A friend of mine informed me on Monday that I hadn’t posted anything here in a week and a half.  So much for being on top of things in the new year, huh?

If I were a smart person, I’d say that that’s because nothing’s been happening, but that excuse falls flat for a couple of reasons.  First, there HAVE been things going on (nothing earth-shattering, granted); and second, I don’t believe I wrote several weeks ago that I’d update this thing more often assuming that I had something to update it with.  The whole idea was just to write something every day or two, right?  So I apologize for my slackassness, and I’ll try to put down the latest gossip now (in no particular order).

I went up to Greenville last Saturday and hung out with Mom, Dad, Dianne and Cy.  The occasion was, of course, Dad’s 77th birthday (which actually was on Monday, but who’s going to drive 5 hours on a Monday?).  Greg showed up briefly with Tad and couple of Tad’s friends, all of whom had just finished the first round of their All-State auditions.  I’m told that Tad is a fantastic trumpeter – and he’s only in 9th grade.  Yo, Tad!  Don’t screw up and major in, say, sociology when you get to college.  You’ll regret it when you’re 40.

We spent the bulk of the day chatting – some of the parental units’ church friends came over for a few hours in the afternoon – and then Cy and Dianne and I made stuffed peppers for dinner.  I gave Dad a can opener and some pink batteries for his birthday.  Sentimental sap, ain’t I?  Mom held up pretty well, but opted to lie down when the time came to eat the peppers.  No surprise there.  She didn’t even want a salad because, as she put it, “the peppers have already corrupted the lettuce.”

Getting back into the work thing has been difficult, to say the least.  I’m completely unmotivated and more than a little overwhelmed with the languages that I’m supposed to be using to write reports.  I just don’t pick this stuff up as quickly as I used to be able to do.  Would really just like to go back to working with hardware; but, if I’m going to keep my job, I need to knuckle down and get really good at coding in some language.  I’m starting to think that javascript might save me.

At any rate, I’ve got about 4 projects on my list right now and I’ve been going into work every morning all fired up about digging in and completing them.  That enthusiasm lasts until my first cup of coffee and then I generally waste the rest of the day on side projects that have no actual value to my boss – the folks in my old boss’ group are quite happy with my help, however.  Maybe I can get him to hire me as an on-site IT guy…

I had a decent tuba lesson on Monday night – my first one in several weeks because of the holidays. I haven’t been practicing as much as I should.  Still got a couple of really nice compliments from Bernard, along with the usual assaults upon my pride.  It’s okay.  I pay him to put me down.  Can’t say that it inspires me, but it does make me practice a bit harder.  The Persichetti solo is still kicking my ass, and he pulled out a new book (Snedecor, I think) on Monday to help me with my low-range stuff.  It’s a bear.

Still, I catch myself thinking “You’re sounding good, dude” every now and then, which is nice.  At rehearsal on Tuesday night, I was pretty stoked about the way I was playing.  For a short time last month, I even considered entering the solo and ensemble bit at the brass band championships in April; but I’m not ready to do that yet.  Not to mention the fact that I’d have to register this week and I haven’t even looked at solos for Eb tubas.

Chris has mentioned that she might be going to D.C. later this month, stopping in Virginia to check out her potential new school.  I might go with her.  Haven’t been to the capitol in too long and there’s a brass thing going on there, so it’d be fun.  Can’t believe I’m getting sucked into helping a girlfriend move again, though.  I’m thinking I’ve got some sort of mental illness going on where women are concerned.

The cold weather continued through yesterday, but it’s supposed to be warming up today.  That’s a good thing.  It’s not that I’ve been uncomfortable with the temps, but my stupid heat has been running almost non-stop for the last couple of weeks – and the thermostat is set at 57.  I’ve had fires going most of the time, have put up thermal drapes, and generally have an electric heater or two running.  And STILL the heat’s kicking on.  I’m scared to see my next natural gas bill.

Speaking of the cold, Atlanta got hit with mild snow and ice last Thursday, and the citizenry predictably went nuts.  Actually, the surface streets were pretty bad.  Betsy Jones had come to Atlanta to teach on Thursday morning and had made tentative plans to hang out with me in SC on Saturday, but she got trapped at Rich’s house because of icy roads until Saturday afternoon.  The streets in my own neighborhood were pretty treacherous on Friday, but I’m a yankee stud and all that.  I *can* hit the brakes and turn sharply on solid sheets of ice.  It’s a genetic thing.

