a 4-person table to speak with each other. When I started my gig last night, I asked the audience to let me know if the volume was too high or too low.

We walked to the clinic for about 10:15 and were told we could not get the flu shot until noon. So we walked to Intercam bank to get a CLABE for Por Los Niños account so I can transfer online the money I get in my tip jar during my gig. That was a debacle as they claimed they were unable to give me the CLABE as it is a security issue. That security issue excuse wore very thin 40 years ago. We had the account number and just needed the 6 digits before and the last check digit to build the CLABE. This is a 17 digit number that identifies a bank ID, branch number, and account number. I did not anticipate this would go well and it did not.

We walked back toward the clinic and stopped in at El Arrebol oasis for a while to kill some time. I had hot cakes and she thought she was ordering soup. There are two dishes in Mexico whose names are sope and sopa. The menu must have said the latter and when the order came she could not eat it. The owner came to the table and spoke with us for a while and we ended up getting it to go and she or I will eat it tomorrow. This happened earlier this year once at Doña Licha unfortunately too. Once we arrived at the clinic, we got our flu shots and left after making a 100 peso donation to the clicnic.

We met P&B at 4:15 at their place. When we were walking there, a garbage truck was chugging up the hill and the wind from its passing caused a cockroach to land on Dominique's arm. She whisked it away and we went up to P&B's so she could wash up. We walked to Arcadia and had the usual gab'n'drink until about 6pm. We then headed off to Rufo's for dinner. We had the catch of the day, Bernie had ribs, and Patsy some taco-like dish. The music there was great and after the dinner crowd subsided, Rufo picked up his ax and joined the guitar player. We listened to them for 20 minutes or so then headed home.