Yes, indeedy.

It’s Memorial Day Weekend (capitalized because it’s an event – not just a weekend), and I’m doing what? Making lunch, doing laundry, washing dishes, and watching NFL Europa. I’m just a regular 21st-century bon vivant, huh?

I’d planned on going camping with some buddies this weekend. Was going to take yesterday off, head to the mountains, and get some much-needed nothingness for a few days. In preparation for this, I went out last Tuesday night to play video bowling with a couple of other friends. Okay, so it wasn’t actually a preparatory step, but that’s what I did. We invented a really cool wagering system for the game. Kind of a “skins game” for video bowling. I won $7. Thanks for asking.

When I left the bar, my “check engine” light came on. Not a big deal. It happens occassionally. This time, however, the engine didn’t want to run at over 2500 RPM. Started bucking and jerking and yada yada yada. So I drove the 6 miles home mainly with creative shifting: get that puppy in 5th gear as fast as possible and you never get up to 2500 RPM. Figured I’d take it to the shop on Wednesday morning and get the fuel filter changed or the plugs checked or something mundane like that.

On Wednesday morning, however, I was unable to start the car.

Crap.

So I called AAA and got a tow to my mechanic, who informed me that he’s no longer my mechanic – he only does brakes, tires, oil changes, etc. No tune-ups. No ability to read the check engine code. Nothing.

The AAA guy, who was an extrememly personable and helpful guy, towed me to a Chrysler dealership; where I was informed that, due to Memorial Day Weekend stuff, they wouldn’t be able to diagnose the problem before Thursday.

I borrowed Gramma’s old car from Herb and Andy.

On Thursday, I got a call from the dealership. Timing belt was shredded. Water pump was frozen. Possible valve damage, but they wouldn’t be able to check until after replacing the timing belt and water pump. For around $1,500. If there was valve damage (a 50/50 chance)? $3,000.

Double crap.

To make a very long story short, I got the car back last night. There was no valve damage, thankfully; but I’m out about $1,200 (the estimate was high) and camping is out for the weekend.

I did, however, reserve a campsite at Hueston Woods State Park in College Corner, Ohio, for the first week of July. It looks like a lovely and secluded area and I’m really looking forward to zoning there for a week before heading up to Lake Ahmic on July 7th. It was also quite a bit cheaper than my other two choices – Blueberry Pond in Maine (where I’ve stayed twice before) and a provincial park in the far north of Ontario (a couple hours north of North Bay), the name of which I cannot recall. Maybe I’ll try that next year, unless Hueston Woods is a great place.

For the rest of this weekend, I’m just going to putter around the house. Mow the lawns, chip up a tree that fell quite some time ago, maybe grill some dogs on the deck.

Hope everybody has a safe and happy weekend. I’ll go eat my lunch now.

TWD

Yes!

Another month of my life is gone, and one month closer to being out of a job.

We’ll start there, I guess. Ed Whitacre (CEO of AT&T) announced last week that he’ll be retiring next month. Along with Duane Ackerman (CEO of BellSouth). I think it’s wonderful that these two wizened gentlemen will both be able to hit the links and drink umbrella drinks on their verandas knowing that they were able to work together to forge a union between two of the largest companies on earth and screw 10K to 15K little people out of jobs. Good for them.

I’m not bitter.

Our affiliate’s president has been given his marching orders for the rest of the year. #1: Cut headcount by “double digits.” I don’t know why this has to be classified information. That just means it’s somewhere between 10 and 99, right? #2: Don’t spend any money.

Let’s go into a bit of detail here. One of the president’s direct reports is my boss’ boss. Due to a convoluted system of bureaucracy, she found herself in a position of working for two different bosses a few weeks ago – our president and a VP of a delivery (systems and apps – not packages) affiliate. She decided that this was too much for her and asked to choose just one boss. Logical enough, right? Certainly.

Amazingly, she decided that she wanted to work for our president – meaning that everyone under her also went to that side of things. When I was told this at a lunch by my boss, I asked, “Wouldn’t it be better for US if we went with delivery? Everyone knows that our affiliate won’t exist in a year, but delivery WILL.”

I got a straight answer from my boss. “Yes.”

Last week, when we were told about the headcount reductions, etc., my first response to my boss was, “So why don’t we get realigned with delivery and just “contract” back to BEI until it goes away – at which point, we’ll hopefully still have jobs somewhere else.” It took a few minutes for this to sink in, but once my boss got the idea, she took it to HER boss – who was somehow taken aback by it and asked, “Why would they want to do that? Where’s the loyalty?”

Loyalty? Are you JOKING?

My two directs are both contractors and both have expressed a desire to find work elsewhere. And my boss’ boss can’t understand why.

Am I really that dense? Am I missing something here?

On a related note, in spite of the headcount issue, we still have to keep a product going out the door for the next 6 or 7 months – meaning that more and more work is going to get dumped on a very small handful of people – and those people will probably NOT be allowed to transfer to another division of AT&T.

