Okay, so – technically – summer doesn’t arrive until 7:28 tomorrow morning; but, as far as I’m concerned, it’s been here for a while.  My brain gets fooled when every day features 100-degree heat and humidity approaching that of the inside of a tea kettle.

On this glorious Sunday morning (Fathers Day, for those of you in North America), I’m sitting in my office naked at 7:25 in the morning, already sweating, trying to determine what I’m going to wear to a baseball game this afternoon.  Do I go for the “so sweaty it looks like I’ve been swimming in brine” look by donning jeans and a tee-shirt, or do I shoot for the “my legs have been painted with mercurochrome” badge by sticking with shorts and hanging out in direct sunlight for several hours?  Right now, I’m leaning towards the sweaty look, but anything could happen between now and the time that I’m supposed to meet Rich, John and Betsy for lunch.

Last weekend, I attended the Great American Brass Band Festival in Danville, KY – or at least as much of it as I could stand before the incessant heat forced me to ditch it for the relative comfort of sitting in my air-conditioned car for the 6-hour drive home.  I drove up to Kentucky on Friday morning, got set up in the worst campground ever imagined (the Pioneer Playhouse Campground, if you need to avoid it), and then went to a nearby airport where there was to have been a hot-air balloon race to kick off the festival.

Unfortunately, high winds grounded the balloons.  I spent about two hours walking around the airport taking pictures of a clown band out of Indiana and a brass quintet out of Tennessee before heading back to my campsite to read, make some ravioli and suffer.

Was up early on Saturday, thanks to a brief rain shower at around 6:00.  After a tepid shower in the campground’s disgusting shower room, I went to downtown Danville and took a quick walking tour.  Not a great deal to see.  Danville is a small college town (Centre College).  At one end of Main Street, there was a gazebo.  At the other end, there was a large stage.  Since the bands that would be playing in the morning were scheduled to do so at the gazebo, I grabbed a seat there and waited until 9:00, when the Saxton’s Cornet Band out of Frankfurt, KY, kicked the weekend off.  They’re a period band (Civil War), which generally doesn’t appeal to me, but they were quite good and highly entertaining.

Also at the gazebo, I saw a ragtime quintet and the Fountain City Brass Band.

There was a parade down Main Street at around 11:00, by which time it was getting uncomfortably hot.  After the parade, I went back to my tent to change into clothes that weren’t sweat-soaked and scarf a couple of sandwiches.  Then it was back to the main stage to catch the afternoon & evening performances.  I caught bits of the Millenium Brass quintet, the Southern Stars Symphonic Brass Band and the Canadian Staff Band of the Salvation Army before the heat just got to be too much for me.  After hastily throwing my tent and gear into the car, I hit the road for home.

This past week was sort of a rotten one.  My renter became severely ill on Wednesday, which prompted me to learn where the nearest emergency room to my house is (it was not necessary to go there).  I worked from home on Thursday and noticed in the afternoon that I was also getting a tad sick.  By Friday morning, I was feeling bad enough to call in sick and I spent most of the day in bed, although Chris lit up my world late in the afternoon by bringing me some matzah ball soup, cookies and nyquil.

I spent most of yesterday doing nothing and trying not to get any sicker.  Woke up this morning with a chest cold, but I’m hoping the worst is past.  I guess I’ll find out while I’m sitting in the oven that is the Braves’ stadium later this afternoon.

Happy Dads Day, Dad!  Wish I were in New England with ya.

TWD

So I said I’d post again quickly to catch you all up on what I did in the week before the morons tried to break in.

I lied.

Basically, I did nothing in the week prior to that august event.  The brass band played a concert at a church in Chamblee the Sunday before then.  That was pretty much it.  I goofed around with my new camera during the concert and shot some pictures when I should’ve been counting rests, but they aren’t all that interesting.

So…you’re all caught up now.

For the last week, I’ve been extraordinarily unbusy.   Betsy and I went to Andersonville National Cemetery on the morning of the 28th and then wasted much of the rest of the day doing touristy things on the way back to her house.  Stopped in Montezuma, GA, for about an hour’s worth of picture taking.  Old houses, a broken-down gas station, a confederate memorial…all the usual tripe that one would expect to find in a small town in middle Georgia. 

