Category Archives: personal

back to the grind

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So it’s been a couple of weeks since my sojourn to Chicago and life in Atlanta hasn’t changed much since then. I still go to work every day and wish that I could have almost any other job in the world.  I still walk a few miles in the mornings and take longer treks on the weekends.  I still have rehearsals on Tuesdays, still listen to my friend Robin play his guitar and sing on Wednesdays, still feed the feral cats most mornings, still have lots of jobs that need to be done around the house.

I guess about the only thing that has changed in the last two weeks is that I’ve been a happier guy.  And yeah – that’s pretty much a direct consequence of my Chicago trip.  Amy and I have had several long talks in the last two weeks and, though we don’t know exactly how things are going to work, we’re both pretty sure that they are going to work.  That makes me happy.  And that’s all I’m going to say about that for now.

Work really has been a complete drag since I switched to DLSO.  It’s bad enough that I really don’t understand what it is that we’re trying to accomplish.  What makes it worse is that the other Atlanta guy – the one who I was actually sort of looking forward to working with – doesn’t seem to have the capacity to shut up. Today, for example, he decided to spend twenty minutes reciting to me all of the company acronyms that he could think of – knowing that the over-abundance of acronyms in my job is one of the things that really pisses me off.  He’s a nice enough guy, but sheesh!  STOP TALKING ALREADY.

With that notable exception, today wasn’t all that bad.  I got volunteered to write the procedures for some failover testing that we’ll be doing tomorrow and it was the most useful I’ve felt in a month.  Nothing huge – just filling in some server names and determining in what order they should be shut off or turned on – but I was doing something tangible and it felt good.  I keep telling myself that if I can just hang in there until the actual technical trials start, I’ll be okay.  Time will tell.

It is currently pouring down rain for about the third of fourth time today.  I don’t mind, as it’s keeping the temperature down and it always sounds nice to me; but every time we get big storms I have to wonder what’s happening to my roof – and I have to wonder how fast my grass is going to grow.  I just mowed the lawns last Saturday, and it’d be nice not to have to do it again really soon, particularly as my next two weekends are booked and I’ll be going to Canada for three weeks after that.

Booked weekends?  Yes!  This coming Friday, I’ll be heading for Gettysburg, PA, immediately after work.  Amy will be playing there with the Athena Brass Band on Saturday afternoon, and that seemed like a good enough excuse to make the trip.  I also intend to kidnap her on Sunday and bring her back to Atlanta until Monday night.

The following weekend, the Georgia Brass Band will be playing at the International Euphonium Institute’s grand finale on Saturday night – and plans are in the works for a certain red-headed friend of mine to fly to Atlanta on Friday to take in the Saturday show and learn a bit more about my adopted city on Sunday.

After tucking her back into a plane on that Sunday, I’ll have one more day of work to snore through before putting my happy ass in the Audi and heading to Vermont, where – on June 28th – the GBB will play a benefit concert for the Sheldon Museum, and from there I’ll make my way up to Magnetawan to spend 10 days or so at glorious Ahmic Lake before picking my way southwestward between two rather larger lakes in order to spend another two or three days in Waukegan.  Then it’ll be, yet again, back to the grind.

I think I’ll still be pretty happy, though.

TWD

we want details!

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I’m sure that you’re all just on pins and needles wondering about how my trip to Waukegan went, and so I’ll begin this little tome by stating that I have been dead tired for the last couple of days at work.  I got very little sleep on Monday night and not much more last night.  Work has been, to put it mildly, less than stimulating these last two days.  A number of phone calls, lots of reading, occasionally looking at a spreadsheet…the usual.

On the bright side, however, I now have an actual co-worker working in my office with me!  The last time this happened was in (I believe) the summer of 2008, which is when I made a lateral move away from the television company into the metrics group.  You may recall that all of my colleagues and my boss were located in Texas for that gig.  When I made the jump to Digital Life at the beginning of this month, all of my new colleagues were in Texas.  As of yesterday, however, Atlanta has two people in Digital Life, and I finally have a guy in the office with whom I can commiserate (and, hopefully, get some better work done).  For the last couple of days, I’ve been spending a lot of time helping him get software set up and find documentation on things that we’re supposed to know, but we’ve spent some time chatting and learning backgrounds and talents, etc. and I think we might make a pretty good Atlanta team.

You don’t want to hear about all that, though, right?  You want all the spicy details of this romantic liaison in Waukegan.

Keep dreaming, people.  This isn’t a tell-all.