Let me rephrase that so everybody gets the picture here. We currently have two UNIX administrators and one Windows administrator. Take a guess at which three people are not going to be fired until the business is dead – and which three people are not going to be allowed to find work (within AT&T) elsewhere.

Loyalty? Are you freaking kidding me??

And don’t think that I’m over-reacting. I know of one programmer in my company who was ALREADY denied the right to leave after he found a great job in another affiliate.

I have no loyalty to this company. I haven’t for the last 5 years. What I have no is closer to emnity.

Enough ranting. I think I’ve gotten most of it out.

The GBB received the tapes with the judges’ comments from NABBA last week. Overall, they were all very complimentary; pointing out obvious mistakes but throwing in a large number of very positive comments. One in particular, made by Sheona White (without question the best tenor horn player in the world), made my day:

“Really some stunning tuba sound coming from this band.”

It is very immodest to say so, but we (the tuba section) know that we’re good. It’s just really nice to hear it from a person of Sheona’s stature.

I’ve got a rehearsal with the GBB tonight (the last before our concert next week), a rehearsal with a quartet tomorrow night, and a performance at the Atlanta Symphony Showhouse (with the quartet) on Thursday. Also had a rehearsal with the church “orchestra” this past Sunday (still an awful experience), so my chops are getting a workout this week. In the quartet, by the way, I’ll be playing euphonium. THAT will be an adventure. I haven’t played a Bb horn reading bass clef (other than bone) in about 6 years.

I think we’ve got two more gigs at the ASO Showhouse in the next few weeks, but I’ll be playing tuba on the rest of them.

Last Saturday, I finally learned how to read music on my electric bass. I’ve had the thing for about 5 years, but have always amused myself by just doodling on it and jamming with various CDs by ear. Last Easter, I played a really cool cantata at the church and I asked the librarian to pleeeeaaasssse give me copies of the percussion parts so that I could try to play the bass along with the practice recording (we get those from the church. I don’t actually use them to practice – I just listen to them).

So I got the scores last weekend and immediately took out the bass and spent a few hours actually playing. I know that most of you will not understand this, but it was SO DAMNED EXCITING to learn how to read music. Now, instead of thinking, “Play this note here on the 1st fret of the second string and it’ll sound neato,” I get to think, “Play a Bb – that’s what’s written.”

Just way cool to me. Cool enough, in fact, that I actually DID play the thing until my fingers were in a great deal of pain. And I wasn’t bad!

Keith and Dennis are now both moved in, and we’ve redecorated my piano room. It is now a music/playstation/futon room – complete with a lava lamp. Actually a pretty cool room, and it’s nice to be using all that space that was heretofore pretty empty.

Wow. I’ve typed a lot here. I guess I should go take a shower and get to work.

Loyalty and all that.

TWD

Well, I made it back safely from Louisville, where the Georgia Brass Band was awarded….

drumroll….

…second place.

Yeah. The Central Ohio Brass Band nipped us by 3 points out of 300 and got away with the gold. I have to admit that I was – and am – a tad disappointed that we didn’t win; but the COBB was a good band. I just thought we were better.

The two bands picked by 4BarsRest.com to finish ahead of us ended up in 5th and last, respectively. So much for the experts.

The night before the contest last Saturday, we played a concert at the Christ Church cathedral in Louisville, one of the oldest churches in Kentucky. Interestingly, we played the concert on the night before the anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. You all know who he was, right? It’s important that you do, because the interesting part is that Jefferson Davis was married in the Christ Church Cathredral in Louisville. I’m assuming that you know who he was, too. Oh – it was also Friday the thirteenth. Neato, huh?

Anyway, the concert went pretty well. Our sound was tremendous, and I hope we can play there again next year (assuming we go to NABBA again).

After the Gala Concert on Saturday (where it was announced that we were being awarded … drumroll … second place), most of the GBB went across the street to a little brewpub named the Bluegrass Brewing Company. In short order, about 4 other bands followed us there, including the Central Ohio Brass Band (you may recall that they got first by three freaking points . . . I suppose I might want to be a little more circumspect with my opinion – who knows if COBB has spies online). We all had a good time being brass bandsmen (i.e., drinking lots of microbrew beer). After a short while, a tubist friend of mine discovered that the BBC sold “growlers” – half-gallon jugs of their brews which could be transported back to our hotel.

End of BBC party. Beginning of hotel party. I believe I got to my own room somewhere around 3:00 the next morning.

Remember I told you in an earlier post that I had a gig in Atlanta on Sunday afternoon? I made it. Just barely. Fortunately, it was a pretty informal gig. My quintet played at the house of one of our trumpeters (he had a small party going on), and everyone was so amazed that there was a quintet in the neighborhood that they didn’t really care if we sounded good or not.

In other news, tomorrow is the day that Keith and Dennis move in. We’ve been getting together once or twice a week since they decided to make the move, and by and large we’re having a good time together. The housing situation should be fine.