After that, we made a brief stop at the Lane Packing Company, which is a large peach distributor in Fort Valley, GA.  The idea was that we’d eat there, but the cafeteria frankly didn’t look all that appetizing.  Instead, we took a self-guided tour of the peach processing room, played on the tractors in the playground outside, and headed to Warner Robins, GA, where we ate at a Cuban place before spending a couple of hours at the WR Museum of Aviation and then driving around the WR Air Force Base.

I had the day off for Memorial Day on the 31st and basically slept for the entire day.  The rest of the week was a typical short work week.  I accomplished very little other than watching some training videos that I’m required to watch (I’m about three months behind in this task).

Wednesday night found me poking around the Marietta National Cemetery before gorging myself on Sicilian pizza at the Marietta Pizza Company, and Thursday night I headed back to Marietta to frolic in a pool and have dinner with Chris prior to a rehearsal that she had. 

Worked from home on Friday and watched a movie on Netflix Friday night.  Fun week, eh?

Yesterday, I left the house at around noon looking for some gravesites in two cemeteries that I didn’t know about.  The first one, Union Hill Baptist Cemetery in John’s Creek, GA – about 15 miles from my house – was very pretty and quite depressing.  It has been either vandalized (I suspect) or hit by severe storms or both.  60% of the stones are pushed over or broken.  Why anyone would get their jollies by doing that is beyond me, but it does make for interesting pictures.

The second cemetery, Kirkland, is located right across the street from one of my old watering holes and – as far as I can tell – is completely inaccessible. I *think* I drove past it, but saw no way to get my car to it.  If what I saw is indeed the cemetery, I’ll try parking down the street and walking to it later today.  A couple of the requests in that graveyard are for members of the Medlock family.  I’m wondering if they’re related to the family which lent its name to Medlock Bridge Road, near my house.

This evening, I’ve got the next-to-last concert of the season with the brass band.  We’re playing at a Methodist church which has hosted us at least twice previously.  Very cramped stage, but the room sounds okay.  We’ll be doing mainly fluff pieces as we wind down the season, but will be premiering a work by Stephen Bulla called (I think) Decade.  We commissioned the thing about 18 months ago in the hope of premiering it last September – 10 years after the band was founded.  Unfortunately, we didn’t receive the piece until about a month ago.  So we’ll still get to premiere it during our 10th season – just not our 10th year.   The piece’s main little motif (if it can be referred to as such) is “G-B-B” (get it?  Georgia Brass Band?  Ha!) and, though it’s not something that I’d want to run out and purchase were I a brass band music director, it’s nice enough and it’s a new addition to the brass band repertoire…and it’s ours, dammit.

In a couple of weeks, we’ll finish the season with a performance at the International Euphonium Institute and then take a week or two off before resuming rehearsals with the hope of recording a Christmas CD in late August.

My plans for next weekend are to travel to Danville, KY, to get a little camping in and to hang out at the Great American Brass Band Festival, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned in these pages previously.  Those plans could change if Chris is available and wants to do something; barring that, I’m Kentucky-bound next Friday.

I think that pretty much covers everything of non-interest for the moment.  If anything world-shaking happens in the near future, you know I’ll rush to write about it here.

TWD

Three teenaged idiots tried to break down my back door last Saturday afternoon.  Fortunately, my renter was in the house at the time.  He heard the noise from upstairs, though it was me, and walked down to check things out.  The kids, standing on my deck wearing bandanas over their faces while attempting to kick down a door (which is 90% glass, yet they were trying to break the deadbolt rather than smashing the glass), saw him and ran. 

Most excellently, one of them apparently busted his ass during the flight.  I hope it hurt.

Scott (the renter) immediately called 911 and then me (I was in middle Georgia shooting cemeteries – more on that later).  From what I’m told, three sets of cops were out the house within about 90 seconds.  No sign of the punks, though.  I’m guessing that they saw my laptop sitting on my living room table and figured they could accomplish a smash-and-grab manoeuvre; but I guess nobody ever told them that glass breaks easier than wood and metal does.  The did manage to crack the core of the door, which pisses me off. 

