Bodging my way through life

So we showered and put on clean clothes and headed to Annapolis to see
Don Dixon
and
Marti Jones
at
Rams Head On Stage.
Granted, we'd
seen them last month
in Philly at the Tin Angel
along with their friend and co-conspirator
Kelley Ryan
but we love seeing them live.

We keyed the route into the GPS, which informed us there was a 11 minute delay on the route.
It was a fair way out, so we decided to see it it cleared and headed out.
Sure enough, after a little while, it had become an 8 minute delay.
But sure enough, we got to stopped traffic on the beltway,
and the GPS announced it had just jumped to 16 minutes. We told it to find a way around,
and it routed us down 187, over a bit, and back up, through some fairly pretty scenery.
We popped back out on the beltway right where the emergency vehicles were,
and resumed our journey in very light traffic.

These delays got us into Annapolis without much time for dinner.
We found the parking garage we had used last time,
but it was surrounded by construction so we had to squeeze around to use sidewalks that
were officially closed, and then do some more squeezing through a little garden to escape at all.
This put us well off the beaten path, and it took us yet more time to wend our way back to West Street.

By now, timing was really tight, but we were both hungry and wanted a real meal (there's food at Rams Head,
but not really what we were looking for).
I vetoed the tavern, so we stuck our noses in a Mexican place that was hopping.
There were a bunch of people waiting for tables, so that wasn't an option.
Fortunately, there was a Thai place nearby
(Pad Thai) that didn't look too busy,
so we went in there. They offered a Rama chicken dish with steamed broccoli and carrots
with spicy peanut sauce that sounded good to me, so I ordered that.
Our food came right out, and it was really good, too.
The (fairly cute) waiter said it was his favourite dish.

We had gotten notification that the concert was at 7PM, not 8PM as originally,
but it was apparent that the people at the next table (who had showed up after us) hadn't,
and they were scurrying!

We walked across the street to the concert and got situated.
We had bought our tickets the day they went on sale,
but they had sold fast, so we were a little back and off to the side
(I had thought we were way in the back, but was happy this wasn't the case).
The set list was similar to the one at Tin Angel (without Kelley, whose
absence Marti was bemoaning, those two really have fun together),
but they had to keep it short, as there was another show later (which
is probably why the show got bumped up to 7). They said they were trying
to do a cut from every album they'd released, but there are enough of those
that it's not really practical! They ended up up with a rousing rendition of
Praying Mantis, a fun song with a great bass line.

We stuck around afterward to say hi, and both Don and Marti recognized
fizzygeek, which was nice. Don seems interested in tee shirts,
and remarked on one guy's Folksmen shirt, another couple who had Don & Marti
shirts that were probably 20 years old, but still looked new. He liked my Josie and the Pussycats shirt
(I had worn it, hoping he'd play Who Let The Cat Out Of The Bag),
and was most intrigued with Andrea's
Tofu? Horse? Refrigerator?
shirt. We told him we'd send him a link.

Then we headed back homeward. It took a little searching to figure out a way back to the
garage (once we got there, we realized we could have just walked half a block down an alley
if we'd known about it) but it was a nice night, so that was no problem.

Andrea was unhappy with the prospect of driving back around the beltway at night,
so I pointed out we could just stay on route 50 and go right through DC instead.
This didn't thrill her either, but we eventually decided to give it a go.
The GPS kept wanting us to take I-395, but I ignored that and just headed west,
then south to Constitution, whereupon it got the idea. At that point, I knew the way
home anyway, so it didn't matter.

We got home pretty tired, but really glad we had gone.

But then he showed up at the fabulous and bizarre O Mansion, where we saw him on Sunday! He brought along Marti Jones as a surprise guest! With him were Mark Bryan (of Hootie and the Blowfish) and Danielle Howle, who were also a lot of fun. Poetry, singing, silliness, and much music. Good crowd, too.

And Don's playing with his band Arrogance in September down in North Carolina! Yay!