For the last year or so, I’ve been promising the Northbrook UMC (Alpharetta, GA) that I’d play tuba in their orchestra. I promised this because 1}I like to play, and 2}I’ve been guaranteed two gigs a year (Christmas and Easter) at Northbrook since about 1991, so I figure I owe the music minister something. To his credit, his musicians and singers have improved by leaps and bounds since the early 90’s. One thing that worried me is that, if I started playing regularly with the orchestra, I wouldn’t get paid for Christmas and Easter. Last Christmas, I was assured by the church secretary/pianist/organist/flutist that I would indeed keep getting those two gigs. So I agreed to start playing with them after NABBA.

This last Sunday, I went to my first rehearsal.

Remember that sentence up there that said, “his musicians have improved…?” That apparently doesn’t apply to the regular orchestra. Oh. My. God. What have I gotten myself into? On the one hand, it’s nice to have people going gaga for your playing because they’ve never had a bass voice before. On the other hand….Oh. My. God.

But I did promise.

Last Saturday I got to hang out with some of the best musicians in the world, by the way. Really. One of the tenor horn players in the GBB had a party at his house, which I decided to go to. What he didn’t tell anyone was that he’d invited basically the entire Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to join us after they finished playing a concert – and a good number of them did. And I thought brass people could put away the beer in Louisville. The symphony people descended on the lone keg like it was an oasis. I’ve never seen 18 gallons of beer disappear so fast.

As an aside, I’ve rebuilt the GBB website. You can access it at http://GeorgiaBrassBand.com/2007. I’ve been meaning to update the site for the last 7 years, so it’s nice finally to have done so.

Got my lawn mowed last weekend, and also put in the first of two gardens that I’ll have this year. Planted cucumbers and carrots. Next weekend, I’ll try to get tomatoes and other stuff put in.

I also trimmed the holly around my deck….and sliced right through my (television) cable while doing so. Not to worry. I work for a television company. I got two of the technicians to give me a private lesson in splicing coaxial cable yesterday and had my televisions working again by about 6:30 last night.

As I’m sure I’ve bored everyone enough for one day – and as I’ve got to get to a rehearsal (we have a concert on May 8…but if you’ve already looked at the GBB site then you know that) – I guess I’ll wrap it up here.

Turtle Cakes and Lemonade? That’s what one of my helpdesk guys said to me today. “I’d love to talk, but I need to go make some Turtle Cakes and Lemonade.”

I laughed.

TWD

I always wanted to use the word “nigh,” but the opportunity just never presented itself until now.

Oh, sure. I could have said things like, “My birthday is nigh” or, “I’ve been really sick of my job for nigh onto eight years,” but let’s get real. Those things just aren’t worthy of nighness. NABBA, however, is nigh. I’m talking NIGH, babe.

Did you ever notice that after you use a word about twelve times in a very short time, it begins to look completely strange. I’m tempted to grab a dictionary now to confirm that “nigh” is a word.

Nigh nigh nigh. Nigh. Nigh.

I can’t stop typing that.

Etch-a-Sketch time for the old gray matter.

So anyway, the GBB and I had our last rehearsal last night and fortunately spent very little time on the contest pieces (for those of you in the cheap seats, those’d be The King of Elfland’s Daughter and Resurgam). We did do a late run-through, but the majority of the rehearsal was spent on a number of other pieces that we’ll be playing in concert this Friday night at a church in Louisville, KY.

Saturday afternoon, we’ll drive about 20 minutes into Indiana to compete in the North American championships at Indiana University of the South in (I think) Albany, IN. 4BarsRest, a website that tracks this sort of thing, has predicted that we’ll finish third behind the New England Brass Band and the Triangle Brass Band (Raleigh, NC). New England won the thing last year. I’m not sure why Triangle is picked to finish ahead of us – they’re a good band, but I’ve never been overly-impressed with them.

I’m not sure what the Vegas odds are.

The winners will be announced at a gala event on Saturday night, after which I’ll probably hit the road (or not), as I’ve got a gig on Sunday night with my quintet in Atlanta.

I learned last weekend that the incredible rehearsal schedule since December has actually been quite beneficial for me. I played a couple of Easter gigs on my CC tuba – which I hadn’t touched since about January – and I must say that I kicked butt. Not back to college form, but I’m definitely better than I was when we started ramping up for the competition last December.

In other news, Maria is now firmly entrenched at Fort Bragg (I’m assuming that she’s not planning any sort of putsch against the government) and I have indeed lined up two guys to replace her as my roommates. Dennis Hamilton and Keith Ackerman have been in my circle of associates since the early 90’s and they’re scheduled to move in on April 25th. While “working” from home today, I managed to shampoo the carpets and clean out both guestrooms so that everything’s ready for them.

I also cut a hole in the bottom of my bedroom door so that I can close the door and the cats can still go in and out. They drove me crazy when Maria was here. Everytime I closed my door, the cats went crazy either trying to get in or trying to get out. So I ended up propping the door open with a sneaker while holding it shut with a box of towels. It was annoying.

