Prescott Bluegrass festival

Two day festival. Just went up for the day on Saturday. On the way up met some friends at Rock Springs cafe in Black Canyon city for breakfast. Other than the waitress forgetting to enter an order and the hash browns sucking it was pretty good. Parking was not a problem as we were willing to pay the $5 to park in the garage. 3 of the 4 groups were pretty good. The emcee told the same old dry jokes he did the last time I went two years ago. The second group in the rotation was sort of OK musically but their overall presentation was so full of dead jokes that I was not impressed. I would have left as they started their second set but I was guarding the stuff for my friends and it would not have been cool to just disappear. They came back from shopping about 15 minutes later and they were ready to go too. I managed to get sunburned, it may not be a smart thing to take a nap in full sunlight in the middle of the day. All of the shady spots were taken when we got there so we chose a spot that would be in afternoon shade and took possession. When I get back from vacation I may post some pictures.

I need a nap

I went over Old Town Scottsdale this morning to grab a bite to eat and go again to the Farmers Market which has moved underground. Good thing they are only having it downstairs for 5 weeks, it's a total bust. Only one farmer with tired looking produce. plenty of arts and crafts stuff, tamales, hummus, jellies. Carolyn was working the Scottsdale museum booth and I chatted with her a bit before heading off to work.

The reason I need the nap is what I had for breakfast. I walked over to Bacon to try it out. Bacon is a breakfast/lunch place until 3 and then reopens as a bar for the rest of the day. $9.50 for their big meal; 3 eggs, 3 bacon, 3 sausages, ham, potatoes with brown gravy, baked beans with some more bacon, toast and a cup of diced fresh fruit. I did not finish it all and was glad I had a mile walk to get back to the car.

Fire

So here I am eating breakfast and reading an article in an industry mag and towards the end of my meal I think maybe I smell some smoke. No biggy, I think possibly I didn't get a cigarette fully out in the ashtray and some butts caught on fire. I finish up my bacon, cheesy scrambled eggs and sourdough toast and take my plate in the kitchen and notice the apartment is really smoky as the light filtered in trough the blinds. Nothing smoldering in the ashtray. the smell had a sort of electrical scent to it so I go check to see if there was something wrong with the motor in the air cleaner, nothing wrong there. I go back in the kitchen and happen to glance at the stove. Sure enough there is smoke. Forgetting to turn off the burner the eggs were cooked on is something I probably do once a month, being normally the last item to hit the plate, and isn't that big of a deal. This time the large slabs of sourdough from Arizona bakery didn't work well in the toaster so I used the toaster oven and had set the pot holder off to the side that I had used to get the toast tray out of the oven. The combination of the two created a bit of a fire. It was still smoldering pretty good when I took the pictures. I have (had) two identical pot holders, one has a hole in it created by the original packaging staple and the other was in one piece. Take a guess which one I burned up?

Yelp Rocks - Martini Ranch

Once a year Yelp throws a party for all Yelpers in addition to the Elite members. This year the party was huge. We took over Martini Ranch for 3 full hours on Thursday evening. Elite, and their guests had the place to themselves for the first hour and then the rest of them came in. We had what was arguably the top 6 local bands, one every hour (The last 3 hours were open to the public and there was a $5 cover). The three I heard were all good. Mostly cover bands. The bands were actually donating their time to Ear Candy which is a group that gives instruments and lessons to kids who would not otherwise have them. I donated, with his OK, the trumpet that Daniel used in grade school. Ear candy also got the $5 cover charge for the non Yelp people and those Yelpers who stayed after 10PM. Being an old guy with an hours drive to get home I left about 9:30.

Martini Ranch is a big bar encompassing a large main area with a stage and a dance floor that had 3 bars, a downstairs open area with a bar, an upstairs open area and an upstairs lounge with it's own bar. We filled the place up with probably 200 people. We each had 2 drink tickets which I used for beers, a pale ale and a lager which tasted almost identical. Martini Ranch does not serve food but plenty of vendors were there to give out samples to Yelpers for this event. I got a couple of shots of the food tables. The first pic has a pile of pizza boxes and they were also serving meatballs and lasagna. To the right of Mamma Mias was a chocolate fountain which is hidden behind a person but you can see the mound of strawberries. Over on the other side of the room I got a pic of some little tarts provided by Wildflower bread co. None of us went hungry