Not as much as the fact that they were in my back yard to start with, mind you, but it does piss me off.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I’ve lived in this hellhole of a metropolis for the last 20 years and this is the first time anybody’s tried to make me the victim of a home invasion.  Some loser did indeed break into my car about 15 years ago, though.  Did $300 worth of damage in order to steal a $10 equalizer.

Lesson learned.  Laptops now stay upstairs in my room – as do my wallet and keys.  But enough about all that.  As I said, I spent most of Saturday driving around middle Georgia shooting cemeteries and trying to fill requests for FindAGrave.com.  Betsy and I hit something like 9 graveyards between 7AM and 5PM and managed to get some pretty decent shots in spite of a couple hours of rain and an inability to find a couple of the smaller cemeteries we were looking for.  I also go to see Griswoldville, GA, for the first (and probably last) time.  If G’ville is famous for anything, it’s the fact that, during Sherman’s march from Atlanta to Savannah during the Civil War, a bunch of GA “militia” attempted to engage some of the union troops there.  After Sherman’s guys basically destroyed the rebs at Griswoldville, they were rather shocked to learn that this “militia” was comprised entirely of very old men and very young boys.  It was a clear sign that the confederacy was running out of soldiers.  This link gives a bit more background, though from a decidedly pro-southern point of view.

After driving through parts of Jones and Twiggs Counties, shooting at 5 or so cemeteries, we went to Macon and spent some time at the Old City Cemetery, the Jones Chapel Cemetery (a truly bizarre experience) and Evergreen Baptist Cemetery.   The Old Cemetery, located pretty close to downtown Macon, was in use from 1825-1840.  It has a rather odd feel to it, because it’s basically a raised hunk of land – about one city block square – surrounded on all sides by industry.  I’m not sure if it was never very popular or if headstones have just been stolen from it, but it’s mainly just a large open field, containing few graves.  In fact, the entire listing of the cemetery can be read here.  Still, it’s a pretty place.

After seeing the old cemetery, we went looking for the Jones Chapel Cemetery because Betsy had a couple of names from there on her FindAGrave list.  I said above that this place was bizarre, and I’m betting that whatever pictures of it that I include here cannot convey just how strange it was.  For starters, the Jones Chapel in question – the church to which this cemetery was presumably once attached – is no longer there.  As I understand it, it was moved several miles away.  On the spot where the church stood, there is now an abandoned house which – to me at least – looked as if it were being used as a crack house. 

The cemetery itself is so overgrown that we very nearly missed it, in spite of knowing exactly where it was and driving around three sides of it looking at it.  After parking the car (in what amounted to an alley across the road from section 8 housing), we made our way across a weed/briar barrier into what was basically a jungle.  Kudzu, vines, thorns, trees, trash….and every now and then, we’d stumble across a gravestone or a decrepit old wrought-iron fence surrounding what one must assume must’ve been a family plot at some point.

And I’m not saying that this was an OLD cemetery.  The latest graves there, I’m told, are from the 1970s.  The graveyard is in the shape that it is simply because the city of Macon turned its back on it.  We ran into a man and his son who were doing their best to clear the brush and clean things up, and they weren’t at all pleased with the lack of service the city was providing – things like sending a truck to pick up the piles of trash and debris that those two people had collected.   The son, probably about 13 years old, turned out to be somewhat of a genealogy buff who is an active member on FindAGrave.com. He knew exactly where one of the graves that we were seeking was.

On the Sunday following the cemetery tour, I spent a few hours at the 5 Seasons Brewpub near Buckhead watching “Mercury Orkestar,” a Balkan-style band that, honestly, I don’t much care for.  Several of my friends play in it, however, and I like hanging out with them and, potentially, networking.  Just because I don’t like *listening* to something doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to *play* it, after all.

And now, in spite of really not putting much of interest down, I think I’ve spent enough time writing in this for today.  I do actually have some real work to do.  I’ll try to get another entry added pretty quickly to catch you up on the wee BEFORE the idiotic moron loser jerks tried to smash my door down.

TWD

I couldn’t think of a decent title for this entry, but that seems to work.  I went on a redneck holiday recently, I’ve got a couple of brass band gigs coming up, and one of the original names for the GBB was (no kidding!) “Rednecks with Horns,” so….there it is.