A week or two ago, I bought a new refrigerator. My old one came with the house (8 years ago), and never worked right; so when I got my bonus I splurged and bought a great big brand new one. I must divulge that I got it for $600 off because it had a paint scratch. The horror.

The coolest part about it is that it’s got a beer rack built into it. I mean a soda rack.

Get it? I said “the coolest part” in reference to a refrigerator. Ha!

At this point, I have nothing more to say. This is what we call, “A boring life – nigh to pathetic.”

TWD

See when I’m publishing this? The time? See that?

Yeah. I’m at work on a Sunday morning. And not “Sunday morning” as in “just after church let out” or like “after getting out of bed but before hitting the Rusty Nail for brunch and a Bloody Mary.” Sunday morning like 1:00 AM Sunday morning. And I’ll be here until at least 3:00 AM.

Why? Because some hot-shot politico decided that we simply MUST have Daylight Saving Time for an extra month every year. He didn’t take into consideration that every damned computer on the face of the earth had the old DST dates pretty much etched in stone. Apparently the Y2K thing is a distant memory to him (and for those of you wondering – YEAH, there were some problems with systems at that point. Not the apocalypse, but some things did indeed fail), or he doesn’t recall that every systems admin and power user on the planet had to spend all night on 12/31/99 running tests. And that generally nobody showed up to work on 1/2/00 because they were all too freaking tired.

Yup. Apparently this genious who decided we had to extend DST forgot all about that.

So I’ve spent the last month patching all of my servers and now I get to sit here until 3:00 in the morning to make sure that they all roll forward an hour when they’re supposed to. And then a whole bunch of users can login between 3 and 4 and make sure that their applications work. And THEN (assuming that those applications do indeed work), I get to go home and try to get a few hours of sleep because, unlike that brilliant senator or representative or president or whoever the hell it was that just couldn’t deal with not screwing around with the natural order of things, I actually have things to do on Sundays in March. Like till the garden, vaccuum the rug, wash my car, do some laundry, and get that damned Bloody Mary.

And, come November, I’ll get to do the whole thing all over again.

Here’s a thought: Why not just roll everyone back to Standard Time forever and tell people to change the times that they work? So instead of working (for example) from 8 to 5 everyday, we’ll all work from 7 to 4. Or 9 to 6. Or however the hell it’s supposed to work. How about sunup to sundown? Would that work for you, Senator Cantstayoutofmylife?

So Maria sold her motorcycle today. For those of you not keeping up, Maria is my roommate and she’s deploying to Iraq later this month. She started going into a funk about selling the bike on Thursday night (apparently, she’s got an emotional attachment to it) and I’ve spent the last few days rationalizing to her that:

1. She’s getting a nice chunk of change for the thing.
2. It’s not like she was going to be riding it for at least the next 18 months.
3. She already had plans to buy a new Harley while she was overseas.
4. It’s taking up too much space in my garage as it is.
5. She’s a soldier and needs to stop acting like some whacked-out female.

She handled the transaction fine, thankfully, and immediately started surfing around and designing the Harley of her future. I’m not sure exactly what the deal is, but apparently she can buy the thing while she’s deployed and Harley-Davidson will give her a huge discount because she’s overseas and she doesn’t have to pay tax on it or something. I don’t know. All I know is that she can buy it cheaper than she could if she stayed in the states.

She’s heading out on Monday, by the way. By “heading out,” I mean “She’s leaving.” She’ll drive to her house in Pennsylvania for a few days, then either fly or drive to Texas after that, then fly back to Atlanta for a week – sans vehicle. Since I’m certainly not going to chauffer her around for the week she’s back here, she’s planning on staying with a girlfriend when she gets back. After a week or so here, she’ll head to Fort Bragg, then to Jordan, then back to Bragg, then to Kuwait and finally to Iraq. Fun stuff.

At any rate, she’s out of my house – and she doesn’t read this blog, but I’ve told her (and therefore don’t feel guilty about retelling you all) that it was a real pleasure having her stay with me for the last 8 months. I couldn’t have asked for a better roommate.

That being the case, I’m not sure that I want to tempt fate twice; but there’s a guy (or maybe two) coming over to “check out the house” tomorrow afternoon with an eye towards moving in in April. I’ve known both of these guys for years and, if they decide to move in, we’ll probably get along fine (and I’ll be raising my rent); but I haven’t completely decided if I want to continue renting. Life is much less complicated when it’s lived on one’s own.

Of course, cash is nice too.

So they (or at least one of them) should be rolling into my driveway at around noon tomorrow. That’d be 8 hours after I can leave work (see how I’m tying this all back together? I’m a freaking literary genious) and about 4 hours before I have to leave for Rome, GA, for a brass band rehearsal. Homey’s gonna be a tired puppy come Monday morning, and there is a good possibility that I’ll take a half-day off of work (comp time, naturally) and try to actually get some sleep.

Stupid politicians.

