I left Charlotte today and traveled to Waxhaw, home of the JAARS center (Jungle Aviation And Radio Service) and my friends the Kellers. On thursday I'm playing a concert for the youth group there - mostly MKs and others whose parents work at JAARS. My family used to come through Waxhaw quite a bit on furlough, particularly to visit the IT support department for various computer-related issues.
Here's some video of the day - uneventful and relaxing. The Kellers were missionaries in Ghana and our families knew each other pretty well, being on the field at the same time. Great folks!
Happy Birthday to ME! yup, i'm a st. Patty's day baby - and proud of it! =) So today on my birthday was surprisingly uneventful, just how I like it. I slept in until 11, then got up and proceeded to play on the computer (Twitter) while fielding tons of happy birthday phone calls and texts. And hundreds of well-wishers on Facebook. Thanks to everyone who wished me happy birthday - you made my day!
Later on I hung out with my friend Aimee for dinner. She grew up in Taiwan as an MK, so we have that connection. It was a lot of fun to spend time with her and hear about life from her perspective. We also happened to go to a killer Chinese restaurant right across the street from where she lives and I packed it away. Then visited Doug and Jacqueline in their apartment down from the Evening Muse.
So here's the latest video installment - short and sweet. You can watch me handle the camera as I shift (manual transmission) and you can tell how addled my brain is from too much sleep - I say Charlottesville instead of Charlotte. What's funny about this video is that just after I turned off the camera I went over a hill and saw Charlotte's skyline, which is a really cool sight. Not as cool as NYC, but still impressive. My friends didn't tell me about that...
So moving right along, I left Charlie Jones and the Peculiar People in Greensboro and set off for Charlotte. An uneventful drive, and along the way I stopped to visit my friend Doug, who is a project manager (IT/website) at a packaging solutions company.
Doug was a project manager for Samaritan's Purse in Afghanistan when I interned with them in the summer of 2004. He was responsible for the drenching welcome I received when I arrived (buckets of water from the roof now greet all new arrivals to the Afghanistan office). He worked with SP for a few years after that in Indonesia, Uganda, and now is married and lives in Charlotte. A really cool guy that I haven't seen in a few years. It was good to see him.
Doug put me in touch with his sister, and she and her husband Tom had an extra room I could spend the night in. So I hung out with them for the afternoon (great conversations about the work their church is doing in Sierra Leone and internet marketing techniques), and then took off to the open mic night at the Evening Muse here in Charlotte.
My goal for playing at the Evening Muse was to meet some of the local musicians and share some of my music. You can see bits and pieces of the evening below. I gave out some cards, made some cool connections, and generally enjoyed myself. A couple cool bands/groups I discovered/met in the folk/rock (softer) genres: The New Familiars and Elonzo. If you live in Charlotte or near where they'll be playing, you should definitely check them out.