Work for the last two weeks has been mostly annoying, but punctuated by moments of pleasantness when I actually got things to work that I hadn’t known how to do before.  I’ve been working pretty much exclusively on a “ticket scrubbing” system, which gives users the ability to edit information in trouble tickets, generate reports on those tickets, etc.  I’ve been using the <cfdiv> tag in my coding a lot lately and writing *a lot* of javascript functions (recall that that was one of my goals this year).  Add to that my recent experimentation with FusionCharts, and there have been days that I’ve really enjoyed coding. 

The annoyances have been caused mainly by an inept project manager who doesn’t have a clue about managing projects and continually lets the end users email me with requests for “aesthetic” changes to the program (yes, it’s a program – we’ve gone far beyond “webpages” here), which are generally “minor tweaks” that destabilize the entire project and cause me to have to rewrite numerous pages, resulting in unforeseen errors to other pages and yada yada yada.  These same users also have an extremely annoying habit of changing formulae on me. 

I can deal with their changes.  Users have never known what they want.  But scope-creep (and this project is the poster child for that phenomenon) is *supposed* to be contained by the project manager.  As I said, the PM on this project is clueless and I wish she’d just get out of the way, rather than calling for conference calls every three days and constantly pinging me to ask how things are going.

After the brass festival at the beginning of the month, the GBB took a week off from rehearsing, which was nice but left me absolutely bewildered about what to do with myself one Tuesday night. 

Betsy Jones and I went to two redneck staples near my house last Saturday afternoon: Stone Mountain Park and The Yellow River Game Ranch.  The former is (I believe) the largest slab of exposed granite on the planet and features a huge carving of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson on its face.  During the warm months, this carving is the backdrop for a nightly laser and fireworks show, which hasn’t changed much in the last 20 years.  What at one time was a pretty amazing technological display has become a fairly passé way to waste an hour while listening to diehard confederate sympathizers burst into rebel yells while listening to patriotic music and watching a laser trace out illustrations of a reunited north and south.

The rest of Stone Mountain Park is given over to your usual tourist-trap “country” stores, a campground (which I really need to check out sometime), various walking trails, a skylift, a train, a very small museum (which used to be free but is now, I learned last weekend, something that you must pay to see) and various other attractions that can only be found where one has access to the world’s largest exposed hunk of granite.  Betsy and I spent probably 4 hours walking around, taking pictures, and laughing at people. Prior to that, we went to the Yellow River Game Ranch, which is quite near the park and contains a menagerie that can only be thought of as a redneck zoo.  The YRGR’s tagline is (I’m not making this up), “Like a zoo.  Only better.”

One must assume that they chose this line of advertising because 1.the animals contained in the place are not what one would generally expect to find in a zoo, and 2.visitors are generally encouraged to feed said animals just about anything that they (the people) can think of.  It would not be considered odd, for example, to throw marshmallows at caged coyotes in the YRGR.  Other attractions of the YRGR include chickens (some caged, some wandering around free); rabbits; peacocks; a supposedly “talking” crow in a cage; a number of extremely bored black bears; a large enclosure wherein one is encouraged to pet rabbits; a cage containing approximately 9000 racoons; a toothless mountain lion which gums a hung of round beef once or twice a day; a herd of 100 or so deer (which wander around and have absolutely no fear of the people who attempt to feed them everything from peanut butter to steak); several donkeys, goats, pigs and sheep; some bison; some bobcats; turtles; geese that apparently enjoy French fries; and – the crown jewel of the whole place – a woodchuck named General Lee who annually prognosticates on the nearness of Spring (a la Puxatawney Phil).

I’ve been to the YRGR several times in the last two decades and I have to laugh and cry simultaneously each time I go.  It’s so pathetic it’s funny.  But let’s face it: who doesn’t want to see what happens when a gray fox is tempted by, say, a handful of Sugar Frosted Flakes?

On Sunday, I drove up to Travelers Rest to hang out with Dad, Cy, Greg (and his family) and Dianne for Mothers Day.  Greg fired up the grill at Di’s house and we chowed down on burgers, dogs, coconut, corn on the cob, and various other summer cookout foods.  Had a nice afternoon just hanging with the family and not thinking about anything.  Dianne’s got a really nice little chunk of the planet.