Played trivia for the first time in a year or so last Friday night and was well on my way to a 2nd-place finish when I decided that it was late and I should go to bed.  That was fun.  In other competition news, I played in a singles darts tournament last night and – drink and smoke free! – came in third.  It was more a case of drawing weak competition than any feat of great throwing on my part, but I’ll take it.

And that’s pretty much all that I can think of to say for now, so I’ll throw in a “momery” and then see if I can find some photos to sprinkle throughout this monologue.

In about 1978 or 79 (I was in 8th grade, at any rate), some friends and I were throwing a frisbee around the quad area at Middlebury High School and the frisbee went onto the roof over the walkway between the junior high and the high school.  Naturally, I climbed up to get it….and was seen by a student teacher who felt that it was her duty to drag me to the principal’s office.

She was leading me there when I looked up and saw Mom walking down the hall towards us.  Mom loves to tell the story about the look on my face when I saw her.  Something along the lines of, “How did she know already??”  I probably was thinking something like that.  I really don’t recall.  I just remember the sight.  I also remember her sitting in the office with me and insisting that I throw in “sir” after all of my “yes” and “no” answers to the principal.

Those of you in the south might not think that’s all that strange, but northern kids generally don’t throw in the “Yes, Sir” and “No, Sir” sobriquets.  I felt like an idiot. I still have no idea what she was doing at the school that day, but I’ve been afraid of heights ever since.

Yeah, don’t get excited.  Just because it’s the first doesn’t mean that it’s going to be any better than last year’s drivel.


And now it’s nearly the end of the day and I’ve got a rehearsal tonight, so let me just try to go over the last 5 or 6 days quickly and get out of here.

I guess, for starters, I must admit that I relapsed on the damned cigarettes last night.  I swear, I can be such a dumb ass at times.  See, I entered a “blind draw” dart tournament (something I haven’t done since before I was married and had to do it to pay the rent, and I drew a really bad partner.  Truth be told, I haven’t been much of a darter since I quit drinking, either.  So I don’t know if it was to try to capture lightning in a bottle or trying to calm down or what, but I told myself, “Don’t smoke.  Don’t smoke.  Don’t smoke.”

And then, naturally, I bummed a couple of smokes off of my partner.

We got killed, by the way.

At any rate, my new quit date is now the evening of January 4, 2009.  Which was 5 weeks after my original quit date.

Dammit.

Let’s see.  My last entry before this one was on the 30th, huh?  Well, the 31st being New Year’s Eve, I spent it wondering if my neighbors would succeed in burning down my house with their fireworks.  They shot them off at random intervals during the day; then inexplicably missed their opportunity at midnight.  It was about 12:20 when they uncorked the bulk of their assault – which was the biggest one yet.  I stood on my deck taking pictures of their pyrotechnics, certain that one of the pine trees in my yard was going to start flaming.  Nothing happened, however.  Might have been nice if it had.  Then my insurance company would *have* to put a new roof on the house.

Betsy Jones and I went to the zoo on New Year’s day (I’ll upload some pictures at some point). Unfortunately, it was fairly cold and none of the primates were allowed to be outside.  We got in for half price because of that, so I won’t complain too much.  We’d been trying to get to the zoo for nearly a year, so when we finally both had a day off we weren’t about to let some cold weather get in the way.

Went to the Oakland Cemetery after the zoo (they’re right next to each other), but it was a bit too cool to spend much time there.

Actually, it’s been quite cold for quite a while in and around Atlanta.  When I drove in this morning, it was 18 degrees out – and I don’t believe it ever got above freezing last Sunday.

Speaking of Sunday, my terrible church orchestra may be coming to an end.  Got an email from director last week stating that the church has decided that 1}They don’t have enough money to run a decent music program, and 2}They’re not sure they like the way the music program is going under his leadership.  Admittedly, it’s a terrible church orchestra (and the choir is worse), but it’s still light years ahead of where it was when I first started playing there 15 or so years ago.

You got that part, right?  I might have to start looking for Easter and Christmas gigs for the first time in 15 years this year.  Maybe if the church hadn’t spent untold millions of dollars to construct a new – and completely unnecessary – wing of classrooms and offices two years ago, they’d have enough money to adequately fun, say, a children’s handbell choir.  Instead, I’m going to have to find a freaking Easter gig.  Merry Chrimmus to me.

As I mentioned, I’ve got a band rehearsal tonight.  First one in several weeks and I’m pretty sure we’ll be rusty.  And my horn’s at home, so I need to get going.

