I’m getting my 60K miles tune-up done on the Subaru this morning. It’s not something that I think I’ve ever done on one of my cars before (dealer-suggested services), but the Wilderness is a good car and I don’t spend a lot on it, so I guess it makes sense to try to keep it in good working order for as long as possible.

I arrived at the dealership at around 8 this morning (it’s about 9:30 now), and the whole shebang should take 4-5 hours, so I brought my iPad with me, along with a keyboard, mouse, and headphones. Figured I could watch some movies, maybe do a little work, and actually update this li’l blog thing with tales of what I’ve been up to over the last year or so. Hopefully, I’ll have enough calendar entries and photos on my phone to remind me of actually what that WAS, because every day is kind of a blur once it’s over. No, I don’t have dementia or depression and my memory isn’t going (much) – I just don’t lead a very exciting life.

It appears that my last entry prior to this one was in October of 2025, so let’s start there and see what happens…..

The month started out with a joint concert of the GBB and the Atlanta Wind Symphony at Milton High School. I don’t remember a great deal about it except that it was fairly well attended, and we did one mass piece that was kind of a cluster. I won’t swear to it, but I think it was Pines of the Appian Way. GBB tenor horns naturally sat with AWS French horns, but we had completely different parts and nobody really knew what was happening. It was also tough to see the director, since there were about 900 people on the stage.

As I recall, the AWS sounded pretty good, but hadn’t progressed much beyond where they were when I was playing in the group 30 years ago.

Other things that happened during October – Sandie began a journey of mouth fixing (root canals, crowns, implants, veneers, etc.) that continues to this day. I see in my calendar that she had three appointments with a dentists or dental-related people, and I have very unflattering picture of her with a wide-open pie hole in my OneDrive photos from that month. I will not be sharing that here.

We also went to a haunted house in Cumming, GA, in the middle of the month. This is a fairly large undertaking that two of my colleagues from work dive into each year (raises money for someone, but I’m not sure how), and Sandie and I have gone each of the last two years, usually meeting up with at least one other person from my work, to support their efforts. It’s actually very well done, but it tends to be a bit too loud and too full of dry ice fog for my tastes. I don’t particularly enjoy it.

Sandie went to a Springsteen concert and a No Kings rally in October (I agree with the sentiment of the latter, but have no interest in hanging out with 3000 people), and the GBB had the first of a handful of 8-hour weekend rehearsals as we began preparing for NABBA 2026 (the brass band championships).

Had a couple of cool things happen in November. First, I got to play the big horn at a special service at Morningside Presbyterian, celebrating its centennial. Not only did I get a raise from the church (for the first time requiring that I fill out an I-9 form), but it was also the first time in I don’t know how long that I had TWO tuba gigs in the same calendar year (the other being Easter at Morningside).

Immediately after the gig, I took off for a 10-day vacation at Fort Mountain State Park in Chatsworth, GA. Normally, I like to take my fall vacation in the far north, and I don’t recall why I didn’t do that last year. Might’ve been to save money, might’ve been to just give Fort Mountain a chance to prove itself, might’ve been because I couldn’t make the timing work for Michigan….I really don’t know why I decided to stay in GA, but it was both a success and a failure. At the start, I had the campground pretty much to myself (which is usually the plan), but it was also a lot warmer than I would’ve liked. Sure, it got down into the 40s (maybe even the high 30s) at night, but a tee-shirt and jeans were more than enough to stay warm during the day, and make hiking (of which I did a good amount) a sweaty, uncomfortable, affair. I brought along an electric heater for the tent (that may have been another reason I chose Fort Mountain – experimenting with an electric campsite), but I don’t think I used it at all. Later in the week, as the weekend before Thanksgiving approached, the campground started filling up. By the time I left, it was well over 75% occupied and not at all what I want during my fall camping trips.

I’m not sure exactly how long I stayed in the woods, but I did go home in time for Thanksgiving, and Dianne, Dad, and Wayne (along with two little dogs) made the trek to Lawrenceville to spend the day with Sandie and me. I think we had a bit of trouble with the turkey (didn’t manage to get it thawed in time), but we did manage to get everything cooked and had an enjoyable day with the crew.

Not much happened in December.  I had two GBB concerts on consecutive Tuesdays, which was rather odd.  And I ended the year back at Fort Mountain State Park.  Spent 5 days there and thoroughly enjoyed myself.  As hoped, the place was basically empty and the temps were brisk.  I did a good deal of hiking, slept like a dead man, got in some reading, and actually got to USE the electric heater in the tent. 

So that was the end of last year.  I’ll go ahead and publish this, and the next entry will try to summarize this year up to this point.  Hopefully, I’ll be in a campsite in Maine when I write it.