In preparation for NABBA, the Georgia Brass Band hired Dr. Colin Holman to rehearse with us last Friday, Saturday and Sunday. By Sunday, all I could think about was the fact that I hadn’t played so much or with such intensity since the All-State rehearsals in high school. We went from 7:30 to 10:00 on Friday night, 9:30 to 12:30 Saturday morning and 12:00 to 3:00 Sunday afternoon. Then (just for good measure), I drove to Rome, GA, immediately after the Sunday rehearsal and rehearsed with the Roman Festival Brass from 6:00 to 9:00. Don’t know if I got any better, but I do know that I broke my face. It’s almost recovered now…but I’ve got a rehearsal from 7:00-9:30 tonight during which time I’ll probably break it again.

Dr. Holman is an amazing clinician though. I videotaped each of his rehearsals and the difference in the band’s tone between when we first started on Friday night and where we were 10 minutes after he took the baton is astounding. On Sunday afternoon, while we were playing the “Elfland’s Daughter” thing, I actually liked the piece. I’ve played for some really fine directors in my life, but this guy might be the best – or at least second best. Darryl One conducted a gig I was playing when he was the assistant conductor of the Atlanta Symphony (he’s since gone on to bigger and better things). He’s absolutely brilliant.

There’s an interesting 20 seconds or so near the end of the Friday night tape, which was filmed from behind me. During one section of resting that is particularly difficult to count, the tubist next to me and I were both bobbing our heads in order to avoid getting lost. We look amazingly like two of those little cymbal-crashing monkeys as seen from behind. But the two of us sounded damned good, if I say so myself.

Anyway, the band improved quite a bit over the weekend and hopefully we can keep it going for the next six weeks and make a splash at NABBA. It’ll give me something to put on the new website that I’m building.

I noticed going to and coming back from Rome on Sunday that my front brakes sounded terrible – I also was long overdue for an oil change and for some strange reason the tires on the left side of my car were inflated to about 4 pounds PSI less than the right-side ones. So I decided to at least take care of problems two and three yesterday at lunch. Figured I’d hop over the the mechanic and get the oil changed and the tires rotated (and, presumably, inflated correctly). In and out in an hour, right?

Almost. After a few minutes, the mechanic came out and said, “Tom, you really need some new front brakes.” Since I knew that already, I said, “I know.”

Then I asked him how long it would take him to fix them. “Not long at all.”

So, in spite of the fact that it was going to cost me $475 instead of $30, I told him to go ahead and take care of the brakes. Then he proceeded to take my wheels apart and called the parts place to have the proper parts driven to him.

The truck carrying my brakes got into a accident. 5 hours later, my car was ready for me.

You haven’t really lived or experienced hell until you’ve sat in the waiting room of Kauffman Tire for 5 hours. Your magazine selection is limited to tire advertisements, newspapers of undertermined age and maybe an Ebony magazine from last summer.

And one Cosmopolitan. I eyed it a few times, but didn’t want to be seen reading it. I mean, I’m a guy and all….but I was kind of curious about the “foreplay that will blow his mind” which was apparently featured somewhere between the covers.

Fortunately, I had my iPaq with me (which always has about 12 books loaded on it), and I spent a great deal of time reading one of them (a mob thriller called The Good Guys). Even so, the chairs left a lot to be desired. As did the television, which was tuned to CNN Headline News.

Interesting thing about CNN Headline News – they might be a 24-hour station, but the news only takes about 10 minutes….and then you get 4 commercials followed by the same 10 minutes of news being shouted at you again. I’d seen coverage of the bus crash in Atlanta about 13 times before I realized that I was alone in the waiting room.

Time for the Cosmopolitan, baby.

In reaching for it, I discovered the remote control for the television. Spent the next hour watching the History Channel.

After I finally got my car back (they knocked $50 off the price because I had to wait so long), I went back to my office, packed up my stuff, and left. Oddly, nobody seems to have noticed that I wasn’t there all afternoon.

It’s good to be needed.

TWD

It is currently 1:49 on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Duluth.

I’m still in bed.

I got up at around 7:00 to feed the cats, then got back in bed. Haven’t moved since, except to throw a load of laundry in the washer…and to move it to the dryer a half-hour later. I’ve watched three and a half movies, surfed the web, scratched a cat’s head, and finalized plans to get my taxes done.

Don’t tell me I can’t work from home. I get more done before I get out of bed than the Army gets done before 9:00. Or something like that.

I have a rehearsal in Rome, GA, this afternoon. It’s about two hours away and I’m not all that gaga about the band (a very amateur brass band), but I told them I’d play a concert with them next month and I can use the extra practice. That became painfully obvious yesterday, when the Georgia Brass Band had one of our weekend rehearsals (ramping up to NABBA) and my chops were complete shot by the time we’d finished. I have one section in one of our championship pieces that calls for me to play a very high and very loud obligato. I think I cracked every other note the last time through it.