It’s a tell-some, though, so here’s a quick run-down of the weekend.  I left Atlanta at around 3:30AM last Saturday and made the drive to my hotel in Waukegan, arriving a little after 3:00 in the afternoon (central time). Amy was working until 6:00, so I had time to take a shower, do a little NABBA business, and worry about what I was going to wear for a planned dinner date.  After spending an hour getting more and more nervous and toying with the idea of feigning a computer emergency and returning to Atlanta, I walked outside to await the arrival of my reason for making the trip.

Spent some time thinking of clever opening lines and so I was perfectly prepared to greet Amy with, “Hi!  Tom Day! Damned glad to meetcha!”

I was prepared to say that, but I don’t think I actually managed to get it out.  I think it was more like, “Hi,” followed by a hug.

Pleasantries done, we went to eat some pizza at The Quonset Hut pizza place.  It was good pizza.  And the menu was no-nonsense: “Pizza.  Your choice of sausage, pepperoni, and/or cheese.”  Okay, there might have been a few other toppings to choose from, but not many.  I believe we also had a couple of beers.
Romantic dinner.  Check.  After the pizza, we went to the Illinois Beach State Park, parked the car, and walked to the edge of Lake Michigan, where – because it was freaking freezing – we nodded at the water and went back to the car.  Long romantic walk on the beach.  Check.  Following that, we went to a coffee shop and talked until it closed. Stimulating conversation.  Check.

On Sunday, Amy played a church gig in the morning and we spent most of the rest of the day in downtown Chicago, where we did touristy things like going to the restaurant at the top of the John Hancock Center, visiting the Chicago water tower (survived the Chicago fire) and hanging out at a coffee shop.  More stimulation conversation.

Monday found us in Elmhurst, IL, where Amy played in a quintet for a Memorial Day parade and I shot a bunch of pictures.

If you’d like to view pictures of the weekend and the parade, they’re here in my SmugMug account.

And that’s that.

TWD

a day in columbus, a weekend in waukegan

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The GBB played our concert for the International Trumpeters Guild at Columbus State University this afternoon, so I took the day off from work to do it.

In a normal life, that would’ve meant that the individual taking the day off could sleep for an extra hour or two.  In my life, that doesn’t happen unless I go out of town.  The cats seem to think that 6:00 is when the day starts, and I really don’t get a say in the matter.  So I rolled out of bed, gave the kitties their breakfasts, and walked about 3.2 miles.

I should mention that my new morning route is a bit over 3 miles now – I added the extra mile after last weekend, when I explored a new road and figured that I could make the 3-mile hike work in the mornings now that I’m so close to the office.

After the walk, I went to the old office (yes, I showered first) to pick up a print-out from the plotter there, then got my hair cut and drove the 2 hours down to Columbus to have lunch with Joe (music director) before our 2:30 call time.

You’d think that, when you order a slice of pizza from a pizza restaurant, you’d get it in less than an hour.  You’d think that.  So did a good number of the band.  Apparently, that’s not the way things work in Columbus. What was supposed to be a leisurely lunch followed by an equally-leisure stroll to the venue with plenty of time to spare turned out to be a lot of waiting, followed by wolfing down food, followed by running to the venue.

Once there, while waiting for the rehearsal hall to open, I talked to Cy and learned that Dad and Diane will be on hand for the GBB concert in Middlebury next month.  Excellent!

The ITG concert itself went very well.  It’s hard not to have a great time when you’re playing to an extremely enthusiastic packed house.  Several standing O’s and good vibes all around.  Then another 2-hour trip back to Duluth, and the day is pretty much over.

I mention the two 2-hour trips because I’ll be making a couple of 13-hour trips in the next four days.  Early on Saturday morning, I’ll be hitting the road for Waukegan, Illinois.  Why would I do this?  Why not?  Doesn’t Waukegan sound like the perfect getaway for a Memorial Day weekend?

Actually, I’m going up there to spend a couple of days getting to know more about this trumpet-playing woman who was mentioned a few days ago in this blog.  The two of us came to the conclusion that, after having sent a few hundred texts and emails to each over the last two months, and after having spent a sizable percentage of the last couple of weeks on the phone, maybe actually hanging out together would be a good idea.  So I’ll be driving up there on Saturday morning (arriving Saturday afternoon) and coming back Monday morning (arriving home Monday night).  In between those two anchors, the only plan at this point is to catch a church service at which she’s playing on Sunday.  The rest of the time, we’ll just see what happens.  I’ve never spent any time in Chicago, so tourism is likely.  There is, supposedly, some really good pizza up there – and I’m guessing it doesn’t take an hour to get it – so food is also likely.  6-hour conversations are also quite likely.

Interesting side-note here.  Google Chrome does not like the word “Waukegan,” and keeps recommending that I replace it with “Milwaukee.”

On this day in history, something probably happened.  I don’t feel like looking it up, though.

TWD