Wow.
I haven’t posted anything in how many months?
I really should update this more often, so I don’t wind up having to figure out what I’ve been doing. Since January, for example, I’ve played with the GBB in Savannah, Louisville and Atlanta; I’ve had an Easter gig in a church about 8,000 miles from my house; I’ve jettisoned a roommate; I’ve gotten sucked into writing reports for a different service group, using two different databases and dealing with a new set of administrators; I’ve seen dead Egyptians and dead Chinamen; I’ve glued a robot together; I’ve discovered a very intriguing expansion to an old haunt; I’ve nearly been crushed by a computer desk; I’ve joined the hordes of iPhone fanatics; I’ve learned that catfish don’t particularly like liver.
And I’ve used more semi-colons in the last five minutes than I’ve ever used in my entire life up until 5 minutes ago. Don’t care if they’re grammatically accurate or not.
Let’s get started, shall we?
In late January (or maybe early February), the brass band played for the GA Music Educators’ Association conference in Savannah. This, theoretically, was a big deal for us, as it put the band in front of several hundred high school (and, I guess, college) music teachers – so if we didn’t screw up too badly, we could potentially generate some interest for our peculiar kind of music and land some gigs.
We didn’t play particularly well (and the recording of us totally sucks), but the comments from those in the audience were generally positive and we did, in fact, land a sort of quasi-gig at Pope High School in Atlanta a couple of weeks later (sort of an open rehearsal for interested students and others).
Savannah was quite lovely. I hadn’t been there in probably 20 years, and I spent the morning (a perfect Georgia spring morning, I must say) after the GMEA concert walking around by the river and looking at old stuff. This was an excellent way to shake off the lack of sleep caused by rooming with four twenty-something guys the previous night. One of whom (I swear I am not making this up) apparently decided that the best way to avoid a hangover was to sleep in the hotel tub with the shower running. All night. Tubists are strange people.
A few weeks after the Savannah concert, the band competed in the NABBA championships in Louisville and came in second in our division. Our performance was (again) relatively uninspired, but we only lost by 3 points to the Central Ohio band.
Days after the NABBA performance, we did a concert with a cornet stud named Richard Marshall in Atlanta. That one seemed to go very well, and I’m looking forward to hearing the recording of it.
The week after next, the band will be playing in some southern brass band festival or something in a podunk town in middle Georgia. After that, I think we get to take a break for a while – though the board of directors is supposedly ramping up to get worked into a lather over planning to maybe do important things dealing with stuff that might affect the general direction of the band at some yet-to-be-determined time. So, I’ve got that going for me.
Pardon my cynicism. These things happen. Enough about the band already. Let’s talk fishing.
The weekend before the NABBA contest found me and two other tubists sitting in a boat in the middle of a lake in Buckhead, Georgia. Three guys, 12 fishing poles, about 4 different kinds of bait, lots of beer. Two days and about 13 boat-hours after we started, we’d landed a grand total of two fish. And the second one very nearly stole a pole before I noticed that it (the pole) was trying to jump off of the boat.
Before the trip began, Robert – who is an excellent tubist and pipe organ builder – had assured me that catfish love chicken livers. I’ve come to the conclusion, however, that chicken livers are catfish kryptonite. From what I could tell, catfish fall all over themselves trying to avoid chicken livers. Write that down.
I did, however, get a new fishing pole; so maybe I’ll bring it to Canada this year and practice casting. I also scored a tub of pimento cheese spread (which is still in my refrigerator a month later). Pimento cheese spread, it seems, is the sandwich filler of choice for Georgia anglers.
Sometime in late February, my roommate Julie got laid of from her job as a graphics artist (along with most of the people with whom she worked). As a result, she moved up her plans to move back to Minnesota (which had been planned for around July) and headed out one very early morning in March. She sounds like she’s enjoying herself quite a bit since moving back, as she can now hang out with her kids, grandkids, mother and – from what I gather – an old flame. “Wah wah wah,” as Chachi would say.
She got a job at a grocery store in Minnesota almost immediately, by the way, and from what I’ve heard she’s also fielding other offers closer to her area of expertise. Some people have all the luck, huh?