TWD

As I mentioned, I went to Andersonville National Cemetery on Monday with Betsy Jones.  It was a rather chilly day – never got above 50 – but startlingly bright and clear.  We spent a couple of hours in the museum (where some genius had erected a shrine to “Hollowed Ground”) and then two or three more wandering around the park and the cemetery.

For those of you who don’t know, I should explain that Andersonville was an infamous prisoner-of-war camp run by the confederacy during the civil war.  The museum is dedicated to POWs in all wars, the park is basically a large open space in which about 13,000 union prisoners died, and the cemetery is a national military cemetery along the lines of Arlington.   Monday was the second time that I’ve visited.  The museum has been greatly expanded in the last 15 years.  The park itself seems to have been scaled back a bit.  It’s still quite a thought-provoking place.

After Andersonville, Betsy and I joined her husband for some Indian food (which was fantastic), after which I came home and went to bed.  Scott (renter) has returned from Minnesota, and I’m sure he was somewhat taken aback to find that my living room looked like a hurricane had gone through it.

I continued my cleaning ways yesterday.  I’ve put all of my DVDs into a binder and have boxed their individual cases (I’ll put those in a closet or something).  This was step one in the process to take my television off of the wall and put it on a table in the corner.  Hopefully, I’ll be doing that today.  That’s going to allow me really to open up my living room and should make it appear quite a bit larger.  Future plans for the living room include a new paint job and maybe a hardwood floor.

I also did quite a bit of cleaning in the  kitchen yesterday and made some jambalaya (yum).  Last night, I watched a football game.  Today will probably be a repeat of yesterday in many ways.  It’s started out the same, at any rate.  It’s 1:00 in the afternoon and I’m still in my bathrobe.

TWD

I’ve spent much of today trying to bring order out of the chaos that is my downstairs.  It used to be relatively organized, but then very strange things started happening with my work life and with my home life all at the same time, and I’ve never really recovered.

See, about two or three years ago, I was working for BellSouth at our Executive Park office, and BellSouth began building a new “head end” for our television service (a head end is where the signals are encoded and sent out to subscribers).  It was determined that the Executive Park office, which was acting as the head end, was going to be emptied of actual people, except for one or two who monitored our equipment.  Since I wasn’t one of those people, I proceeded to pack my office into a bunch of boxes.

But I was never told to leave Executive Park.  So I continued to work there, slowly taking things that I actually had to use out of the boxes, but leaving a lot of stuff in the boxes.  Eventually, I got to a point where I had 5 or six (fairly large) boxes of stuff that I never used – so I took it home and put it in my garage.

Not long after that, I took in my first renter, Maria, who had boxes of her own and a motorcycle, and I couldn’t store my stuff in the garage anymore.  So I moved it into my other guestroom closet and forgot about it.

Maria moved out.  Dennis and Keith moved in – and I had to clean out the guestroom closet.  So the boxes came downstairs and ended up in my music room, where they have remained until today.  Today, I started going through the boxes and throwing stuff out left and right.  I also found a lot of pretty neat stuff., which I’ve stored in a box.  In 5 years, I’ll probably go through that box and throw everything out.  But for now, it’s made the cut and can stay in a box.   What I’m going to do with the box, I don’t know.

I also mopped the kitchen floor today and made some pumpkin soup, which was REALLY good.  If you’re interested, you make it like this: melt a half a stick of butter in a pan and throw in one chopped-up onion.  Sautee it until it’s nice and soft.  Pour in about 4 cups of chicken stock and some salt and pepper and bring everything to a boil.  Dump in a can (15-16 oz) of pumpkin, mix it up really well, lower the heat, and simmer it for about 45 minutes.  Then pour in about a half a cup of heavy cream, stir everything, and simmer for another 10 minutes.

Serve hot.  Parmesan cheese on top makes it great.

I spent several hours on Christmas (two days ago) in Greenville.  Got to see Mom, Dad, Dianne, Greg, Lisa, Zack, Nathan, Riley and Tad.  If I missed anybody in that list, I apologize.  Dianne brought some ham to the house, I showed up with mac and cheese, and we had some vegetables or something.  After lunch (just Dianne, Zack, the ‘rents and me – Greg et al showed up shortly thereafter), we went downstairs and chatted about nothing for an hour or two until Mom got very tired and went to take a nap, and everyone else sort of scattered.  I’m told that Larry and his family showed up yesterday, which is nice.  Next family gathering should be around the 8th or 9th, when we’ll descend on the parents’ domicile to celebrate Dad’s birthday.  Cy should be coming to that one, but I’m not sure about “T.”

