Tag Archives: banda gozona

dio de los muertos and other gig-related ramblings

tapetei had a gig last sunday, a rehearsal monday and wednesday, another gig yesterday, and a gig today. i get sunday off (because our usual rehearsal space will not be available this week), then i have a rehearsal monday, tuesday and wednesday of next week.sugar skull the gig yesterday was for the dio de los muertos celebration at the seattle art museum. unlike most of the previous banda gozona performances i’ve been to, this one included my camera and i took some really cool photos, not all of which are related to dio de los muertos. but most of them are… the gig today is the ballard sedentary sousa band’s “Sousa Bash” for john philip sousa’s birthday. unlike previous years, when we have had an outsized saxophone and a standing-room-only crowd, or last year, when there was a major storm, the bridge closed, and we had to start a half-hour late because most of the band wasn’t there, this year promises to be relatively tame… although that was said before the performance, and a lot could change between now and 6:00 pm. the philharmonic is into full rehearsal mode for the december panto, which has been extended to four weeks this year.

busy busy busy…

gearing up for the holiday season

panto rehearsals start next monday, and are monday and wednesday until the performance starts, which is 4 december. for sure there is a banda gozona performance at the plymouth congregational church next sunday, and a possible snake suspenderz performance on friday, at chumleighland. then there is a banda gozona performance next thursday, at the SAM sculpture park, and a sousa band performance on 6 november (sousa’s birthday) at kenyon hall in west seattle.

oy… 😐

i just realised that i have a massive schedule conflict on 4 december: i have panto performances at hale’s palladium at 4:00 and 7:30, and i have a snake suspenderz performance at the drawing jam at the gage academy of art from 6:00 to 9:00… they’re both paying gigs… and last year i was actually the subject of a sketch by one of the artists at the drawing jam. i have to make a choice between playing music for a crowd of artists sketching naked people, or playing music for a crowd of british panto afficianados… what to do, what to do? 😐

‽⁜‽⁜

we had a banda gozona performance yesterday on beacon hill, not far away from where moe and i used to live. it was really frustrating, because there weren’t enough musicians to cover the important parts, which meant that they were covered alternately by the ben the clarinet player who doesn’t know how to stop playing when it’s someone else’s turn, and marc the trombone player, who thinks that any time is a good time to stick in an unplanned, unannounced trombone solo, and resolutely plays whatever he wants regardless of what the part actually says. this was further complicated by gil, the spanish-only speaking sousaphone player who wasn’t playing from music at all, and continued honking well after everyone else had decided that maybe we should give up and start over. sometimes i wonder why i continue with this group… 8/

i’ve been really tired for the past few days, so much so that i actually took about a 4 hour nap yesterday, after the performance, and still was tired enough that i slept until about 10:00 this morning. i’ve had a lot of house-maintenance stuff that i’ve had to do ever since getting back from OCF that i haven’t even started on because i’ve been so exhausted.

according to moe, who is studying these sorts of things recently, i have all the necessary characteristics to be psychotic. whee. 8/

spoons, etc.

yesterday i got up at an ungodly hour (6:30 am) and went to pick up my wanna-be-art-car from one repair shop, and drove it 15 miles to another repair shop where they’re allegedly going to fix it. on the 15 mile drive from one repair shop to the other, the car almost overheated, and smoke was coming out the fresh air vents when i arrived, but ganesha is in charge of this car, so if it’s going to be fixed, then it’s going to be fixed, and if it isn’t, there’s nothing i can do about it.

anyway, that left me in burien with no car. i had my bicycle, though it’s around 30 miles home from there, so i rode to the burien transit center and took a bus from there to international boulevard, where i transferred to another bus that was going to the federal way transit center, and from there i rode my bicycle the remaining 8 miles home.

when i got home, i turned around and went out again, to get an ink cartridge for my printer, so that everything won’t print green any longer, and i also went to the copy shop to get photocopies of the panto music of which i need multiple copies. then i came home again…

when i got home, i used the new ink cartridge to print an invoice, and packaged an order that came in the day before, and went out again to the post office to ship the order.

then i came home again, and searched for, and found a guy who would fix the free lawnmower that i got on freecycle the other day. he picked it up(!) last night.

