The Brief Return of DJ Red

I stopped DJ-ing some months ago because I was pregnant and over being hit on by drunk 20-year olds.

My mixer and case sat in a hall closest collecting dust.

I finally decided to contact another female DJ that worked at the same pub as me and see if she wanted to buy my gear.

She did and when I was delivering it to her I mentioned that I would happily take any extra work she might have. She sent me a list of dates almost immediately and I said I'd take them.

My first gig was to be a small gathering at a private residence.

I felt sick to my stomach about it for days.

I reactivated my Virtual DJ account, added some tracks and put cue points in some of the longer songs.

I went to my favorite second hand store and bought two dresses that minimized my "just had a baby" lumps and made an attempt to part my hair in a different location than normal.

I know what you're thinking;don't get too crazy there party animal!

After the other DJ met with the client she called to give me the details and told me he had a nice house and was very particular about the music he wanted.

After she gave me the address I looked it up on Google maps and found that it had been on the market at the beginning of the year and that a virtual home tour video had been made.

I watched the video and felt even more anxious. There was a swimming pool and a tennis court and a little courtyard with a fountain. The house was huge and obviously very expensive. I felt an impending sense of doom.

I tried to arrive at the location early so I could set up and get comfortable but I got lost and arrived with about 15 minutes to spare before the guests arrived.

The husband and wife were obviously concerned that everything would go all right and told me their guests were doctors, lawyers and other professionals and that they wanted to make a good impression.

I soured their first impression of me by asking if they were Russian. They were Romanian.

For the rest of the evening I looked in vain for a opportunity to express my admiration of Nadia Comaneci.

I spent several panicked minutes trying to remember how to hook up my laptop to my old mixer and then connect it to the other DJ's equipment. I failed miserably and contemplated running away and hiding somewhere.

I tried to call the boss on my phone but I ran out of credit (yes, I have one of those phones). Finally I asked to use the house phone and then struggled to dial the number correctly. The wife told me to dial "1" first and this got me through.

After more fiddling around and some reassurances from the boss, I was finally able to connect and get sound out of the speakers.

By then many of the guests had arrived and were standing in a tight circle giving me occasional glances that seemed to express a curiosity as to whether or not I might be some sort of living art installation entitled "Faux DJ With Paunchy Midsection."

The first time the husband came over to me it was to say that I needed to play less House music.

Alas, this was often a comment I received at the pub where I used to play.

I knew this meant I would have to trot out the Top 40 hits and throw in some 80s and 90s stuff.

I had forgotten how difficult it could be to try and please everyone's musical tastes.

I had also forgotten not to assume that others would agree with my examples of beat mastery and sampling genius.

One day I will show up to a party and someone will ask for an obscure dance remix of a song and I will win the day by having it on hand.

I played with the sound turned down at first so I didn't drown out the conversations.

The rest of the evening saw a rather comical back and forth of the husband telling me to crank up the volume while his wife came over seconds later and asked if I could turn it down a bit. They always seemed to miss each other and must have thought I was constantly doing the opposite of what each of them wanted.

Several of the guests came to talk to me and they were all very nice.

One was an eye surgeon and we talked at length about an unfortunate side effect of my PRK.

Soon the alcohol began to kick in and people began to lose their inhibitions.

This first manifest itself through slight twitches and barely perceptible shuffles before eventually erupting into full blown dance extravaganza.

My impression of Romanians (based off the two that I met that evening) is that they are very gracious and hospitable. I say this because the wife kept insisting that I eat something and get something to drink. There was a lovely catered spread but I didn't want to stuff my face in front of the guests and I have a rule about not drinking and mixing.

At the end of the night the husband presented me with a nice bottle of Italian wine and the wife packed me a little tupperware container with some homemade cakes, strawberries and chocolate truffles.

I left their home feeling like life was pretty good and hummed the melody to  Dragostea Din Tei most of the way home.

I don't really want to go back to full time Dj-ing. I feel like I'm getting too old for it and I put a high value on being asleep by 10 p.m.-but I wouldn't mind a few more intimate house parties with cordial couples like this one. (The wine and cakes weren't a bad addition either.)

Mr. Pickwick and the Tittlebats

I have started reading the works of Charles Dickens.

Somehow I made it through high school, college and grad school having only perused "A Christmas Carol" twice.

My mom always liked to rent musicals back in the heyday of VHS so I had seen "Oliver!" numerous times.

I started reading "Great Expectations" a few weeks ago and laughed when one of the characters becomes an actor in the "theatuh" and gives a shaky performance in Hamlet.

Dickens writes that the actor playing Hamlet's father had a terrible cough which he carried with him into the afterlife.

There were also some stockings that weren't doing the wearer's legs any favors.

I read "Oliver Twist" next and was surprised to see how the writers of the musical had made Fagin a more sympathetic and likable character.

What I have enjoyed so far is how Dickens manages to make his social commentary with a touch of humor.

In Oliver Twist, Mr. Bumble is completely unfeeling toward the welfare of the parish orphans and is consumed with pride in his power over the unfortunate. In the end, he marries a disagreeable woman and loses all employment when he conspires with a criminal to hide Oliver's true identity.

I just started reading The Pickwick Papers and was delighted by the titular character's paper entitled "Speculations on the Source of the Hampstead Ponds with Some Observation on the Theory of Tittlebats."

The word "tittlebats" put me in hysterics and caused Nick to give me the side eye (he didn't see anything particularly funny about the word.)

Heh, heh. Tittlebats.

Mysterious Encounter Upon the Lawn

Last night when I went out to bring in a garbage bin, I heard a strange rustling sound behind me on the lawn.

I turned and saw a lump sitting on the grass and assumed it was one of the stray cats in the area that likes to poop in our boxwoods.

