Man.
I haven’t updated this thing in 6 months. And I left the Canadian monologue unfinished. Just wow. I’m sort of a slacker.
Let me just gloss over everything by saying this: A lot has happened in the last 6 months. Some of it’s probably interesting. A lot of it isn’t.
I’m not going to bore myself or you by trying to remember much of any of it. As a summary since July:
- I’ve played a few concerts with the GBB
- I’ve gone to 11 football games, taken about 10,000 photographs, and sold about 30 of them.
- I’ve quit drinking and smoking.
- I’m contemplating going back to school for a masters in music in a few years.
- I’m trying to figure out how in THE hell I can afford to do that.
- I’ve started taking tuba lessons.
- I’ve gone camping once or twice.
- I’ve totally fallen in love with a woman, but I expect nothing to come of that.
- I’ve refinanced by second mortgage.
- I’ve launched about 4 other blogs for various reasons under various names and I’m not going to tell you what they are.
That pretty much covers it.
Now as far as THIS blog goes, I’ve decided to make it one of those “normal” blogs, which I will attempt to update on a much more regular basis (like once a day or so) with items of very little interest to anyone. Along the lines of “this is what I did today, this is what I’m thinking right now, this is what the big picture of my life looks like at this point,” and garbage like that.
It will be incredibly boring to everyone except myself (who will go back over it in a year or two and see just how screwed up my life was in 2009 and 2010); but hey…this is called “Stuff Nobody Reads” for a reason.
So to kick things off for today, I overslept (slightly) for the second time in two days. This is because, also for the second time in two days, I stayed up until about 2 o’clock this morning chatting online with the aforementioned woman (I’ll call her Chris for now), who is once again talking about moving far far away to pursue her doctorate.
More power to her. Doctorates are good. However, seeing as how I didn’t tell the last woman who moved away and left my ass pining for her, I vow that I will tell Chris, in no uncertain terms, that I don’t want her to leave. Hopefully she’ll read this and acknowledge it and I won’t actually have to tell her. Because, you know, I don’t want to be seen as standing in the way of anybody who’s going after an advanced degree.
Had a tuba lesson with Bernard last night and it went okay. I’m still fluttering around the third-line D – I think because my chops are just weak – but I think I’m getting a tad better at controlling it when I’m fresh. At the end of the lesson, however, I was having a terrible time trying to center a C# in the Persichetti solo, and I finally told Bernard, “Look, I’m trying, but I’m just tired. I practiced for 90 minutes before I got here.”
He was astonished, and told me quite earnestly that I wasn’t supposed to be practicing on the days when I studied with him. I was like, “You told me to practice every day. That’s what I’ve been doing.” His response was, “Don’t you remember practicing for auditions? You didn’t practice on the day of the audition, right?”
“Bernard,” I said, “I told you when we first started doing this that I’ve never practiced. I don’t know how to do it. You said every day, I was doing every day. If you don’t want me to do it every day, you’ve got to tell me not to do it every day.”
So he had a nice laugh over that and told me not to practice on the days I take lessons. He also said that the revelation that I had been doing so cleared up some questions for him. I’m guessing he means the question, “Why isn’t this guy getting any better?” I can answer that. My chops are shot to hell by the time he gets to hear me play.
In other news, I’ve started researching the NA Brass Band Assoc in a serious way because I’m thinking I might nominate myself to be on the board of directors of that group. I’m on the board of the Georgia Brass, but am quite disillusioned with that post. The GBB “board” is basically an attempt by the founder/music director/president to legitimize all of his decisions. Board members at large have very little ability to conceive of, plan, finance, or implement anything unless the f/md/p wants to do the same thing and has complete control over it. I don’t need that. My term on that body is supposed to end on January 1. I am completely torn. I hate wasting my time with it, but I have this deep-seated hope that, just maybe, I’ll get to actually contribute to something great.
So anyway, thinking about throwing my hat in to ring for the nabba board (which has also been disappointing lately), and I’m doing a lot of research about the association and its history in order to 1}make sure I want to do this, and 2}be able to present myself as someone with a knowledge of our history and plans for our future if I do.