Last Night At The Party

I left sunny Tampa, Florida....... had a terrible flight from Tampa to Charlotte, North Carolina, a better flight from Charlotte to Manchester but still not great. I landed in a terrible storm that turned New Hampshire into a disaster area because of all the flooding. It was a mess.

We left Jim's house to go set up the church where the party was and what normally would have taken 10 minutes turned into and hour and a half because of the washed out roads. We saw one moron try to drive through a washed out spot in the road and he ended up sinking his car up to at least the bottom of his windows. More proof we need to throw some shock in the gene pool and thin it out a bit. We finally got to the church and while we were setting up Jim was being abused by Darin for keeping him busy for like 5 hours or something. They went to 2 guitar shops, ate at Hooters and all the while Darin is thinking somethings up because Jim never wants to just hang out like this and he was keeping track of mileage on his van and keeping up with all of his wife's phone calls so he could try and figure out what was going on.

Darin had an idea that something was up but he thought it would be for the coming weekend. He was not expecting a party last night. So, after much stress and anxiety--most of which was caused by Darin himself--Shari and Jim pulled it off and pulled it off well. Darin was most surprised. I was standing up on the stage with the other musicians when Darin looked up and saw me. He had to make his way through the crowd of church congregation members and family to get to the front of the room. It was a good reunion. It had been 7 years since we had seen or spoke to each other.

The night progressed with lots of slides of family, friends, cars, kids, bands, music............ everything that has made up the life of Darin Shaw. Then the band got up to play. It consisted of me on guitar, Jim Mariany (Darin's nephew) on guitar and vocals, Jesse Andreasen on guitar and vocals, Peter Havens on bass, and Dan Cruz on drums. Darin joined us for a few of his original tunes and we had a blast.

Tonight we are going to some bar and play and try to win $500.