Julie actually moved in last year while I was playing with the brass band at NABBA, so it’s only fitting that she moved out shortly before I played with the brass band at NABBA this year. The GBB played the required piece (“Trittico”) along with “Talis Variations” for our free-choice selection and we did rather well, but just didn’t have the spark necessary to give us our second straight Honors Section championship. We lost by about three points to the Central Ohio Brass Band. Interestingly, we knocked off the COBB by about three points last year. The year before that, COBB beat us…by about three points. Budding rivalry? Not really. Both bands have eventually made their collective way to a nearby brewpub each of the last three years, and congratulatory pints are way more fun than rivalries.
At work, I found myself suddenly thrown into the position of having to write some reports for Microsoft. This wouldn’t have been such a traumatic experience were it not for the fact that Microsoft maintains their own database (separate from the Metrics team’s), which is on a SQL server (rather than Oracle); and, they being Microsoft, their procedures are all over the place and a pain in the ass to navigate. Enough about that. I’m surviving. Tearing my hair out on some days and hating the hell out of my job on most others, but I’ll get by.
After Julie moved out, I started rearranging my house and turing it back into a regular old bachelor pad. This involved dragging a lot of heavy furniture my my stairs, and I managed to break my bannister (and nearly die) while moving my (rather large and unwieldy) computer desk from my piano room to the room that had been lived in by Julie. That room is now a computer office with a guest bed in it.
The other upstairs guestroom (now and forever to be referred to as “the formal bedroom” instead of “the satan room” – long story…), is starting to look really nice. The walls are a very nice shade of maroon and I’ve installed basically all of my old stuff in there. A bed that was (I think) my great-grandmother’s, a desk that was (I think) my great-grandfather’s, a chair that was (I know) Jenny’s grandmother’s, an end table/humidifier that was (I think) Jenny’s great-grandfather’s, and probably some other stuff that I’ve forgotten about. It looks nice, at any rate.
After (almost) getting the house back in order, just shortly before NABBA, I was treated to a visit by Mom, Dad and Cy, the three of whom trekked to Atlanta to check out a King Tut exhibit at the Civic Center and a display of the Terra Cotta Warriors at the High – and, one would hope, to see their bouncing baby boy/sibling, too. I was not overjoyed by the Tut thing, but did enjoy the Chinese stuff quite a bit. Of course, it was also nice to see the folks and the always-amazing big sister. The three of them also made it down in time on Saturday morning to catch the GBB in our last serious rehearsal before the championships. They tell me they were impressed.
The sidebrush on my Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner kept falling off as I cleaned up for the fam’s visit, so I finally just glued it in the spot where it’s supposed to be. It’s worked fine ever since.
And a few weeks ago, I took the plunge and upgraded my cellphone to the iPhone 3G, I have to admit it: I’m hooked. I’ve avoided getting one for the last couple of years because the applications available to it were limited. In particular, it had no book reader app; I figured why should I buy something to potentially replace my iPaq if it doesn’t have the one thing that I’d use more than anything else. When Apple finally opened the thing up to developers and apps began showing up, I figured it was time. I’m glad I waited. The thing is amazing. I can listen to tunes (as I’m doing now), read my books (which are stored online rather than on the phone), check all of my email, chat with friends, get the titles and artists of songs that happen to be playing on my radio, surf the internet, take pictures, login to Facebook, get directions and GPS guidance to restaurants (and go directly from the directions to reviews, menus, phone numbers, etc)…all I can say is, “Wow.” I really do understand all the hype now.
I think that pretty much covers everything I mentioned in my initial list of things, except for the intriguing expansion of an old haunt. And the Easter thing. For the latter, I had an Easter gig. It was a long way from my house. But it paid well.
The intriguing expansion, however. I’ve got to admit, I started typing this entry about 4 days ago and I can’t for the life of me remember what I was referring to when I said that. Apparently, whatever expansion has happened to whatever old haunt just wasn’t that intriguing. I am completely clueless.
But most of you knew that already.
TWD