today, i went to the bank to get cash for the guy who fixed the lawn mower, and when he delivered it(!), i mowed the lawn, taking a break in the middle to go out and buy a gas can and gas, because it ran out of gas and i didn’t have any because my previous lawn mower was electric.

then i got most of the rest of my gear ready for OCF. i still have to pack clothes, and there are probably some miscellaneous things that i haven’t remembered to pack.

i keep finding myself amazed at the fact that in a little more than a week there are going to be feral hippie children immitating the play that i only saw for the first time on monday, and that was an incomplete show, because all of the music isn’t written yet, and we’re still putting the final touches on the script… the final dress rehearsal for the panto here is tonight. i believe the people who aren’t going down early are having another rehearsal on monday, but the next complete rehearsal we’ve got scheduled for the panto is at OCF, a week from tomorrow evening before the fair opens on friday. i’ve still got to determine whether or not i’m bringing my saw. also i’ve got a pink bandana and a trumpet that i have to remember to take for katy.

tomorrow there’s supposed to be a banda gozona rehearsal, but it’s for a performance that i have to miss because of OCF, so i’m not sure whether or not i’m going to it. friday there’s the final BBWP rehearsal before the fire show the night of the fair opening.

as long as we hold it together, the panto this year has the potential for being the best show we’ve ever done. we’re doing a mash up of Red Riding Hood and The Three Pigs: they’re both fairly simple, short stories that have some similar characters – the big bad wolf, and the woodcutter, for example – and they’re both ripe for tweaking the plots a little bit (or a lot) so that they’ll fit together. of course we’ve got the standard gender bending and off-colour jokes which should go over the heads of the smaller members of the audience. if we don’t hold it together, well, it’s OCF, so the probability is very high that nobody will notice, or if they do, they’ll think we planned it that way.

okay, i’m here…

doughnut joustingi am totally exhausted from SACBO and surrounding festivities, and i’ve been pretty depressed most of the day (the morning after blues?), but i’m slowly coming around. it rained pretty much all day sunday, and there was at least a bracing dampness to the air all day saturday when it wasn’t actually raining. fortunately it cleared up for the actual parade, because i was very clear about the fact that if it was raining, all of my expensive electronic music production gear was going to stay in its respective boxes, which would have definitely put a cramp on our part of the parade. i didn’t vend sunday, but lack of motivation was only part of the reason. now that i’m fairly confident that the transmission on ganesha the car version two is going to last at least a year (because that’s how long the warranty on the new transmission that i bought for it lasts), i can turn my attention to the leak in the pressurised engine coolant system which causes the car to run really hot when it’s not on the freeway, smell funny, and requires engine coolant about every 4 days to a week. it’s annoying that i’ve had to put so much money into this free car to get it working reliably. about the most fun i had at SACBO was watching the doughnut jousting that evolved over the course of sunday afternoon. the crowds were really light because of the rain, but we were determined to make the best of it, which resulted in a couple of microphone stands and some coat hangers becoming targets on which were placed yesterday’s doughnuts, which were the target of jousters on bicycles, unicycles, wheelchairs, and pretty much anything else, armed with pool cues. i spent time with people that i only see once a year (mostly), was part of the centrepiece of the whole parade, and i was inducted into a secret society, the less said about which the better. fremont phil rehearsal tonight, BSSB rehearsal tomorrow, players rehearsal wednesday, LBG rehearsal thursday, BBWP rehearsal friday…

moe was at a sheepdog trial all weekend, and she won! she got a 92, and the person who came in second (who is also moe’s mentor and friend diane) got an 88. i’ll let her tell the story, but we’re all pretty proud of moe and her doggie. 🙂 also, today is our 12th wedding anniversary.