The GBB played a concert with the Georgia Youth Brass Band last week, which went pretty well. It was the first time we’d performed “The King of Elfland’s Daughter” (NABBA obligatory piece), and we didn’t have any serious train wrecks. I did get completely lost during an early solo part and had to stop playing and look at the director with “I’m clueless” eyes – but the piece is so ungodly twentieth-century that nobody in the audience would have known just how badly I choked. The judges on April 14th will be a different story, but I should be a tad more comfortable with the part by then.

We found out the other day that we will play second in the Honors section – right behind the New England Brass Band, which won the section last year. The general wisdom in brass band circles is that the GBB and the NEBB are the top two bands in the section, so it sounds like the competition might be decided very early in the day. Unfortunately, we won’t get to see them play because we’ll be preparing to go on next, and they won’t get to see us play because they’ll be whisked off for photographs, interviews, etc.

If you’ve never been to a brass band competition (and I’m betting you haven’t), it’s an interesting albeit extremely tedious thing to watch. Every band in each section must play one mandatory contest piece, which is usually quite difficult – to play and to listen to. They can do this piece at any time during their concert, which is limited to (I think) 23 minutes. The contest piece is also usually pretty lengthy, so a band’s performance will quite often consist of just two pieces. The OTHER piece is the one that’s fun to listen to and makes the whole competition bearable. I mean, how many times can you listen to a Charles Ives work before you go insane?

Things are still up in the air at work, and I’ve started looking for jobs online a bit more seriously, although I still have no idea what I want to do. I found out last week that an assistant manager at Quik Trip makes an average of close to $50K. I could do that. Don’t laugh….I could do that.

I’m actually in a “line up potential jobs” mode, but have no intention of taking another gig at this point unless it’s just absolutely amazing. BellSouth/AT&T pretty much has everyone over a barrel at this point. We can hang in there until the end and get a pretty nice severance package, or we can find something else and hope it works out. I’ll tell you right now – I’m not leaving without the package.

A tree fell over in my backyard sometime during the past couple of months. I have no idea when, but I suspect it was during one of those monster rain storms we had in January. Shows how much time I spend in the yard, huh? Anyway, I’ve been meaning to get out the chainsaw and hack it up for the last week or so, but just haven’t. Today would’ve been a good day to do it…but I’m still in bed as I’ve mentioned, and I’ve enjoined myself from starting a chainsaw in the house.

Cy called the other night and told me that she and “T” will be at Ahmic from the 7th to the 21st of July this year, and that Chris and Jamie will be taking up all the available space from the 14th to the 21st. So I’m thinking I’ll probably take the first two weeks of July off, which allows me to use the 4th, get some camping in somewhere, and then spend 5 or 6 days of the second week at the lake. Looking forward to it, but I haven’t decided where to camp. Maine is on top of the list once again. I haven’t been there in two or three years and I want a lobster.

Speaking of driving 8 billion miles, my car has been acting funky lately. It likes to stall when I push in the clutch. Probably need my injectors cleaned, but that’s expensive…and the mechanic that I’ve been using for the last twenty years recently closed the shop. I’m 2000 miles overdue for an oil change and I have no idea where to get it done. Maybe I’ll do it myself. Assuming I get out of bed. Which is where I am.

That’s about all. Hope everyone is warm and happy and looking forward to March 4th. That’s Vermont statehood day, you know.

TWD

Wow.

January is seventy-five percent gone, and I still have a job. I supposed that’s a good thing. If I had a job that I enjoyed, it’d be a better thing; beggars can’t be choosers. So what’s been going on in my little life since I last got bored enough to post an entry to this thing? Not a great deal. With a title like, “Stuff Nobody Reads,” that’s pretty much a given for this blog; but I probably should try to think of something. I mean, I’m assuming that this thing will be a vital tool for the hordes of biographers who are certain to be researching my life in 10 years or so – after I’m rich and famous.

Beats the hell out of having to read the backs of envelopes to find, say, The Gettysburg Address, or trying to interpret really poorly-drawn paintings of stickmen killing stickbison on some cave wall in France in order to establish that “Bob Neanderthal was here.” Biographers and historians of the future probably will have no idea how easy they’ve got it.

But I digress.

Last Friday we had a conference call during which we were informed that we’re basically working for no reason. Can’t say much about it (with my luck, the entire legal staff of every telecommunications company in the world reads this daily in order to see if I divulge any proprietary information), but it boils down to this: we can continue our market trial for the next year or so, but our product will never actually go on the market. Begs a couple of questions, right? Like, “Why?” and “Come again?” And the ever-popular, “What the hell am I doing here?” Eh bien. Having spent the last 16 years of my life navigating fairly stormy corporate waters, I guess I can sit back and wait for the maelstrom to start up again later this year. What else would a gadabout like me do for fun?