Betsy Jones and I are planning to visit Andersonville Cemetery tomorrow.  I’m a big Civil War buff, as most of you know.  From what I understand, everyone else in Betsy’s family is also interested in the war (she is not particularly – at least not like I am – but she does like history).  I’m looking forward to spending 5 or 6 hours there, soaking up the history and maybe getting some decent pictures.

My dentist has been trying to get me to put an operating system on one of his old laptops for the last couple of weeks, but we can never get our schedules to jibe.  Maybe later this week I can get to him.

A few entries ago, I’d mentioned that I was going to put down “Mom Memories” here, and one that’s been stuck in my brain for several weeks now is of the night she fainted (hey – I didn’t say they’d all make her out to be some sort of saint, did I?).

This occurred in probably 1989, and I’m thinking that it must have been on a Wednesday night because it was early evening and Dad wasn’t home and I was grabbing a bite to eat at the kitchen table before I went out to play darts.  I’m not sure if league night was on Wednesday or not; but if Dad wasn’t home he must have been at a choir rehearsal or something.  Let’s just say that it was Wednesday, but that’s really not important.

At any rate, I’m sitting at the kitchen table reading something and eating something (cheese sammich, perhaps?), and Mom was doing something near the kitchen sink.  Making coffee or watering a plant or … I don’t know what she was doing.  We were just both in the kitchen, not paying attention to each other.

All of a sudden, there was a tremendous THUMP and the floor shook.  I think I said “What the…” before I glanced over and saw Mom lying on the floor.  I remember quite clearly that my next word was, “Mom!” – I can hear myself saying it in my head.  But, being a great boy scout and being on the safety squad at 3M and all that other good garbage, I knew exactly what to do.

Okay, that’s a lie.  I didn’t have a clue what to do.  So what I did was checked to make sure she had a pulse (I swear I couldn’t feel the damned thing in her wrist OR in her neck, but by that time she was awake and asking me what had happened).  Then I helped her get up, walked her up to her little television room, got her under a blanket in her recliner, gave her a couple of aspirin, and went to play darts.

I make myself sound more callous in the telling that I actually was.  She thanked me and told me I had a great bedside manner, as I recall.  And I *was* concerned – but I had obligations to the league and she seemed to be fine, except for the fact that she had no pulse.

TWD

I really haven’t liked Christmas much for a long time, and this year is no exception.  Hell, this year is probably the worst it’s been in quite a while.  Mom calls to tell me that she has cancer. Chris lets me know that she’s probably going to move (I told you that relationship was going nowhere, remember?). The price of gasoline continues to surge.  It seems like it’s been raining every day for the last 6 months.  I’m still in debt, so I have to keep doing that hideous job.  My roof is still leaking (probably because it never stops raining).

There.  I got some of the mental bile out of my head.

Two nights ago (Tuesday), I went to Dr. Tom Gibson’s house in Powder Springs and, with about 20 of my closest brass-playing friends, spent about an hour walking around Tom’s neighborhood and playing carols out of the Nestico books.  I’ve always like those arrangements.  The highlight of the night had to be when a car pulled up behind us while we were in the middle of playing Silent Night.  The driver, having no patience for something as trivial as Christmas carolers on his street, laid on his horn for about 5 seconds.  God bless our trombone players.  They completely ignored him.  After we finished the song, we moved out of the idiot’s way.  I was so entranced by his JesusFish license plate* that I nearly missed seeing his wonderful expression of Christmas spirit – he flipped us off.

I had a fairly nice day yesterday.  Drove down to Macon and spent a few hours doing nothing with Betsy Jones. We got some lunch, browsed at a Barnes and Noble, and walked a mile or two along the top of the levee that holds the Ocmulgee River away from the Macon baseball stadium (the Macon Music are a 1-A Braves affiliate, I believe).  I got back to Atlanta at about 7 and went to hear my friend Robin play his guitar and sing at the Rusty Nail – but he wasn’t there.  Apparently, his schedule has changed and he now plays there on Tuesdays.  That really sucks, as I’ve got rehearsals on Tuesdays.   So instead of watching Robin, I watched a bit of the amazingly-named “San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl” and played a few games of darts.

To be honest, I think my main reason for going there was to test myself.  To see if I could spend a few hours in a smoke-filled bar doing all the stuff I used to do – except for smoke and drink.  I passed.