This past week at work was a repeat of the previously-outlined week, and seemed to last about 12 years, in spite of the fact that the GBB resumed rehearsals on Tuesday and my life – at least for that one night – resumed normalcy.  Friday finally came, however, and I left work early to go walk around some cemeteries and grab dinner with Chris in Macon.  I must say that her face was a most welcome sight.

The forecast is calling for rain all weekend, but as I sit here (naked, in bed, at 10AM Saturday), the weather outside is nearly perfect.  I’m told that there’s a balloon festival in NW Georgia today and tomorrow, and I’m considering driving up there today for some photographing fun.  Tomorrow, however, I’ve got a concert in Chamblee with the band.  Looking forward to that.

Hope everyone has a great time until I next update this thing.  Don’t put no beans up your noses.

TWD

Well, we’ve had some very nice (cool) days in Duluth, some extraordinarily hot ones, and a bit of rain over the last week or so.  This has made sleeping either very nice, very difficult, or pretty fantastic, respectively.

This past weekend, the Georgia Brass played at The Deep South Brass Band Festival in Pine Mountain, GA.  This is the festival’s second year and we were once again the “big name” band.  The festival’s unstated goal is to try to generate as much interest as The Great American Brass Band Festival gets (an annual shindig which has been going on in Kentucky for a loooong time), and Pine Mountain has a big hill to climb to get there; but it’s a fun gig and the crowds this year were definitely larger than they were last year – at least for the night portion of the festivities.

We played three gigs in Pine Mountain.  The first was in the center of town at three in the afternoon on Saturday.  It had been raining off-and-on for much of the day, so the audience was rather small, but very appreciative.  Our second concert was on the beach at Callaway Gardens, just outside of town, at nine in the evening.  By that time, the weather was beautiful (if a bit muggy) and we entertained quite a large crowd.

We wrapped things up on Sunday morning (Callaway provided hotel rooms for everyone in the band) by playing at a special service at the Pine Mountain Methodist Church.  Rather than having a sermon, the church did sort of a “praise through music” type of thing and we played a variety of Salvation Army arrangements and other sacred stuff.  We played it very well, too.  In fact, we got a standing ovation after the service.  I really wish we’d do that sort of gig more.  The arrangements are usually very well done, and our band plays them so nicely.  Our music director is a bit leery of the sacred stuff, though.  I think he’s concerned that we’ll get a reputation as being a Salvation Army band instead of just a generic brass band.

Because we had several hours between the Saturday gigs, I got on FindAGrave.com (it’s a real website) and looked for cemetery requests in and around Pine Mountain.  Oddly enough, I found a fairly large number of requests in three cemeteries within about 3 miles of the town, and I managed to locate about 17 graves for which pictures had been requested.  Before anyone asks, I can’t really tell you what exactly the draw is for me.  It’s just sort of fascinating to locate a grave that somebody from God knows where has been looking for.  I told Chris the other night that it’s like finding a bottle with a message in it – or like geocaching (a sort of high-tech meets camping scavenger hunt).  At any rate, I enjoy it and the people who request the photos are generally effusive in their thanks when you provide them with one or more shots.

Last week at work, my boss called a special staff meeting and announced that the four developers on our team (of which I am one) have been traded to a different affiliate.  I’m not sure exactly what this will mean going forward.  I know I’ll have to start learning a new set of systems, there will be some on-call time (oh joy), and everybody seems to think my new boss is the greatest guy ever…so we’ll see how it goes.

I also brought my car into the shop last week and discovered that a crankcase valve cover was loose or something, which had been causing my engine to lose vacuum or something, which had resulted in my car acting funny for the last month.  Thankfully, the repair was less than $200, and it has made a dramatic improvement to my daily commutes.  Also noted on my repair order was, “Slow leak in rear tire.  We found a nail in it.”  They didn’t FIX it, however…so I guess I’ll be going to a tire place near my house in the next few days.  I’d noticed the hiss before, but the tire never seems to get any softer.  I figured maybe it was just the noise of water steaming on the exhaust.  Oops.

