Late Summer check in

My usual groveling apologies for the long silence.  

I FINALLY got around to getting DVD dubs of some archival material and getting it uploaded to YouTube. You can see the 1990 video of Every Road (when I was 5 months pregnant with Julia). Amazing to think that that child now plays the piano on the song when we play it live. Wow. You can see it at 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjTad2c6znM

I also found a copy of The Hometown Band doing Flying in 1977. You can find that at 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQRTSVuXv_4

And lastly, the 1994 video of UHF's "Lifting My Heart" is at 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w30EZraWkPc

Julia and I had quite an amazing summer, full of adventure. It's such a blast to get to this stage of knowing your children as adults - full of their own opinions, sense of humour, and loaded with character. She definitely returned from McGill more mature, self-assured, and funnier! Early in the summer we did a 2 week road trip south as far as San Francisco, visiting lots of family and friends en route. (That's granddaughter / neice Abigail above!) It was SO much fun - except perhaps for the constant challenge of surviving while careening down the highway. Holy s--t. It was death defying every single day. I thought it would be an adventure to take the coast highway between Portland and San Francisco. Oy Vey. I did it countless times in my youth, but DO NOT recall the heart stopping, stomach lurching sense of looking over the edge on those hundreds of curves, with just inches between the road and a 500 foot plunge to the pounding surf and rocks below. No guard rail - no nothing. What was I thinking??

We did it all - rode bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge and out to Point Reyes - and even did the total tourist shtick of riding a double decker bus around San Francisco. Mostly it was wonderful to be able to share that part of my past with Julia - all those places I loved and explored - particularly at 18 when I got my first bike and first camera. 

I'm thrilled that she shares my passion for photography and worked to earn enough money to buy a good digital SLR. That's her shot of the railway up by Wells Gray BC. 

Having Julia home definitely slowed the progress on the CD, but I've been back in the saddle for a couple of weeks and was able to make use of her great ears to catch some of the details I've missed. (So handy.) I'm 'smelling the barn' though, and am getting very excited about it. You can bet when it's done (I'm thinking mid-November) you'll be the FIRST TO KNOW!

UHF is doing some 20th anniversary shows - the most notable being the Centennial Theatre in North Vancouver on Oct. 3 (and the next afternoon in Mission BC). There are shows coming up with Barney and Tom as well. All that info is on my website, so, go forth. 

See you out there!!

Shari

Julia GraffComment