Storm?

So I sat down last night to write about our trip to Raleigh, and realized after a while that I had fallen asleep while typing, and managed to write a paragraph of utter nonsense. I thought I deleted all the random additions before giving up and going to sleep last night, but when I opened the original attempt today, there was still a line left over:

"And we arrived in Raleigh to its enormous street fair and the cool dim light of the Pour House on Blount (pronounced 'Blunt'?!'. It was a fast soundcheck and then into an Ellery set and the singing (and playing of 'Amaizing Grace'"

Hmm.
Okay, so aside from the missing parenthetical enclosure and the mysterious 'i' in Amazing...
To clear things up, I do believe that someone told me that Blount was pronounced Blunt, so I'm going to tentatively stick with that.
But there was no singing (or playing) of 'Amazing Grace' at The Pour House.

This random insertion I may be able to trace to the fact that before bed, we were sitting round the kitchen table with the dear Marion family talking about how their son, among other musicians, had played 'Amazing Grace' on bagpipes at the football game that night during halftime. (Which I must say is terribly cool.)
That this tidbit found its way in dreamland into my recollection of our show, instead of all the other conversation topics that could have made for a most unusual show description... I can only say it's a bit disappointing. :)

So... A lot more material got nixed in my bewilderment when I decided to close the macbook and lie down. I have no idea but I'm sure it was at least creative. Okay, so it turns out that 2am doesn't work for me for the journal thing. Note to self.

But I'll try to pick it up where I left off last night, beginning with the remaining comprehensible bits--

*****

We spent far too little time with friends in Athens GA before heading out late this morning, back through Charlotte NC and into Raleigh. We've been curious about Tropical Storm Hannah and her appearance in NC during our travels...

But we left under an Athens blue sky today (Sat the 6th), and saw nothing but clear blue skies all the way into Raleigh. We arrived wondering if it had even rained in Raleigh; there was no trace of a storm.
Apparently, we followed it today as it made its way through, causing a decent amount of concern and Saturday festival cancellations in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill areas. But we saw none of it; nothing but beautiful September North Carolina 93-degree-ness.
(We consider this a good thing.)
(Although a couple years ago when we were staying with friends in Tampa and driving with them to stock up on peanut butter, water, and toilet paper under serious hurricane warnings... That made for some interesting journaling.)

Raleigh is Kyler's hometown, so we opened the show last night and like our other shows this tour we sat in on her set -- Which has been so fun. Her songs are ridiculously singalongable and we wind up singing along whether we're on stage or off... So it's lovely to sit in.

After the show we went a couple doors down for dinner with friends at an Irish Pub... We had amazing food and tried to catch up with each other over the band playing (pretty decent-sounding!) covers. We were in a separated alcove area of the restaurant but still yelling to be heard -- It was hilarious and frustrating and entertaining and -- well, there was a bit of dancing too. (I was not involved.)

And we made the drive to Durham where we were invited into a beautiful home in the middle of a mass of beautiful old trees (NC and GA are so lush -- It's so lovely)... We had some fine conversation and made friends with an awesome chocolate lab (have we talked about our perhaps pathetic adoration of animals?) before heading off to bed.

We're feeling particularly blessed today (Sunday the 7th); there are amazing people in the world. Such a gift to connect with them.
Our enormous thanks to Kyler for a great show in her hometown, and to the Marions for so much kindness and generosity, and to The Pour House and our fans old and new who came downtown last night in the midst of Raleigh Downtown Madness... Thank you thank you --