Eleanor loves the attention. The minute her investigators arrive at the door, she is instantly refreshed and ready to be adorable, vocal, chipper and, to be honest, pretty manic (See my books! See my shoes! See my dog! See my mom! See my yoga mat! See me do “yoga” (kicks legs and cackles)! See my books again! See my other shoes!). I swear I give her plenty of attention, too, but I suppose she requires the status of sole subject of scientific study to have her attention needs fully sated.

Yesterday, the students brought a microphone to record Eleanor’s chirps. She did not fail them and prattled on for 50 minutes. Our tireless students followed her around the house with the microphone held down at her lip level for optimal recording quality. She loved every minute of it. “Finally!”, she thinks, “someone is getting this down!”.

Eleanor is not the only *roll who is getting some recognition, lately. The Counterfactuals (Daniel and Jason) were voted the Best Band of Northfield for 2010 by the Northfield Guide and Locally Grown Northfield. It was announced on KYMN this morning and the copies of the guide should be out today.

Complete. Rockstar.

The Counterfactuals had a gig last Saturday and I missed it (now that they have graduated from the 5pm slot, it’s a little harder to attend). When he got home that night, Daniel told me some very drunk female students from St. Olaf showed up and gyrated and pelvic thrusted to the fairly un-gyratable and less-than-thrustable tunes of the Counterfactuals.

At playgroup the following Monday two of my friends who were at the show asked me how it felt to have girls  drooling over my rockstar husband. They then told me the same story Dan did. They were even going to videotape it for me but it was too dark.

Northfield: Where the husbands are faithful and the wive’s friends are too.

Ian and I make a point of seeing each other once every year or sometimes two. When I was at McGill I spent two summers on P.E.I. with the greatest summer job in the world: playing drums 6 nights a week in a band. Beyond meeting Emma, the highlight of the trip was playing a gig with the old trio: Ian on guitar, Chris Budhan on bass and me on drums. As you can imagine, playing with the same guys 6 nights a week for two months straight and then again as a group during the academic year leads to some serious musical sympathy. To the very limited extent that I have a distinctive style of drumming, it was formed in the group with Ian and Chris and in conjunction with their development of a distinctive sound. There was one month in particular when, as result of seeing a fantastic show by the Abby and Norm group (the album really doesn’t begin to do justice to the way they played live), we came out of our shells musically and started to stretch. Playing with Ian and Chris that summer, and in the following months, was far and away the most satisfying experience I’ve had playing drums. So you can see why I was excited to play with them again. And apprehensive: just a quick glance at their websites reveals that since our days at McGill they have, to put it mildly, progressed musically. I, on the other hand, have not (well, not on the drumming front at least).

I’m happy to report that the gig was awesome. Chris and Ian sound amazing and, while I did make some mistakes here and there, I was able to hang with them reasonably well. What was most amazing about the show however was how ridiculously comfortable it was: Chris and I locked in together time-wise immediately, I knew just when Ian was wrapping up a solo, & we would often hit breaks at the same time. There are days when it feels like you’re fighting your instrument. If you’re in decent shape, those days are usually somewhat rare (i.e. not so rare for me anymore). More common are the days where it feels like things are working, but playing still involves a lot of thinking. And then there are times, very rare indeed for me, when it really feels like you are no longer playing the instrument. It’s as though you’re watching yourself  play the instrument and it feels effortless and fresh. Those are the best moments and I had a few of them, just a couple stretches of 8 bars or so, playing with Ian and Chris. At the end of gigs with moments like that I feel giddy and weirdly peaceful. It’s been a while. I know I sound, very uncharacteristically, like a hippie. But there it is. Groovy.

In other musical news, The Counterfactuals are back at it, although the only constant between the previous incarnation and this one is me. Jason Decker and I are playing The Contented Cow at 5pm (so rock and roll. I won’t be in bed until at least 8.30 with that start time), so if you’re in Northfield, come check us out.

I’m glad to say that we’re all still talking to each other. We decided, however, that if we were The Beatles, I would be Paul because of my all-round bossiness (when it comes to the band).

Last night*, The Counterfactuals (Dena Wangberg, Lisa Anderson, Micah Lott and me) played at the book launch for Ted Marino’s book of poetry. It was certainly the largest group we’ve played in front of and the first group that didn’t consist solely of friends/family. All in all, it was a smashing success — we all played really well and, so far as we could tell, we were well-received. Sadly, we have no recordings of our music, but hopefully we’ll rectify that before the summer is out. In the meantime, enjoy our music through the visual medium of photography (we sound as good as we look).

You can see all the pictures from the evening here. I’m hoping that there will be some incarnation of The Counterfactuals in Northfield.

In other news, I’ve stuck a link to our Picasa web albums in our blogroll so you don’t need to search through old posts to find pictures that you may want to see again.

*Now that I think of it, it might have been good to advertise this the day before the show. Still getting this showbiz thing.