The band has a concert coming up in a couple of weeks, then another concert a few weeks after that.  Then I think we’re taking a short break before trying to lay down some tracks for a long-overdue CD project so that, hopefully, we’ll have an album of Christmas  tunes ready for sale by, say, Christmas.   Lots of playing this year, which I like.  Many people don’t.  I don’t understand those people.

Still haven’t decided on the brass band association board thingy, and I’m running out of time to make up my mind.  I think I’ll probably have done so by the next time I update this blog.

Most of the pictures that I’ll throw into this entry will be from the Deep South festival.  Nothing particularly photographically appealing, but the shots have all already been resized and are sitting on this laptop waiting to be used for something, so it makes sense to use them here, right?

TWD

The 2010 North American Brass Band championships are history and the Georgia Brass Band, for the third time in four years, placed second in the first section, falling once again to the Central Ohio band.

That’s a hell of a sentence, that is.  Let me try to explain it for the brass neophytes out there.

The North American championships are held annually (they were in Raleigh, North Carolina, this year) and there are a number of different divisions, called sections, in the competition.  I think that in Europe a band is assigned to a section based on their previous competing success (correct me if I’m wrong on that, Al); but in North America, each band that goes to the annual championships (which is basically the only competition we have) chooses which section they want to be in.  Most bands try to be realistic about this choice. 

The top bands compete in the Championship Section.  These groups are often made up of college music professors and graduate students, professional or semi-pro musicians, and generally people who make their livings musically.  Fountain City, out of Kansas City, MO, won the Championship section – for the fourth year in a row.  The FCBB (BB=”brass band”. I’m not going to type it after the name of every band I mention, so just assume that it’s there) was only founded about 8 years ago, but has stormed onto the brass band scene in a major way.   Along with their (I believe unprecedented) four straight wins at the NABBA championships, they’ve also won the US Open three years running (different sort of championship); and a few months ago, they became the first American band EVER to win a major European competition when they took the Scottish Open and shocked everyone.  Coming in second in the Championship section were the kids in the James Madison University band.  A new band, Potomac, made up of a lot of folks who play in the Washington, D.C., service bands, took third. My favorites – Chicago – came in a disappointing fourth place.

Just below the Championship section is the First section, in which the Georgians have competed for the last 4 years.  Bands in this section are comprised of a smattering of musically-dependent people (maybe 50% of our number are music teachers or army bandsmen) along with a generous number of people like me – the unlucky dorks who, for whatever reason, didn’t pursue a career in music but manage to do alright for themselves in that area through a combination of talent, luck and an overabundance of low-paying church gigs.  Three years ago, Georgia took second (behind Central Ohio) by three points.  Two years ago, Central Ohio took second (behind Georgia) by three points.  Last year, Georgia took second (behind Central Ohio) by three points.  And last weekend, Georgia fell again to Central Ohio – this year by only one point.  Coming in third was Massanutten, a band out of Virginia, I believe.

Below the First section is, quite naturally, the Second section.   These bands are normally either relatively new to the genre (Georgia competed in the second section the first time we competed) or are made up of mostly regular joes with real jobs who get together once a week or so just to play.  The Spires band – out of Maryland, I think – won the section.  I honestly can’t tell you who took the other trophies.

The Third section is, as you might expect, on a slightly lower plane than the Second.  I think the main difference between Second and Third is that the Third section bands don’t necessarily have to have the right horns.  They can use trumpets instead of cornets, French Horns instead of Tenor Horns, etc.  Don’t quote me on that.  I could be completely wrong, as there’s also an “Open” section (I have been corrected on this point since writing this entry.  The 3rd section must use “real” brass band instruments.  Non-standard instruments may only be used in the Open Section). This year, there was only one band “competing” in the Third section, Oakland (out of Detroit, MI).  They sounded great and I enjoyed listening to them.

I heard more bands this year than I have in previous years, partly because Betsy Jones convinced me to take pictures of the bands for the NABBA newsletter.  While doing that, I got to watch Tri-State, New England, Chesapeake, Oakland, Massanutten, Spires, and one or two other bands that I don’t recall.   Later in the day, after Georgia had done our bit, I had to do some volunteer work for the competition, and I ended up leading several bands from the case storage room to the rehearsal room to the stage.  Luckily, that allowed me to listen to some of the really great bands (Fountain City, JMU, Chicago and Atlantic) from backstage.

