Medifast Status: Day 67, Down ~38.5lbs
Today is the wedding rehearsal so we have a ton of stuff going on all day. The family was running around most of the day trying to get everything set up for the rehearsal dinner tonight which involves a secret performance of “Rock Band” that pretty much no one knows about. The family has been practicing this for weeks or even months to get ready, it is going to be quite the event.
I had to work all day so I was tied to the house. Joe and Bennie went out this morning and got manicures. I was fortunately spared from this event.
Dominica’s parents picked up the PA system that we are going to use for the event and around lunch time we hooked it up in the house (Joe was out for the afternoon) and did a run through of the set list for tonight with the Wii hooked to the PA system and we tested out the projector that we are borrowing from my dad as well. It is amazing that we have managed to keep this entire thing a secret for months as this has been such a tremendous production. Joe didn’t even suspect anything when the Wii was moved into the dining room to facilitate practicing. Nor did he notice that we had a projector stashed in the house all week. Or any of the numerous secret Rock Band rehearsal sessions. We’ve worked really hard on this. We even have complete outfits to wear tonight that we’ve had to hide in the house.
The practice went well and after we did a run-through of the set list we had to break everything down and most of the family headed off to the Utica Train Station’s Blue Flag Room to set everything up for tonight. It is a ton of stuff and we are far, far from a professional roadie crew so a lot of time was going to be needed for that.
I stayed home and worked. It took all afternoon for them to set up at the train station. No small project. They have a banner and everything that needs to go up.
At four forty-five, after I worked like crazy trying to get everything done for the evening deployments since I myself was not going to be able to do the real deployments, I signed off and we ran out to get to the church in Utica for the actual rehearsal. We were a bit late but not nearly as late as the priest so that worked out just fine.
The rehearsal didn’t take too long, then it was a mad rush over to the Utica Train Station so that we could prepare for the Rock Band performance. Of course, being in a hurry, I did something stupid with the car keys and we were stuck looking for them for a little while. That didn’t help anything.
We got to the train station and everyone piled into two bathrooms and changed into our rock gear, wigs, temporary tattoos, hair extensions, etc. This was a major undertaking.
The performance went really well and, as far as we could tell, was well received. We played “I Love Rock and Roll”, “I Wanna Marry You”, “The Power of Love” and ended with “Bad Medicine.” It was a hard line up for those of us singing. Some really tough songs. Liesl was awesome standing up front playing the tambourine and dancing.
There was a video taken of the performance but it is pretty long at twenty-three minutes and it does not have very good sound so it is kind of hard to hear how the performance went but if you listen hard to can kind of get the idea. It is nearly 2GB in size so it will be a while before I am on a network where I am able to upload the file to YouTube. I’ll announce it when it is there.
We were in the Blue Flag Room at the train station tonight and the food and venue were really good. We really liked it.
After the party was done we came home and pretty much everyone went straight to bed. While they all turned in for the night I set out on my evening walk. I went just around town tonight. Dominica later remarked that I now know the village of Frankfort better than she does as I have walked so much of it. It was a nice night for walking but was very dark so I stuck to the well lit parts of town.
I started out up on Cemetery Hill and came down the back side of the hill past the fireman’s memorial and down to “The Aves”. I walked up one avenue and down the next hitting nearly all of town that way. I listened to “The Scratch of a Pen” while walking and got a good way through the book during the walk. I am enjoying that book.
It was a nice walk and I got almost exactly six miles in when I arrived back at the house. Just the smallest bit over six miles. Then it was off to bed for me – tomorrow is going to be a big day.
Before going to bed I explored iTunes University which I had never heard about previously. Pat, next to whom I sat at the rehearsal dinner, told me about all of this free academic content available through the iTunes store. So I logged in from my iPod and checked it out. I downloaded several videos and audio content items from iTunes U to explore. This is looking like it is going to be pretty awesome. I love this kind of stuff and being free, well you just can’t beat that.