I haven’t done a lot today.  Scott (my renter) left for Minnesota yesterday (his family is there) and he’ll be gone until Monday.  I’d planned to do quite a bit of cleaning and building (carpentry stuff) in his absence, but I haven’t started yet.  Maybe tonight.  This morning and afternoon, I’ve basically just made a couple of batches of macaroni and cheese and tried to figure out the best way to use Windows Media Center.  What I desperately want to do is to rip all of my DVDs to a large hard drive, but I’ve had trouble getting WMC to play them correctly.  One thing I have learned today is that the Windows 7 version of WMC (I’m running Windows 7 on the computer that I use to watch Netflix) can automatically connect to Netflix and has a much nicer interface than the actual Netflix website has.  Very cool.

Tomorrow, I’m going up to Greenville to see Mom, Dad, Dianne, Zack – and I’m not sure if Greg and his family are going to be there or not.  That little trip is what I made the mac and cheese for – and Jenny, who is going to give me some fudge to take to the ‘rents, has already put in her request for a couple platefuls of the stuff.  I’ll bring it over to her in an hour or so after it cools.

As I understand it, Larry and company will be in SC on Saturday.  That sort of sucks because I hadn’t planned on staying the night in Greenville.  I’m not sure if I will or not.

Hey, Chris!  If you’re reading this, *don’t move.*

*Okay, maybe it was a license plate for the Georgia Aquarium.  There was some debate about that.  But you’ve got to admit that the story is a LOT more interesting if you assume that the license plate was a JesusFish.

Well it was sort of a quiet weekend in Duluth….

Yeah, I stole that from A Prairie Home Companion.  I couldn’t think of another way to start this entry.

I’m currently at my office and doing my best to drown out the sound of a jackhammer by listening to “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace” over and over and over and over.  It’s doing very little against the jackhammer, but it is keeping me relatively stress-free.  Betsy Jones, a baritone player in the GBB, introduced me to it a week or so ago and I think the last few minutes of it might just be the most gorgeous music I’ve ever heard in my life.  Seriously.  If I could just loop the last 2:50 forever, I might be like one of those rats that does nothing except press the bar that sends happy electrical impulses into its brain, eventually leading to death (but very happy death) by starvation.

Anyway, I didn’t go to Macon on Saturday because I spent a great deal of time in the morning looking for the camera lens.  I couldn’t find it in a number of different stores, so I guess I’ll get it online after the first of the year.  Happy birthday to me and all that.  One of the places I looked for the lens was at Frye’s Electronics, which is a HUGE computer/camera/electronics store near my house.  Once inside, I of course had to look at all the cool toys, and that ended up costing me about two hours.

So instead of going to the cemetery in Macon, I went to the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta.  Oakland was founded in about 1850, is huge, and has some really interesting stuff – historically and photographically.  Along with a whole bunch of governors of Georgia and mayors of Atlanta, the cemetery has one of the largest Confederate sections in the country (maybe THE largest.  I’m not sure).  The cemetery sits on a windy ridge overlooking downtown Atlanta, and it’s possible to get some really cool juxtapositions of new and old in a picture if you’re observant enough.  I’m not, but I try hard.

It was a rather chilly day on Saturday, however, so after walking around the cemetery for a few hours, I was more than ready to get out of the wind.  I did this by going to the party at Rich Ita’s house that I mentioned in my last entry.  It turned out to be not much of a party.  It turned out to be 4 people.  Rich, Betsy Jones, Rich’s roommate and me.   We ate pea soup and ham (prepared by Rich) along with pierogies and cookies (by Betsy), and then watched a couple of movies.  I got home between midnight and one o’clock and slept like a dead man until Boo decided that she was starving to death at 0700 and woke me up.

I didn’t really do ANYTHING for the rest of the day yesterday.  Sat on the couch, ripped movies to a hard drive, read a little bit, ate a lot and watched a bit of television.

TWD

I was looking forward to playing a Red Kettle gig at one of the malls in town after work today. 

I really was.

Unfortunately for me, the weather was horrible (low thirties and raining) and the Salvation Army cancelled the gig.  I seem to be the only one of the potential musicians who was disappointed by this.  I honestly don’t know why.  I love playing.  Maybe when you do it for a living it’s not fun.  I can’t believe that, but maybe.

At any rate, instead of playing my horn, I drove over the Marietta and hung out with a couple of friends for a while.  Got free food, played with a Great Dane (named Nellie Bell – as in Vaclav), watched a bit of television, and then left because I was really starting to feel like a third wheel.