Feeling like I could actually do something to prevent a clandestine scat session I approached the lump and watched as part of it broke off and scuttled into the hedge.

What remained behind seemed to be an improbably large mound of poo.

As I got closer I leaned down and saw that it was actually a hedgehog.

I had never seen one out and about before and I was excited by the discovery.

I ran into the house to tell Nick and his mum but they didn't seem as thrilled as me.

I went back out onto the lawn and saw that the lump was gone. I heard a scratching noise behind me and saw it scurrying toward one of the other natural areas.

I followed it and it proceeded to employ its defense mechanism which was to freeze and pretend to be part of the landscape.

I couldn't resist the urge to poke gently at its spikes. It responded by blinking a couple of times and stoically maintaining its posture.

I saw a captive hedgehog in a pet store once and the same need to poke at it had overtaken me then.The end result was me getting my finger nipped. It didn't break the skin but it did give me a mild case of hurt feelings.

I decided to leave the creature alone and let it get about its business. I bid it goodnight and returned to the house.  

An Odd Source of Inspiration

I recently went to a cafe with Nick and I saw this painting hanging up on the wall:

The original painting is called "Mystery of the Missing Migrants" and is by artist Charley Harper.

I recognized it because I used to have it in the form of a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle.

Whoever painted the one in the cafe had given it a different title, signed their name to it and was attempting to sell it with no mention of Harper whatsoever.

This bothered me immensely so I sent an email to the cafe telling them about the origin of the piece and asking them to contact the artist or the studio that provided the replica.

The reproduction did some good however in that it got me interested in Harper's art again.

I spent a lot of time looking at cached images of his work on Google.

I decided to try and apply his methods to paintings of New Zealand's bird life but, unlike the cafe artist, I have created work that is my own and I give credit to Harper for inspiring it.

My first painting was of a Goldfinch and I was pretty happy with the results:

Below are some other examples of Harper's work:

As you can see, Charley's birds are minimalist and reduced down to basic geometric shapes. 

Tails are triangles, bodies are semi circles and legs are angles. Despite this simplification, the richness of the colors and patterns make the birds easy to recognize.

As a lifelong hater of math, I was surprised at how much sense geometry started to make when it took this form. 

Getting the circle, semi circle, angle and triangle ratios correct is easy because the bird looks wrong if they aren't done properly. 

I can almost feel long unused places in my brain waking up when I work on the rough drawings in my sketchbook.

So far I have done the Goldfinch, a Kokako and a Fantail. I'm thinking of doing a larger painting of Kea for the baby's room.

Song of the Week: Peking Duk - Feels Like

Visiting With Kea In Arthur's Pass

There is something reassuring and exciting for me when I see the snow capped Southern Alps.

I used to gaze on them as I drove to work every morning and feel some stirring that I couldn't quite express.

Last Friday, Nick's mum offered to take the baby so I could have a day out and I decided to drive to Arthur's Pass and look for Kea.

The drive takes about two hours and passes through the Canterbury plain before a slow climb up into the hills.

It is spring here and there are trees bursting with cherry blossoms.

I love long, scenic drives and this one was perfect.

I checked for Kea at the three locations where I knew they would visit but had no luck except for one bird that flew off before I could get close.

In between my searches, I climbed most of the way up the Temple Basin Track and managed to twist my ankle several times on the way back down.

Temple Basin

At about 4 p.m. I pulled up to Death's Corner and saw a couple with a stalled van.

They were from the Czech republic and the man was trying to fill the radiator with water but he didn't have enough. I gave him a large water bottle I had purchased in the village.

Two Kea had flown in silently while I was taking in the view and were walking around beneath the stalled van.

The birds were both juvenile. One male and one female. Neither of them had been banded.

The two had discovered some peanuts thrown on the ground and took turns hopping cautiously toward them while keeping an eye on me as I sat nearby.

The male set his crown feathers on edge to show dominance toward the female and if she didn't get out of his way fast enough he would chase her off.

The female Kea.

While she maintained her distance, the male would take a peanut in his claw and eat it a few inches away from me.

The male Kea.

I hadn't realized how accustomed I am to the more tame Kea at Willowbank. They take liberties with my boots and bags and whatever I happen to be wearing because they are used to people in their enclosure and to me in particular.

These two were cautious and  I imagine it comes from being wild and young and still learning about humans.

One of the Czech tourists took this pic for me.

Both birds appeared to be in good health.

I left after about 30 minutes of observation and headed home.

One day I would like to rent a small cabin in Arthur's Pass, get a research grant and stay a while to study the Kea.

Boy Meets Kea, Boy Sleeps Through Experience

I set out to buy one of those baby carrier thingies so I could take the wee one to meet the Kea at Willowbank.

I haven't figured out how to get him into the darned thing without looking like some clumsy Houdini wannabe with a tiny assistant.

It was cool and windy when we went out so I had put A in his white sweater knitted for him by his great grandmother in the U.K.

It bunched up around the arms and neck in the carrier and made him look like some sort of human/puff pastry hybrid.

I hadn't made it through the front door of the park before he had fallen asleep in his pouch.

I walked down to the Kea enclosure and was greeted by all the usual crowd who always take turns perching on me, pulling my hemline, trying to deconstruct my footwear, plucking at my sweater or jacket and  gently fluffing my hair about in a gesture that may be allopreening.

Two birds actually peered down at the baby from my shoulder and seemed to be giving him a study.

One of the juveniles tried to have a pull at his sock before I blocked him with my hand.

I do wonder what they think of him.

I was hoping he would gaze at them through his blue gray eyes and form some early infant memory that would propel him to study them in depth at a later age.

Oh well, he's only a month old. Mustn't rush things.