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