I had a concert with the Georgia Brass Band last night at a church in Lawrenceville. It was the 4th or 5th time we’ve played there. Always a good crowd (in terms of quantity and appreciation), so it was fun. There was a minor downside to it: I had a solo. Actually, it was a duet between me and a baritone, but it was still far too exposed for me. Made my way through the first half of it somewhat shakily and only cracked one note on the back half. I got a bit of a pick-me-up after the concert when our lead cornet player admitted to me that he gets extremely nervous when playing solos (not that you can tell when he plays). I realized that I don’t really get jittery playing in front of crowds anymore. My nervousness when playing exposed passages with the GBB is due to the fact that I realize that everyone else in the group is better than I am. It’s one thing to play for 1000 people who wouldn’t know if you played a wrong note or had thin tone. It’s quite another to play in front of 27 instrumentalists who know exactly how badly you suck.

But they were all nice about it and I enjoyed the concert. Our encore was from the William Tell Overture and the folks in the church really got into it.

Don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before or not, but my roommate is most definitely being deployed to Iraq at the end of March. She is understandably somewhat nervous about the situation. She’s also looking forward to the extra bucks she’ll get. Her orders, received a couple of weeks ago, imply that she’ll be in country for 18 months; but thanks to a recent rules change, there’s really not a limit on how long she’ll have to stay. As she put it, “Great. I’m being sent to work with a bunch of disgruntled soldiers.” Still, she’s taking everything in stride and doing a great job of getting organized (packing her storage building up to be put in Army storage, arranging for the care and upkeep of her houses in PA and TX, spending time with her kids….updating her will). Her boyfriend, currently in Pennsylvania, isn’t faring so well. After two tours in Kuwait himself (at least one of which left him with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), he is quite upset with the whole situation – which isn’t really helping her nerves.

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently recreating my flagship website. This time, I’m putting it on a Linux server (have never done anything other than Windows) and basing it in PHP (have never done anything other than ASP). It seems to be going rather well, and I’ve got about 30 folks testing it out for me. Hopefully I’ll be able to launch it for real in about a month. Until that time, I’ve got a really steep learning curve to deal with. PHP absolutely baffles me. So does MySQL (the database that runs the site – I’ve never used anything other than Microsoft Access). Fortunately, there’s a host of online support forums and prepackaged code out there, so I should be able to get some sort of product working before I really need to start customizing it for my own purposes. And the experience will certainly help me should I decide to start looking for new employment in the IT field.

My XM radio continues to be a wonderful little thing for my nerves. I find myself spending most of my in-car time switching between the 70’s station and the Broadway station. Don’t know if that means I’m a disco freak or gay; it does make the traffic jams seem a trifle less aggravating.

It has been quite chilly in Duluth for the last several days. Chilly for the deep south, at least. The nights have been in the high twenties and we’re getting afternoon highs in the high thirties to low forties. Last night we had a fantastic amount of wind. Naturally, I had to open my bedroom window when that started up (I love wind), but was forced to close it after about 5 minutes, when the thermostatically-controlled space heater in my room started having convulsions. I toyed with the idea of just shutting it off, wrapping myself in a blanket and sleeping with the window open; but nixed that idea because 1)I’m sure my furnace would’ve had to kick on if I left it open (furnace is currently set to 57 degrees), and 2)I figured my roommate would freeze (she’s in a separate room, people. Enough already!). Anyway, it was nice to listen to it through the window.

That’s about all I can think of at this point. Taxes are coming due so that’ll be fun. And my bonus this year (the last one I’ll get, probably) is going to be the highest ever awarded in the history of BellSouth. Maybe I’ll write something after I get it. Like, “Hey. I need a new job.”

TWD

It is now 2007.

I became acutely aware of this at midnight last night, in spite of the fact that I went to bed at 10:30. I learned it in much the same way that I have for the last 8 years: the people who live in the house behind mine fired off enough explosives to destroy South Dakota.

After the bombardment subsided (approximately 15 minutes – and this is in a state where fireworks are illegal), I reassured myself that my house was not on fire and tried to go back to sleep. I’d almost managed to do that when my cell phone rang.

By the time I’d managed to locate it and answer it, the caller had hung up. It turned out to be my roommate, who I’m sure was calling to say, “Happy New Year.” I did not attempt to call back; but at 2:45, said roommate sent me a text message: Happy New Year and Happy Birthday. I did respond to that – then went back to sleep. People my age need their rest.

For those of you keeping track: 41. Isn’t that the answer to everything?

My trip north was quite enjoyable, in spite of the fact that Vermont had no snow and the temperature seemed to approach tropical numbers. It was still nice to be home, and I made a pretty decent haul from under the tree. Cy surprised me with a Danske kettle that I’ve coveted for several years, and that was sandwiched among t-shirts, socks, chocolate, books, and a varied assortment of other cool stuff.

Cy, “T,” and I were entertained by “T’s” sons, Chris and Jamie, on the 25th and 26th. After Chris departed, Jamie pulled out the poker chips and the four of us (joined on the 28th by Karl and Diane Neuse) spent every evening attempting to recreate the World Series of Poker in front of a roaring fire. I also got to visit quite a few towns in Vermont – Middlebury, Brandon, Whitehall, Leicster, Rutland, Ferrisburgh, Shoreham, Vergennes…to name a few.