I must say, for the record, that I’m quite disappointed with our second-place finish.  I heard about half of Central Ohio’s performance from backstage.  They are a very good band.  I think we were better.  The thing that bothers me the most is that the third place band (Massanutten) came in .2 (that’s two tenths of a point) behind us.  I heard them play.  There is absolutely no way they were that close to us musically.  I can almost swallow the judges scoring COBB higher than the GBB until I realize that those same judges putt MBB in the same general area as the GBB.  Georgia and Central Ohio were clearly head-and-shoulders above all of the other First section bands.

But enough about that.  What else have I been doing?  Well, a lot of driving.  As I said, the championships were in Raleigh – about 400 miles from where I live.  I drove up last Thursday morning, arriving at about 5 in the afternoon, got checked into my hotel, and went to audit a NABBA board meeting (to see if I’m really interested in applying for a spot on the board).  The meeting went on until nearly 11 that night, accomplishing little of import other than determining where the competition will be held in 2012 and 2013.  I still haven’t decided about applying.

Anyway, I got back to the hotel late but woke up fairly early on Friday.  Spent most of that day watching soloists and small ensembles perform (the competition isn’t just for full bands), and then went to a performance/mini-concert that the GBB gave on Friday night.  Got home relatively late again, but again awoke early on Saturday.  Went to a cemetery in downtown Raleigh before beginning the full day of banding, which ended near midnight.

On Sunday, I drove back to Atlanta in time to go to a brass quintet rehearsal in the afternoon.  Monday morning, I drove to Macon to shoot at a cemetery, then cruised up to South Carolina to play a concert with the Southern Wesleyan University Wind Ensemble, which is directed by my brother Greg. 

Ran into an old friend from Furman there, Dana Malone, and we might try to get together for dinner or something in the near future.  She’s apparently a writer who does a lot of speaking tours, keeps a strange schedule, and cruises through Atlanta on a regular basis.

After getting home (late again) on Monday night, I went back to work yesterday, got caught up on a week’s worth of emails, then had a GBB rehearsal last night (we’re playing the Deep South Brass Band Festival in a couple of weeks, so rehearsals haven’t stopped).  Needless to say, my chops are shot, and I’m not touching the horn today.

While in Raleigh, my favorite laptop bit the dust.  I wasn’t pleased.  Upon returning to Atlanta, however, I remembered that I had Jenny’s old laptop, which had died a couple of months ago.  I ripped apart my machine, took the system board out of it, put it in Jenny’s, and have managed to build one working laptop out of two previously dead ones.  I’m typing on it now, as a matter of fact.

And that’s pretty much where things are right now.  Hoping to see Chris on Saturday and maybe tour Kennesaw Mountain or catch a movie or just laze around – it all depends on the weather.  I’ve got a church gig Sunday morning – the last one for the music minister, who announced his retirement out of the blue a few weeks ago.  Not sure what that’s going to do to my Easter and Christmas gig schedule.

Need to scatter some pictures throughout this tripe and do some real work.  Everybody take care of themselves.  I’ll try not to let this go for three weeks without an entry in the future.

TWD

Well, it’s been a couple of weeks and I’ve had a chance to internalize things and get the tears out of the way and get my head back into everyday things like work and brass and bills and other similarly riveting things.

After playing Mom’s memorial service a couple of Tuesdays ago, I jumped back into the banding world by returning to Atlanta in time for a rehearsal that night.

I’d planned to return a tuba that I’d been play-testing to the middleman who was trying to sell it, but he told me to hang onto it for a while, so I kept it for another week.  During the week, I offered the owner $4500 for it. He counter-offered $5000, but before I had a chance to respond, he put the thing up for sale in an eBay auction, effectively pissing off me and the guy who’d been acting as the middleman.

I immediately bid $4000 for it on eBay (not enough to meet his reserve price), and the sale ended last night with nobody else going over $2000.  I’m hoping that the seller goes back to the middleman to tell him that my offer of $4500 is now acceptable…at which point I’ll say that I saw the horn on eBay and he couldn’t get $2000 for it, so my offer is now $3000.

Jerk.

