Last night we had a really good band playing in the bandstand just outside our windows. They are a group from Ljubljana, but they play New Orleans style jazz music from the 40's and 50's. Their name is the Dixie Shock Band, but their music is not shocking at all. In fact, it was quite mellow. There was a guy who sounds just like Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong, with a deep, gruff voice. He's the one sitting on a chair playing the banjo, under the canopy on the right side of the photo.
The leader is the bowlegged guy wearing suspenders and he played clarinet - playing it really well. They also had a guy on trumpet, one on trombone, a drummer, and I heard bass a couple of times. We didn't go down to see their faces, but other than the back-side view, we had the best seats in town. The guy who sounds like Satchmo ended nearly every number by crooning "Oh, yeah", stretching it out like Satchmo did. If you don't remember Satchmo, do a google search on Louis Armstrong. Listen to "What a Beautiful World" on YouTube, which was his last big hit song, and listen for the "Oh Yeah" at the end. We opened our kitchen windows and sat on our little cafe chairs to watch them play. It was a nice, romantic evening.
The day didn't start all that nice for me. I woke with excruciating pain in my knee. Some pain has been normal for a while, but this time it was awful. I can't figure it out. I walk a mile or two every day, and it doesn't hurt much when I walk, although I do use a cane. But when I get back and sit down it aches. I get an occasional pang that is short-lived. When I sleep I lay on my side. When I lay down in bed, one knee on top of the other, it will start to hurt and the pain grows if I continue to lay like that. I started putting a pillow between my knees a few weeks ago, and that helps a lot, but it still comes sooner or later. Usually I wake up after 5 or 6 hours because of it hurting. So I get up and sit in the recliner until morning, sometimes going back to sleep and sometimes unable to. It helps to have my knee flexed a little, so I put a pillow under my knee in the recliner, but even then it will start to hurt again, especially if I let my toes point out, instead of straight up. Kind of weird.
Well, I didn't set out to complain about my knee, but the reason it impacted my day is that we were scheduled to go with the young sister missionaries down to Celje to celebrate one of the elder's birthday. Liz baked him a cake from scratch - no mix involved. Whoever heard of such a thing in this day and age? She also has a roman candle disguised as a birthday candle and she hopes to get a big bang out of that! But with my knee in its current state of ouch, I opted to remain home and mope while she goes out to party. Their plan is to have lunch at the restaurant of birthday-boy's choice (probably either pizza, or hamburgers), and then hike up to the Celje Castle. 1,000 stair steps and then along the cobble stones to enjoy the view doesn't seem like the prudent place to go for this old geezer. So, I stayed home and watched a movie named Gunjan Saxena, which coincidentally is also the name of the first female combat pilot in the Indian military. The subtitles were very soothing.
I did manage to complete some of my auditing tasks, too, but that is too boring for an exciting BLOG like this one.
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