Ever heard the theory that quitting smoking is a piece of cake if you make it three days?  Let me tell you, that’s a load of crap.  Monday will be three weeks for me – if I make it to Monday.  I think it gets worse the longer I go.  I kid, of course, about making it to Monday.  I’m done with ’em.  When I was a little kid – probably 6 or 7 – I hated getting out of bed (yes, I still do).  I remember Dad earnestly explaining the concept of will power on one chilly winter morning after he’d come to wake me up for about the third time.  I’m sure he was convinced that I didn’t have any.  Maybe he still is.  What’s interesting, however, is that – though I really do hate getting out of bed – I have an amazing will when I decide that something is important, whether that something *is* important or not.

But I digress.  As I said, I worked today, then went over to Marietta, now I’m home.

Last night I left work and went to the grocery store for some cat food and started up a text “conversation” with Chris while shopping.  I missed her a great deal and she sounded like she was bored out of her mind; so, to make a long story short, I ended up driving two hours to take her out to dinner.  Did I mention that Chris lives two hours away from me?  Perhaps I should have.  She’s still talking about doing that doctorate thing, by the way.  And that’d be more like 10 hours away from me.  Grrrr….

Anyway, we got sushi.  She’s big on sushi.  I’m not, but I could learn.  I’ve only had it about three times before last night, and those times were at, for example, a Chinese buffet.  Last night we went to an actual sushi place and I’ve got to say that I enjoyed the stuff.  Perhaps it was just the company – but I think the preparation had something to do with it, too.  I prefer the sushimi (I think that’s what it’s called) to the rolled stuff, by the way.

I may go to Macon tomorrow to shoot some pictures.  I’m growing increasingly enamoured of that little town.  I’d like to pick up a Canon 50MM lens in the morning and then cruise down to shoot at the cemetery or just around town.  We’ll see what happens.  Rich Ita is having sort of a party tomorrow night and I’ve been invited. Might be fun.  Might not be.  I’ll have to make up my mind tomorrow.

I do like going to Rich’s house, because it’s a nice house and it gives me ideas about what to do with mine.  He’s got two interesting table/boxes that I’ve spent some time analyzing.  I may build something similar for myself. 

TWD

I’m mildly disturbed this morning.

Not in the usual, “there’s something not quite right about the way I think, act and feel” way; but in the “WTF is the deal?” way.  Like when you’re driving along and you stop behind a line of cars at a red light and the light turns green and the guy who is in the first car just sits there for 5 seconds before moving, and the chick in the second car waits another 3 seconds; and by the time the car directly in front of you finally starts to move, your green light has turned yellow and only 4 cars have gone through.  That kind of disturbed.

See, I went to a sort of informal meeting with a couple of GBB board members last night because one of them wanted to talk to the other one about the fact that our music director is a tyrannical dictator who refuses to let the members of the board do anything that will affect the band unless  he (the musical director) has his fingers in it.  This has been going on for years.  Since the band’s creation, actually.  The board member who wanted to talk about it last night is relatively new to the board, while the board member who was listening/commenting has been on the board of the band almost since its inception.

The above paragraph was not disturbing to me.  The above paragraph was simply setting the scene.  If this blog were a play, we’d refer to the above paragraph as a “roadie” or “a can of paint” or as “fluff.”  We would not refer to it as “a fluffer” unless this were the type of play that children under 18 should not be watching.

What distrubed me was something that happened during our soirée.  See, the three of us are all on a temporary committee of the board which is tasked with putting together a membership handbook and code of conduct.  This is something that the board started discussing a year ago.  The need for a set of written guidelines for membership, guidelines for the revocation of membership, etc.

I’m  a big proponent of this sort of thing.  In fact, do any of you remember posts from a year or two ago when I referred to being on a “planning committee” for the band?  If not, let me rehash.  The planning committee (PC) was group of 6 guys who were apparently hand-picked by the band’s tyrannical music director and told (I’m paraphrasing, but it’s pretty close to a direct quote), “The band is now entering its 10th season, and it’s time that we put some sort of a structure and long-range goals in place.”

Now, I’m not going to say that the PC spent every waking moment thinking about the needs of the band, but we (or at least “I”) did give up a number of Saturday mornings to meet.  We did do research into the legal status of the band in the eyes of the state of Georgia.  We did perform limited cost-benefit analyses on everything from band uniforms to tours to necessary hardware to the commission of a piece of music.  And we did try to put together a membership handbook and code of conduct.  Because I was a founding member of the band, I recalled that – way way way back in the day – we had been given a short list of rules during one of our rehearsals; and I asked various people who would have been associated with the creation of that memo if they had a copy of it.  Although being told by several people, “Yes,” the PC never did get to see that little one-page guidebook.

