"It was a quiet week in Lakewood, my hometown. . ."

I need to live in a town with four syllables to make that headline work properly. Scansion is important if one is really going to make these riffs on popular culture resonate.

I played a funeral for the client's mother on Wednesday. A typical funeral for the most part. Except that the grave location was within three or four spaces of my own mother's grave. An oddly moving experience.

One of the weddings later in the week was in the garden of the Long Beach Museum of Art. If you absolutely have to be married out of doors, this is probably one of the prettiest spots in the Long Beach area to do it:



Lovely old turn-of-the-19th century buildings on either side of a garden overlooking the Pacific and a slight sea-breeze making the mid 90s temperature bearable for all except one unfortunate piper wearing a 1/2 ton of Scottish wool, made a very pleasant setting.

Saturday night was remarkable only in that I played for an American Cancer Society Relay-for-Life event. I've done this numerous times in the past. But this one, at least as far as my bit was concerned, was perfectly organized. A first. 9 o'clock arrive. 9:10 play the folks around the circuit. Play the lament. 9:38 go home.

The rest of the week was even less eventful.

And this week could have been much more interesting. I could be here instead of idling in front this keyboard trying to remember what it was I meant to write when I sat down.