On the way to Vermont, and also on the way back from same, I stopped in Lansdale, PA, to visit with a friend. We managed to take in a nice Chinese dinner, play some pool in a tiny little bar in North Wales, PA, act as chaperones (or so it seemed) at a club which catered to the fake ID crowd, watch some television and just catch up on each other. Good times.

It was actually while we were at the pool pub that I received word that the AT&T/BellSouth merger was approved. Let the countdown begin. Reading a follow-up story yesterday, I learned that 10,000 jobs will be lost over the next three years due to the merger.

I just hope I get a decent severance package. Let me get out of debt and I’m moving north, dammit.

Greg and Lisa and their angry pack of children are expected to arrive at my house late this morning in anticipation of a visit to the Titanic exhibit in downtown Atlanta. Should be fun, but I have no idea where everyone is going to sleep tonight. My roommate and her boyfriend are also expected by this evening. It’ll be Thanskgiving all over!

Rehearsals with the GBB kick off again tomorrow night, and we’re into our NABBA schedule. 31 rehearsals between tomorrow and the end of March. That’s basically every Tuesday, every Thursday, and a few weekends.

More than likely, I’ll also have some Wednesday night sessions with a brass quintet and I’ve pretty much promised the church that hires me a few times every year that I’ll start playing with them on Sundays. I’ll be playing more than I did in college.

Maybe when AT&T drops the hammer I’ll finally be able to live out my dream of gigging for a living.

The weather right now is a rather balmy 50 degrees and clear – quite a change from yesterday’s offering of 40’s with anything from drizzles to downpours. I have no idea what the forecast is, but I’ll roll with it.

Kind of like the year in general. Here’s hoping it’s good for everyone who reads this – and for the guy who wrote it.

TWD

No really. It is. NABBA Night.

I’m willing to bet that you all have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, so I’ll explain. NABBA is the North American Brass Band Association; and the GBB (Georgia Brass Band), of which I am a member, is a member in NABBA. As such, the band will compete in the NABBA Championships next April; performing, among other selections, a rather dull and stupidly-difficult piece entitled, “The King of Elfland’s Daughter.”

Why it wasn’t called “Elfland’s Princess,” I do not know. But it wasn’t.

In any case, the GBB has completed its Fall concert schedule, and so tonight is the first night that we’ll look at the Elfland piece and begin preparing for the competition. Instead of practicing for two hours or so each week, our rehearsal schedule will probably swell to at least twice a week and closer to three hours each time. Sectionals will be in order. Personal practice time will be expected. And until April, we’ll be focusing on that insidiously boring song.

Oh joy.

I should mention that the band actually WON the competition last year (without me, damn them) in their innaugural entry. Well, they won their “section” anyway. The competition is broken into 5 different levels: Explorer, Youth, Challenge, Honors, and Championship. The GBB, having no idea how good they were last year, opted to enter the “Challenge” section, two flights below the big boys of brass banding.

They were the last of 8 bands to compete in that section, and they so completely humiliated the other 7 (winning by nearly 30 points), that they were told that they could only enter this year’s competition in the Honors or Championship sections.

Honors it is. The main competition will probably be the New England Brass Band, which won the honors section last year.

By the way, you can read all about NABBA and the competition at www.nabba.org

On to other things. I bought a satellite radio today. I hated to do it – paying for radio just seems wrong, somehow – but I finally got so sick and tired of commercials that I decided it was worth it. I just kept thinking to myself, “You’re driving to Vermont and back in a couple of weeks, you go to Canada every year….hell, you’ve put nearly 120,000 miles on the car in three years. Get the damned satellite.”

So I did. 170 commercial-free stations, about 30-40 of which I think I’ll enjoy. Finally I can get the CBC in Atlanta. That’s worth the price of admission right there.

On the social front – there’s not one. I have, however, been spending a lot of time with a friend (a male friend) who likes to play pinball as much as I do. And we’ve discovered that we both REALLY like playing this thing called, “Big Buck Hunter,” which is a video game that lets you kill animals for points. Not a completely sick concept – I mean, some people kill real animals for trophies. We kill fake animals for nothing.

There is one facet of the game that I don’t really understand. It seems that you can kill a fully-grown bull moose with a single shotgun blast to the head – but that same gun must shoot a frog FOUR TIMES before it dies. Does that seem just a tad illogical to you (assuming you can get your head around the idea that you’re moose hunting with a pump-action shotgun, that is)?

Don’t know if I’ve mentioned previously that I’m now running Windows Vista on my laptop. Seems to be a really nice OS – an improvement over XP Pro, which I didn’t think was possible. I have found a couple of quirks and there are some hardware drivers that need to be updated, but overall I give it an A-.

That ought to have everyone all caught up. I’ll probably be a year older before I update this again (unless something really cool happens at Christmas), so everyone have happy holidays and hoist a pint to me on New Year’s Eve.