In fact, the PC didn’t get to see or accomplish much of anything because of the tyrant, and what we finally suggested to the tyrant, after discovering that the band was only barely a legal entity and that it could be facing trouble with the IRS, was that the band needed an actual “Board of Directors.”  After making this suggestion, the PC dissolved itself.  Three of the six members of the PC wound up on the BOD.  Two of them, along with one of the “original” BOD, were at the quasi-meeting last night.

All of that was just a little bit more background; but it touches on what disturbed me, as you will see shortly.

At some point during the quasi meeting, the “old timer board guy” (OG) responded to some comments by the new board guy (NG)  – who wanted to talk about how to do end runs around the music director (MD) – by pulling out a sheaf of papers.  These papers were beautifully typed up, in outline form, and addressed many of the concerns of NG.  Apparently OG and a couple of his friends had spent months putting together suggestions for the structure and long-range goals of the band at some point.  That “some point” was several years ago, in fact.  Their efforts had produced documents that dealt with the political structure of the band, the various committees that might be good to have, the audition processes for being in the band, the rules that members needed to obey to stay in the band, the ways in which members could be removed from the band, ideas for promoting the band, ideas for encouraging fellowship within the band….in short, they’d put together a nearly-complete members handbook and code of conduct and had codified many of the issues that the PC had attempted to attack.

I have been made aware over the last year that a group of people (“this group”) – some on the original board, some not – had spent time discussing plans for the band several years ago; and that “this group” was, while not openly hostile, less than thrilled by the formation of the PC.  “This group” put together the documents that I mentioned above.   While knowing that the PC was trying to implement structure, “this group” chose not to share the structure that it had already spent months preparing.  “This group” basically knew that the PC was doomed to fail.  Frankly, it sounds like “this group” really wanted the PC to fail.

That disturbs me in principle.  It disturbs me more because, with maybe one exception, nobody on the PC knew that “this group” had ever existed.  We didn’t know that it had already discussed and debated issues that we were discussing and debating.  We didn’t know that it had put together a road map for the band. We didn’t know anything about it – even after we openly asked the general membership of the band for input.  

The PC wanted to make things happen, but we didn’t really have a starting point and we didn’t know that the MD was a tyrant.  “This group” had already dealt with everything the PC was dealing with; yet none of “this group” clued us in.

I’m over the failure of the PC.  I got over it when the PC’s main suggestion – the formation of a new BOD – was acted upon.  The new BOD began meeting nearly a year ago with the goal of putting together structure and long-range goals for the band.

Yes, I know I’ve been repeating myself.  It’s called a literary construct.

Three members of the PC ended up on the new board.  Three members of “this group” ended up on the new board.  The new board began discussing the need for a members handbook and code of conduct, and it had a few lively and time-consuming discussions regarding what needed to be in such a document and how it should be worded.  Finally, after several board meetings spent way too much of the board’s time on the subject, it was decided to farm the job out to a committee.  Said committee is made of up two old members of the PC (myself and “NG”) and two old members of “this group” (“OG” and another guy who won’t be mentioned again, but who needs a code word and will therefore be known as “Mr. X”).

And so last night, OG innocently pulled out the documents that “this group” had put together YEARS AGO and which directly, succinctly and competently address most of the issues that the PC and the new BOD have been trying to deal with for the last 18 months.

Yeah.  I’m disturbed.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m not sure if I want to stay on the board.  Shit like this doesn’t make the prospect any more appealing.

So right after promising that I’d update this thing once a day or so, I lapse for five days.  Typical me, eh?  Sorry about that.  Quite a few things happened in those five days, so I’ll just jump right in.

On Friday, 12/11, I played my tuba with a small group from the brass band to help out the Salvation Army’s “Red Kettle” deal that they do every December.  You know the drill.  You go into a grocery store (or department store or mall or hardware store or automotive store or massage parlor) and, in doing so, you pass a woman dressed in a Salvation Army uniform and ringing a bell so furiously that you’re tempted to knock it out of her hand and tell her that you need 6 more minutes of sleep.  Suspended next to her, by a chain attached to a red tripod, is a red plastic pail with a hole in the cover.  After you’ve done your shopping or gotten your massage, you emerge from the store and you guiltily stare at the ground while walking past her as quickly as possible, hoping that some other decent person will put money in her bucket, thereby drawing attention away from the fact that you’re not putting money in said bucket because you used a debit card to pay for everything and you don’t have any change.