it’s definitely rehearsal season…

BBWPlast week, monday i had a fremont phil rehearsal, tuesday i had a sousa band rehearsal, wednesday i had a players rehearsal, thursday i had a banda gozona rehearsal, friday i had a BBWP rehersal, saturday was the banda gozona performance at the seattle version of guelaguetza, and today i had a rehearsal of the beatles-simulacra-band for the solstice parade coming up on saturday. this week, monday i have a fremont phil rehearsal, wednesday i have a players rehearsal, thursday i have my choice of a banda gozona rehearsal (which i am going to miss, because it is in preparation for a performance at the solstice parade in which i am going to be otherwise engaged) or a beatles-simulacra rehearsal, friday i have a BBWP rehearsal, saturday i have the solstice parade, plus SACBO, sunday i have SACBO and a number of options, including vending… and then in a week, monday i’ve got a fremont phil rehearsal, tuesday i have a sousa band rehearsal, wednesday i have a players rehearsal, thursday i have a banda gozona rehearsal, friday i have a BBWP rehearsal, and it continues from there until OCF.

i’m going to OCF with chris this year, and chris wants to get there on monday, which is earlier than i have ever arrived at OCF before. which means that i’m going to have to be extra prepared this year (i.e. no “making a run to town to get things i forgot” this year). we’ve already been scheduled for a BBWP performance at the friday night fire show – which we didn’t do at all last year, and there was such a furor because we weren’t there that they demanded to have us back 🙂 – so i’ve definitely got my work cut out for me, learning the new rap, practicing my poi and my tassel-twirling and the fire-avoidance thing to think about. plus i’ve got to do some homework and come up with sound effects for the beatles thing. we’re going to be in a “Yellow Submarine” float, and they want some appropriate submarine noises, along with the actual keyboard stuff that i signed up for.

wuff…

friday the banda gozona performed at folklife. friday was also the day that my mother-in-law, father-in-law, and his wife came to visit, for the combined holiday, moe’s sheep trial, and my mother-in-law’s 60th birthday. i left at 3:00 and didn’t get home until 9:00, whereupon i discovered one of our doggles loose in the bedroom and the bathroom totally trashed, with ibuprophen tablets spilled all over the place, and what looked like a few chewed ibuprophen tablets among the trashed counter contents that were on the floor.

i’m actually surprised that moe and her relatives aren’t at home – i was unaware of their plans, but i anticipated them being at home, in which case this wouldn’t actually be an emergency, but… i’m not sure, but it looks to me like it could be an “accidental” overdose on the part of the guilty party (paddy), so i call moe, who isn’t answering her phone. i call her father’s cell phone, and he’s not answering either, which i find quite strange, since he is, presumably, in the same general vicinity as moe, and i know for a fact that her sheep trial doesn’t start until tomorrow, but i am faced with a possible overdosing dog and i’m starting to freak out, so i call our good friend micah, who is a veterinarian, and he’s not answering his phone either.

now i’m really freaking out… 🙁

eventually i get hold of moe, who has been out to dinner with her parents, she comes home and vomits the dog, who wasn’t overdosing on anythign except toilet paper (she had eaten almost an entire roll, which was sitting on the counter), and everything was fine, although it left me (and everyone else) totally exhausted.

yesterday, i got an order for postcards, and i spent most of the day going back and forth with a trained, experienced graphic artist who (apparently) can’t differentiate between a file that is 250 dpi and RGB with exactly the same file that is 300 dpi and CMYK. when we finally got that all worked out, i went to a going away party for möppi, rebeccah and diemo, who are moving back to germany next month, and i got home, totally exhausted, at 10:00 or so.

today, i got up at an ungodly hour (8:00 am), feeling nauseous – :mrgreen: – but not actually nauseous enough to throw up (which i figured would make the nauseous feeling go away), and made it to folklife for a (relatively) early (1:10 pm) performance of the ballard sedentary sousa band. i didn’t actually get sick, although there were a few touch-and-go moments in the morning before i left, but i wanted to get there fairly early, because, unlike the banda gozona performance, which resulted in my possesion of a parking pass, so that i wouldn’t have to pay, the powers that be apparently figured that the ballard sedentary sousa band only needed two parking passes, which went to the two most senior members of the band, so in order to park, i would have to search out a free spot (practically impossible, given the location and time) or pay $15 to park until 2:30.

i got home at about 3:30, absolutely exhausted, and submitted the order for the postcards.

now, completely bereft of spoons, i’m going to spent the rest of my “holiday” weekend sleeping.

wesak was last thursday. i watched the monks at the buddhist temple down the street putting up decorations, but i totally spaced out mentioning it until now.

the aparajita is supposed to arrive on wednesday or thursday of this week. it’s down to the wire and i still don’t have tracking details from india, but the guy called me(!) to tell me when the shipment was supposed to be here.

