Much of the weekend I hobbled about like a 90 year old man. I spent Friday working in my yard. By many people's standards I did not work very hard. I raked a few leaves, picked up a few sticks, trimmed some bushes and bagged up yard waste. While I was doing all of this and afterwards when I was done, I felt very good. The next morning, however, I could barely get out of bed. I was painfully reminded how out of shape I am and how infrequently I do manual work. Most of the time I feel generally good and people often tell me I look great. However, it is very obvious that I have been an office worker for most of my working life. In spite of the pain I incurred, it felt wonderful to be out of the office and having a working but leisurely day at home.
My son left very early on Saturday morning for New York to see the Pope at Yankee Stadium. Excited that he was there I watched most of the Pope's mass on Sunday afternoon hoping to catch a glimpse of him on MSNBC. I never saw my son but I did see two of my friends from the monastery. I expect Nick to be home sometime today so I hope to hear all about his adventures at dinner tonight. I was a little distracted while attempting to watch the Pope. I was taking care of Chloe while my wife and Chloe's parents went to the Home Depot. She was more interested in going outside to pick flowers than in watching the Pope. I'm a little nervous. Any trip to the Home Depot is never good for me. It will introduce more chaos into my life and it's just a matter of time before I am subjected to forced labor.
Saturday night I attended the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss concert. It was wonderful and exceeded all my expectations. My friends and I had great seats. The set list was a combination of Alison Krauss standards, a few Led Zeppelin classics and all of the new CD that Robert and Alison created together. Although they were the featured artists on the CD and at the concert, one must recognize their band. The whole project was masterminded by T Bone Burnett. I would consider him not only a musician but a musicologist as well. He choose all the songs on the Plant/Krauss CD and was the band leader of some very talented, and in most cases, multi-instrumentalists. T Bone Burnett was also the producer of the soundtrack from "O Brother, Where Art Thou"? I was also happy to broker a deal where my next door neighbors were able to buy some extra tickets from some of my other friends. They were extremely grateful as the wife had been in the same very cold line as me back in December and had walked away without tickets. In a very serendipitous moment I was having a casual conversation with the husband while standing in my driveway. I mentioned that I was going and he lamented that he and his wife were not. He was lucky to have been walking his dog at that moment. After a few telephone calls on my part, they were able to go. I'm always happy when I can make others happy.
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