At least that’s what I do.

For the last several years, however, the GBB has allowed me to feel a bit less guilty by grabbing a tuba or euphonium or trombone or alto horn, standing right next to the bucket lady, and playing Christmas music with 4 or 5 of my closest brass-playing friends.  The idea being, of course, that we can guilt more people into putting money into the bucket.  From what I’ve been told, it actually works.

So that’s what I did on Friday evening outside of one of the Sam’s Warehouse stores in Dekalb County.  Our little ensemble was comprised of cornet, alto horn, trombone, euphonium and, as I mentioned, my tuba and me.  We played until about 8 O’Clock.  Although it was quite nippy, I had a great time.

Doing these gigs in the cold never fails to remind me of caroling with my trombone in Middlebury or Shoreham in the 1970s, invariably having to go inside a store or house at some point in order to unfreeze my slide, and finishing things up by quaffing hot chocolate at someone’s house.  I always enjoyed those relatively impromptu performances, and I still do.

Betsy Jones was the euphoniumist for the Red Kettle gig.  She’s from Warner-Robins, south of Macon, GA, and she was also playing a couple of church services with me on Sunday – with a rehearsal on Saturday morning – so she spent Friday and Saturday at my house.  After the Saturday rehearsal, we’d been planning to  maybe walk around historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta or go to the zoo or maybe even just take our horns and a Tuba Christmas book and hang out by a mall and play for change; but because the weather was so dreary (rainy and about 30 degrees), we opted instead to watch movies, make stuffed pasta shells and pumpkin bread, and play Scrabble for most of the day.

She kicked my ass in the Scrabble portion of those activities.

The Sunday services went fairly well, and we collected our checks and spent the rest of the afternoon (still dreary) eating the aforementioned pasta shells and listening to a very cool modern mass called “The Armed Man,” composed by Karl Jenkins.

Now I’m going to jump back to Friday evening.  Hate to confuse everyone by getting things all out of order here, but I didn’t want to plug what follows into the middle of an ongoing ramble as it’s kind of significant.

A few weeks ago, I got a text from Greg informing me that a doctor had found a growth on Mom’s pancreas and some spots on her liver.  I called Mom to get more details about this and she told me that she’d be getting a biopsy done last Monday (the 7th) and would have some results on Thursday (the 10th).  So while driving home from the Red Kettle gig, I called her to find out what was going on.

The news is not good.  She tells me that she’s in the final stages of incurable pancreatic cancer and she’s got somewhere between 6 months and a year in which to correct my manners, pass on bits of republican indoctrination, give me cooking tips and the like.

Our conversation on Friday night was quite naturally not a short one and I am, also I think quite naturally, a bit weirded out by the news.  That doesn’t sound quite right, but “devastated” isn’t the right word.  It’s hard to internalize the fact of your only mother’s ultimate demise after she’s very calmly laid everything out for you and when she sounds healthy enough and when your brain rarely attempts to deal with anything that is more than a day removed from right now.  Add to that that I’m a naturally hopeful person (I really am), and you’ll understand why I just don’t know how to feel.  Nostalgia, I guess, is my primary emotion right now.  I’ve been continually tripping over memories of Mom that had, for the most part, been stored on the cobweb-covered shelves in the basement of my brain.  I thought I’d try to put some of those down in this blog over the next several weeks – partly to help myself cope and partly because, if Mom still reads this, she might be made aware of some of the little things that she’s done or said over the last 44 years that had effects on me.

I’d have to say that the strongest memory at this point is of a phone call that I made to her at about midnight on a December night in 2004.  I’d broken up with Audrey a couple of weeks earlier, had done everything I could to repair the damage – without success – and I was inconsolable.  I’m quite certain that mothers aren’t trained in how to take phones calls from their sobbing, unintelligible, 38-year-old sons; but my Mom did an admirable job of just listening to me cry, giving me a number of much-needed hugs from 150 miles away, and convincing me that – in spite of my certainty that it was – the world was not ending.  I’m sure that she had much better things to be doing (like sleeping) for the hour or two that it took for me to calm down, but she hung with me and made me understand that I could get past things and that, someday, I’d be able to smile again.

She was right, of course.  Except for her crazy political ideas, she has usually been right.

TWD

I shouldn’t admit it in writing, of course, but I left work early today. Really early.