On Friday night, the band rehearsed with Dr. Joe Parisi, director of arguably the best brass band in the states – and one of the best in the world.  For about 3 hours, he put us through our paces on the two pieces that we’ll be playing at the championships next month.  Yesterday, we resumed rehearsing with Joe, this time for 7 hours.  Not sure how much we’ve improved as a result, but my chops are sore today.

That’s not a particularly good thing, because we’ve got a concert tonight.  I’m looking forward to it anyway.

Must get some shopping done (I’m completely out of food), and then figure out how to waste 5 hours before I head to the concert.

TWD

This one’s going to be tough.

Mom did exactly what I thought she’d do.  She waited for Cy to see her on Wednesday night, and then decided that she’d done all she had to do.

I got a call at work from Greg at about 3:20 Thursday afternoon, telling me that I needed to get to South Carolina quickly.

I wasn’t quite quick enough. 

At around 4:40, I got another call from Greg, this time telling me that there was no need to hurry.  She was gone.  The next twenty or thirty miles of highway were strangely blurry.  It was almost like there was water in my eyes or something.  Apparently, my phone also started to freak out a little bit, because people who called me had a very hard time understanding what I was trying to say.

Stupid cellular networks.  You’d think they could compensate for sobs.

So let’s talk a bit about my mother, who graced us with her presence for about 74 and one-quarter years before moving on to do whatever it is that we’ll all do eventually.

She was born on November 16th, 1935.  I can’t tell you a great deal about that day – or about any of the 11,004 days between that one and the one when I made my screaming, squalling, wrinkled and red entrance in 1966.  Neither can I tell you much about any one of the 16,133 days between that historic event and the one when she decided she’d seen enough of me.

What I can tell you is my overall impression of this lady who gave life to me and to my 4 siblings and who made life better for the last 57 years of my dad’s life.

She was short.  She loved my ex-wife a great deal, not only because my ex-wife is quite loveable, but also because my ex-wife was the only person in the family who was shorter than Mom was.  Even after my ex-wife put on her shoes, gaining that all-important inch that relegated Mom back into the “shortest” category.

She was a conservative to a fault, but she somehow managed to love me in spite of my failings in that area.   She knew that she couldn’t change my mind and I knew that I couldn’t change her mind and neither one of us gave a damn about that anyway.  She put humanity above republicanism, people above party, family above faults, and love above everything.

She was religious, although I honestly didn’t know how much until about 5 years ago.  I count that as a plus.  She worried about me and she prayed about me and she no doubt managed to mix those two things together; but she didn’t beat me over the head with her faith and she loved me in spite of my lack of it.

She was, as you may have deduced from my recent postings, not a lady with whom you’d want to tangle if she thought you were wronging one of her children.  I don’t know how she did it, but she managed to make things right for me against the odds on too many occasions to blow them all off as luck or pluck or general bitchiness or outright fear.  She stuck up for me (and I’m sure she did the same for my brothers and sisters) and won.

She was born with what I believe is referred to as “a tin ear” yet she still raised five musical children.  I heard her say many times (and I heard her sing a few times, so I believe her) that she only played the radio and the blender.  When I was young, she proved this countless times by playing the tune of the day while making cookies – by adjusting the speed of the cookie batter beaters.

Several years ago, she gave all of her kids a book containing a large number of the recipes that we’d all grown up with.  I don’t know how many meals I’ve made out of that book since I received it, but I don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I said that I’ve used it 20 or more times a year since getting it.

She reveled in my accomplishments and she gave me the benefit of the doubt on my failures, regardless of how big or how small each was and regardless of how I viewed them myself.  If I was ecstatic, she kept me humble; and if I was humiliated, she kept me proud.

I could go on for hours telling you all about what a wonderful lady my mom was, but most of you already know it – and those of you who don’t will no doubt think that I’m just getting caught up in my grief.  You might be right about that, but if you think I’m embellishing, then you’d be wrong. She was not a perfect person – but she set the bar for everyone else I’ve known.

So I’ll end this entry now.  Those of you who didn’t know my mom might know her a bit better now.  Those of you who did might know a bit better how I feel about her now.  The present tense there is intentional.  She’s gone, but she’s still Mom.  My feelings will never change.

Goodbye, Mom.  I love you.

TWD