Quantity discrimination in salamanders – they can tell the difference, but only when the ratio is 2:1 or greater… but these guys get paid to discover if salamanders can count. i obviously went into the wrong profession…

Man crosses English Channel in chair carried by helium balloons – including “coming down quickly to avoid restricted air space, missing a power line and then bouncing a short distance before coming to a halt” near dunkirk. once again, it appears as though i went into the wrong profession. what was i thinking?

this is not a title

Extraordinary Rendition Bandthe world needs more girl sousaphone players…

my performances at Honk! Fest went off without a hitch, more or less. i got up at an ungodly hour (7:30) and made it to the first performance, at Casa Latina, by 9:00, where they didn’t know what was going on, and my ability to understand spanish is only because of my vague knowledge of french and latin, so i wandered around in the international district for 45 minutes or so until other honk fest/band related people showed up. we played for an hour, and then we had a break until 3:00, so i went and got breakfast and took a nap for an hour or so. the second performance was after the Extraordinary Rendition Band performed. the latino guy that’s standing in the background is someone from my band, and i suppose that i should probably know what his name is, because i’ve known him for a few years now, but i don’t… (is it yeba ignacio? i’m not sure…) i don’t suppose that it’s partially because he only speaks limited english, and i would only make myself look foolish if i tried to speak spanish…

DJ RX – White Lines is an interesting treatment of the song… in a lot of ways, it’s better than the original.

miscellaneous honk blat wak wak wak ungow

one doesn’t tend to notice annoyances that have disappeared, but i just realised that the guy who has been sending me spam with great regularity, at least once a month, for five-plus years hasn’t sent me a spam message since november of last year. i won’t claim sole responsibility for ridding the net of this annoyance, but i would be willing to bet that the multiple reports of his spam i made to the washington state attorney general’s office couldn’t have slowed down his departure too much.

the new Ganesha The Car is probably not going to be a car very much longer. there’s nothing wrong with it currently, but the transmission is on its last legs, and from what the people at the repair shop (not the repair shop from which i got the car, a different one) told me, the ’93 Mercury Tracer (which is also called a “Ford Fiesta Escort” for some unknown reason) is notorious for transmission and engine problems, and pretty much anything that goes substantially wrong with it will very likely cost more to fix than the car is worth. at the same time, i didn’t actually pay for the car to begin with, and the repair shop that i got it from will very likely do things like replace the transmission for far less than other places would, because we fall under the “friends and family” category with the owner of the shop – which is also part of the reason why i didn’t pay for the car to begin with.

in the short term, this means that i have even more impetus to create “temporary” artwork on the car, using paint pens instead of a brush and one-shot. daniel smith’s has a piss-poor selection of paint pens, but i picked up some black, and some gold pens. i’m hoping that i can find a wider assorement of colours somewhere else.

frustration is finding a bittorrent of something that you really want, and downloading 99.3% of it – with 8 “leeches” and a “seeder” who only logs in after midnight – before getting stuck and spending weeks repeatedly opening up your network to a DOS attack while you wait for the remainder to appear… all i need is 1.16 MB of information and then i’ll have the whole thing… is that too much to ask?

a guy advertised “Goldblatt drywall stilts. Rubber is good, but the straps are shot and some minor hardware needs replacing.” on freecycle, earlier in the week, and i responded, because i can probably fix the things that they have wrong with them, and then i’ll have a set of drywall stilts… unfortunately, i didn’t notice that the guy’s email host is christian.net, and the quote that automatically appended to the signature of my message was “Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world. — Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet), 1694-1778″…

he didn’t reply, so i sent him another message this afternoon. the quote that automatically appended to the signature of that message was “The more you complain, the longer God lets you live.” i still have recieved no response from him, but i get the impression that the probability of my recieving a response from him is miniscule at this point. oh well… if nothing else, i can post a wanted to freecycle for drywall stilts. if i’m really lucky, the same guy will respond… 😉

