Next, Shelly and I went on a date. At least that's what she called it. We went to the George Hrab (one of my geek mancrushes, google for him) show at University of Texas at Arlington last Friday. The crowd was quite small, perhaps 30 people. I think it's an unfortunate choice of time and place. While the UTA Geosciences building had a quite nice little lecture hall with stage that worked well for a small show, choosing the Friday night before an entire week off after all the university kids headed home for vacation probably wasn't the best choice.
Still, the show was a lot of fun and George did great with the venue. I'd been to shows with underwhelming crowds before, like a show with The Guess Who that fetched about 50 people at Arkansas' Magic Springs Family Fun Park where I worked for a couple of summers in the 80's -- boy those guys made it clear that they were there to punch the clock and get the heck outta town.
Also the Geosciences building had a very nice fossil display in the hall. A couple hundred million years ago, Texas was at the bottom of an ocean, so most of the fossils you find around here are marine. Sharks teeth and ammonite fossils are plentiful here, and they had some nice examples.
Shelly brought her knitting with her (as Shelly brings her knitting EVERYWHERE), and she finished up a pair of socks (go here for a bit about her new sock fetish). After the show was over, she presented a pair of socks to George in appreciation. Strangely, George said that he had never received socks before.
The next day, the Bad Astronomer (Shelly's geek mancrush, google for him too) mentioned on Twitter that he's gained an entirely new appreciation for thermal socks now that he's moved to a cold place (Colorado Springs I think). I mentioned to him that Shelly would likely make him a pair of homemade socks, and BA took her up on it but only provided that his socks are better than George's.
The upshot is that my genius wife has inadvertently invented a whole new level of geekery - the craft-groupie. The craft-groupie is a person who follows around entertainers and gives them fine handcrafted items of apparel. Mind you, these entertainers must be the kind who would appreciate such items, so it's a bit of a narrow groupie-hood -- I can't imagine Axl Rose getting excited over a nice pair of hand-knit woolen socks.
speaking of which, I wish I had 15 years and 50 musicians on hand so I could produce 15 really overproduced songs that all sound the same. Chinese Democracy is the musical equivalent of Daikatana. But I digress.So Shelly's now a craft-groupie -- sort of a G-rated version of Cynthia Plaster Caster.
