Seeking Shade

      Happy 420! I’m not really into the whole thing myself, but I do recognize when it comes around. It’s hard not to, as I have a lot of “friends” who are, and practically treat it like a holiday. I’ve gotten to the point where I really only smoke at bedtime. I have no desire to go through my regular life without my brain on. I will probably have a few extra puffs tonight, especially since my wife doesn’t have to work tomorrow. Tonight is kind of like a Friday. It’s kind of cool, for some reason her work decided to give the employees an extra paid day off during the year, and it just happens to be tomorrow! What’s also cool is that they’re having a watch party tonight for the Padres. It should be fun. Everyone is so excited about the return of Tatis Jr. I’m not sure one person can make that big of a difference, but hey, if it gets people excited, it’s exciting. I hope he’s able to pull something off. I do understand it to be true that excitement can cause things to happen. I also understand that if a person creates a bit of momentum, it can be carried on to those around them. So, I have hope, although I feel that the Padres will probably play the way they’ve been playing, which, in case you don’t know, is so-so. Who knows, maybe he is the spark. We got to go see a game last weekend. It was our friend Ryan’s birthday, and what he wanted, was for a bunch of his friends to go to a game together. So, we did. It was fun. A couple of our friends got to the tailgate park early, so we had a place to post up. I didn’t realize that there would be no place down there to buy beer, so we tailgated sober. Which was fine. I was still trying to recover from the night before. Water was more in alignment with my needs at the time. Some people were already quite inebriated.

     I guess the bulk of the crew got there around 11am. That was a little too early for me. We took the trolley, and got there near noon. I wasn’t sure about the shade situation, and didn’t want to spend the entirety of the day in the sun. Good thing we did, our seats were in direct sun. Luckily, in the parking lot they had a pop-up shade, so I was able to get out of the sun. We had pretty good seats, they were just in direct sun, so I was a little nervous. I had put on a good amount of sunscreen, so I just rolled with it. I made it about 5 innings before I had to seek shade. We got a chance to walk around and see what had changed. We hadn’t been to the park in 3 years, so it’s always fun to check out the new stuff. One of our friends, from a different friend group, actually owns one of the restaurants there. It was cool to see his place, and see the line waiting to get his food. It was new since the pandemic, so it was our first time getting to see it. It was cool. By the time we were done walking around, and eating, we got another beer and went back to our seats. It was right about the 7^th inning and the seats were finally in the shade, so we were good for the rest of the game. We won that game! Everyone was obviously very excited. It was interesting that when we got back to our seats, the whole area was full of people. We had like 30 people, and I apparently hadn’t seen all of them. I guess a lot of people were avoiding the sun for most of the game, and only came to the seats when there was shade. People said I was red, but I am happy to admit that I did not get sunburned. I must have lathered myself up appropriately.

     Tomorrow night my wife and I are going to see a band at the Ken Club. They’re called All Monster Revue. I checked them out online, and it’s okay. Not really our style, but the singer has been to see my punk band, The Calvins, like 3 times, and I feel like we should reciprocate. They had actually asked us to play the show with them, but my bandmates were not into it. They are also not interested in going to see them. However, they do want to go see a different band on Saturday night. I’m not sure I want to attend 3 social events in a row. The band on Saturday night is the new band of the guy who used to be the drummer for Fluf. Apparently, he wants to play with us, and they want to see what he’s all about. I feel that my bandmates think he’s “cooler” than the band I’m going to see, and possibly a chance at better gigs. I guess it’s better if we divide and conquer. More schmooze that way. I see it as kind of the same thing, but when I asked if they wanted to go see the band I’m going to see, they practically scoffed. Oh well, the more Calvins sightings the better. We are getting a lot of shows right now. So many shows that we’re turning shows down. I never thought I’d be in that situation, but like I was saying earlier, when momentum gets going, it gets passed around. Kind of like a joint! Sorry, I probably wouldn’t have put that in if it weren’t 420, and I wasn’t watching a documentary on the history of the “weed movement.” But hey, that’s what happened. Or is happening? I’m not sure about the tense there, but I’ll leave it at that. Maybe it is weird to go see a band just to reciprocate. It’s nice, yeah, but would it make more sense to go see a band whose music I’d actually like?  I’m sticking with the more sightings the better.