Posse Guests! (25 July 2008)

We had an absolute Posse in town in July! The Twines came over for two weeks and then the Burges (TM) - OK, Neil and his girlfriend Ginny, who are therefore not technically "Burges" - joined them for a couple of days and stuck around for over a week afterwards. Jaysmith Apartment Absolutely Infected With Visitors From The Old World!

Of course Jax and Twiney have been here before, but Phil saw the place for the first time, and collectively they love it. They arrived on June 30 (I think) and performed Much Sightseeing... Sarah fulfilled most of the tour guide duties as I was at work most days. But I did book a long weekend and we went to Whistler, stayed in a holiday home, went up a 6,000-foot mountain, saw a brown bear (cute! but endangered so go away now), ate lots of very nice food, went on a downhill luge (which was a bit terrifying), watched Twiney go on a zipline (which looked like fun, in the end), and took lots of photos, some of which may be included somewhere along the line. Phil went fishing for two days and impressed his guide with his knowledge. The drive up the Sea-To-Sky highway was gorgeous. And even Jax's 3am medical emergency didn't affect the good time had by all (except Jax while she was ill ;-).

Neil and Ginny arrived on July 8 and the Twines left on the 11th. Burge spent a lot of time playing Super Paper Mario on my Wii, and we also had two games of Lord Of The Rings - scarily, two years to the day since we last played it, in England. We and Burge know this game well, so first Ginny was introduced to it, and then a few nights later, James joined us at Kalypso for dinner and came back to be the fifth hobbit in a session where we tried out the expansion pack that Neil and Ginny bought for us as a thank-you present. It was quite epic and I think James' head visibly exploded several times...

You also should have seen the games of Jenga we had. Ginny nearly fainted from the suspense. Neil and I invented some groovy new moves, which you'd think wouldn't really be possible in a game like Jenga. Also, I was right: there are YouTube movies demonstrating 'mad Jenga skillz', e.g. this one.

But now everyone has gone home and we are all alone again... and, although we love the Posse... we were exhausted! There's been a lot of singing... we've started the summer singing alternative, which appears to have acquired the name "The Strongbow Chorus"... four sessions, every other Monday... we had eighteen people here for the first one, and out of it we got very acceptable-sounding versions of "The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd" and Rutter's "Sing A Song Of Sixpence"... we had Kim and Forsey over for singing... we had two Raves At The Jaysmiths', which were mildly epic affairs, and included me and Neil singing some tenor duets, one of which blew out everyone's ears because we weren't subtle with our dynamics! It was also lovely to reconstitute a chunk of The Incredible Posse Singers - only Justine was missing from our majority lineup. We sang Orpheus and Sounds Of Silence. Very uplifting, and only a couple of moments where our unrehearsed-in-eighteen-months sound wasn't bang on the money. The Posse Rules! Anyway, where was I... oh, more singing... Neil and Ginny learned the ultra-high A New World and we sang that for a couple of people, nearly ripping out our throats in the process (Burge has to sing As, I have to sing off the top of the scale)... and we just generally nebbished around the piano at the slightest opportunity. Result: we've done a lot of singing.

But: all this has been putting a huge dent in our Chilli & Sage time, so over the summer the rule is now: Our Stuff Comes First. We don't have High Spirits or Broadway Chorus until September, so we'll be spending evenings and weekends for the next two months (a) working on our music, (b) relaxing with the thought that we don't have to do anything else, (c) doing other things.

You'll be pleased to hear on our behalf that we are now logged in the US Copyright Office. Look!

CHILLI & SAGE VOLUME ONE.

Type of Work:	Sound Recording and Music
Registration Number / Date:	SRu000865667 / 2007-08-16
Application Title:	CHILLI & SAGE VOLUME ONE.
Title:	CHILLI & SAGE VOLUME ONE.
Description:	Compact disc.
Copyright Claimant:	GIL JAYSMITH, 1970- . Address: 1060 ALBERNI STREET, #2003, VANCOUVER BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA V6E 4K2
	SARAH ELIZABETH JAYSMITH. Address: 1060 ALBERNI STREET, #2003, VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA V6E 4K2,
Date of Creation:	2007
Authorship on Application:	GIL JAYSMITH, 1970- ; Domicile: Canada. Authorship: MUSIC, WORDS, AND SOUND RECORDING.
	SARAH ELIZABETH JAYSMITH, 1974- ; Domicile: Canada. Authorship: MUSIC, WORDS, AND SOUND RECORDING.
Contents:	1. I WANT TO BE A PANDA 2. TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE, TOO BAD 3. I GOTTA GET ME ONE OF THOSE GIRLS 4. VELVET 5. THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY VIII 6 FIREFLIES 7. IF LOVE IS 8. THE NIGHT TRAIN 9. THE JOURNEY 10. ALL YOU HAVE TO SAY 11. WHEN YOU SMILE 12. LOVE, DANCE & SING 13. I’LL RESCUE YOU 14. 24 DAYS 15. AIR CONDITIONING.
Names:	JAYSMITH, GIL, 1970-
	JAYSMITH, SARAH ELIZABETH, 1974-

It's us! Do not steal our music, we have Copyright on our side! Tee hee.

It's hard to focus on what else might have been going on lately, but we've been watching Doctor Who (epic!) and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (a bit epic! and Sarah's aunt Jane is in T4, exciting huh?), and playing the customary range of Games Which Will Work On Laptops.

We finally went to a dentist - with the promising name of Dr Chris Hacker! The Canadian attitude to dentistry appears to be "hygiene, hygiene, hygiene", leading to an expensive but covered-by-insurance bout of cleaning which has left our teeth both spotless and unusually white. On a less enticing health front, I confessed a while back to Sarah that the soles of my feet hurt a lot, particularly in the mornings. I had assumed this was just me getting old (at 38). She researched and then sent me to the GP who referred me to a specialist. Turns out to be fallen arches, or Plantar Fasciisti or something like that... a recurrence, expected at this age, of what I had when I was 15 and had to go to a torture specialist in Teignmouth for various electrical treatments and arch supports in my shoes. So here I am, with new, expensive, custom-made arch supports ("orthotics" is apparently the word for this), and my feet still hurt, but less than they did. Still: tump, I'm getting old and creaky!

More oldness and creakiness next time, including photos if I find out from Sarah where they are. Mwah.