I’m sat here again at my Grandpas PC and my father seems to be cooking something interesting (judging by the smell). Pretty hungry too, not eaten since breakfast this morning and it is now 8:23pm!  My dad is mostly vegetarian which means a lot of tofu, broccoli, chickpeas and beans of various sort but he cooks ’em well and so it’s usually a nice wholesome meal.

My mother incidentally is also pretty much a vegetarian these days as well but her cooking often results in some sort of vegetable mush concoction, usually tasty but odd looking.

Anyhow,  so yes, a couple days ago there was a pretty big storm blowing over Long Island, there were winds of up to 50mph in some cases, it didn’t rain torrents but everything got a nice refreshing douse of it.

I enjoyed watching the trees blow around in the wind and sat outside on the porch for a short while to watch the show.  Then the power went out and I returned inside to see my father and grandparents scrambling around in the darkness for torches and candles.  It took them a moment to realise that just opening the blinds on the windows would solve the darkness problem but as it was getting dark pretty quickly we stacked up all the flashlights we could find and tested their batteries.

Then we realised that we wouldn’t be able to cook any food without power so my father and I drove off quickly to the ‘Stop and Shop’ supermarket to buy some ready-cooked food.  On the way twigs and small branches were falling from their trees all over the road and some banged down on the car, fun stuff!  We also passed a huge tree that had fallen across the front lawn, narrowly missing the house behind,  the storm certainly was shaking the place down.  

** Ooh dinner is now ready.. to be continued then.. **

Right, back now, well we had meatballs today so what do I know about my fathers vegetarian habits!? That said he did say he would have preferred tofu… Hmmm.. So where was I?

Ah yes, getting crushed by trees.. Well as we navigated our way in the blustering wind and rain, my father told me about some woodcutters he knew in Vermont who were chopping down trees in a storm,  one of them took off his helmet for a moments relief and unfortunately at that moment a branch fell on his head killing him.  Not too nice.

Well we got our food from the supermarket and then dodged some more branches and felled trees on our way back.  Typically though when we walked through the front door, the lights were back on, powered had been restored.  Ah well, we enjoyed our dinner.

You may have noticed that I am writing a lot about my father, it should be said that he was not in my life for many years as he and my mother separated when I was about 4. My mother, then living up in Vermont with him, decided to go back to the place she grew up in; Stratford-Upon-Avon in England where her own mother put her up for a bit. She took me with her leaving my father in the US. My mother raised me on her own and I was fortunate to obtain a relatively good education where the primary school; ‘Broad Street’ in Stratford and the secondary school; ‘Alcester Grammar School’ played a big part in integrating me as a deaf student into the hearing world.

It wasn’t until I was 17/18 that I met my father again. He had kept in regular contact writing me letters but even so, he was this unknown stranger to me. I may write further about the experiences of meeting and being with my father after years of separation sometime in the future. This is a story that is still being lived out so to speak and so is best left for another day.

I will say though that so far it has been an interesting and bewildering experience for me. There is much to pick up on, observe, talk of and participate in for the both of us. So far I have done so with somewhat of an emotional detachment.  I suppose it is in this way that I wish to reserve judgement until the beginnings of the bigger picture can to be seen.  By this time, I hope I will have a better idea of what part my father is to play in my life.

Well in a frantic bid to catch up to today, I shall mention that my father and I went hunting for music shops with consideration for labor day bargains in mind.  We visited a couple stores but I was a little disappointed with their range of products.  They were ‘Sam Ash’ and ‘Guitar Centers’ which appear to be pretty sizable chains in the USA. I’m currently on the look out for an Akai EWI4000s which is a wind controller that has an inbuilt synth.  It essentially allows me to control sounds on my computer (or internally) by blowing into it like a wind instrument and fingering the valves in a similar style to a clarinet or saxophone. This allows for a more expressive performance, or at least that is the theory.

Unfortunately of all the places I’ve been to so far, no-one has had one which is certainly frustrating!  I will probably resort to eBay or an online vendor in the end but I want to see and hold one first.

I am also on the look out for a nice acoustic guitar but have yet to ‘find the one for me’.  Interestingly all of the $1500+ guitars I have tried have been pretty terrible to play, at least in comparison to the Ovation acoustic I sold before to help fund this very trip.  Unless I find another make that impresses me then I suppose I shall be sticking with Ovation, which incidentally are very good guitars as well but I don’t think reflect the true sound of what an acoustic guitar is about.. Hmmm. 

In the end I gave up on the music shops and left to go home feeling let down and unusually unmaterialistic. Meh.

So as the topic implies, I am extra tired tonight (which will explain any questionable grammer above) and shall leave it there.  Good night!