i’ve got to get up and go to a gig that banda gozona is playing for part of Honk! Fest West at 9:00 tomorrow morning. there’s another gig that banda gozona is playing at 3:00 pm as well, which means that i can’t even go home and get some rest between the shows. the music that we’re playing is all stuff that i know the tuba parts for quite well. unfortunately, i’m playing trombone for tomorrow’s gigs, and the trombone parts are really fast, with a lot of notes that range from E an octave below middle C to A an octave above middle C within a measure. i’m reasonably certain that i can play most of the notes, and i’m sure i can play all of the notes at a reduced speed, but the fact that there’s going to be at least one other trombone-range instrument (most likely euphonium, but another trombone isn’t out of the question) makes me a lot more at ease with this performance than i would be otherwise.

okay, 2010 has actually started now…

the busy season started about 2 weeks ago. i’ve had a rehearsal for the fremont philharmonic, and a rehearsal for the fremont players every week, plus i’ve had a banda gozona rehearsal every other week, plus i’ve had a snake suspenderz rehearsal and/or performance about every other week (next performance is thursday at smokin’ pete’s barbecue, in ballard), the BSSB is starting rehearsals every other tuesday starting next week, and there’s a BSSB performance coming up in may, the moisture festival is coming up in a couple weeks, and after the moisture festival is over i’m going to have two rehearsals for the fremont players per week until the oregon country fair, which is in july.

on top of everything else, i’ve had an order of business cards to print, an order of stickers to print and i’m doing yet another re-design of the BSSB web site, which is about half done. i’m not gonna post a sneak peek until i get approval from the boss lady, liz… at which point, it may be a live site anyway. there’s not an awful lot of actual re-designing going on. more just moving stuff around and making it look “more grown-up” – whatever that means.

fläwmp

the first weekend of alad’din performances are behind me, and i now have a few days free until next week’s performances begin, which will most likely be filled with projects like finishing the insulation on the workshop, working on xmas gifts and other artistic projects, picking up my business cards, doing laundry, washing dishes, random web surfing and hiding out until all of the VEWPRFs are behind me.

saturday’s performances were interesting. there’s definitely a different “feel” about the philharmonic now that stuart’s not an “official” part of it any longer – in spite of the fact that he’s been there for every performance so far. it hasn’t been made plainly obvious what is going to happen with the phil at this point, but the probability that we will be going to OCF this year is still pretty high. whether or not it will be the phil, or another group with many of the same members is still a question. there hasn’t been any talk of changing the name of the group, but it’s very definitely a different group. we’ve got kellan, who is a college student trumpet player who is quite good, but isn’t as sure of himself as some of the more mature band members. on the other end of the spectrum, we’ve got clayton, who is playing euphonium, who is also in the ballard sedentary sousa band, and in la banda gozona (that makes three groups in which clayton and i both play). clayton is also an incredible musician who plays many different instruments in many different bands. i originally met him at the moisture festival a few years ago. he also is part of the fighting instruments of karma. we’ve also got a substitute guitar player, jacque, but he’s only going to be there for one show, and i’m not sure whether he’s actually planning on joining the band on a more permanent basis or not.

i have been playing my saw recently. i decided that i would actually purchase a bow for it, which is a totally different way of playing it than i have been used to in the past. my bow won’t actually be delivered until wednesday, but i have been making do with kiki’s bow, which she’s not using at the moment. with a mallet you get a much more bell-like tone quality and there is more room for error where you strike it than with a bow. as stuart said the other day, using the bow is the most difficult part of playing a stringed instrument as well.

sunday’s performance was a lot better than saturday’s, but there was only one of them, which is probably a good thing for a number of reasons: i was really tired because of two weeks of intensive preparing for a number of different shows, and also it was beginning to snow and i wanted to get home so that i wouldn’t be stuck later on. it turns out that most of the snow melted over night, and it’s actually supposed to be getting warmer over the next few days, so i didn’t go to marysville to get my musical instrument repair business cards from troy yesterday after the show, but i will probably go pick them up within the next two or three days. it was really amazing to have clayton playing the trombone/euphonium parts for songs that haven’t had them since jeremy and fred left the band.

once again, i am performing on new years’ eve in tacoma for the most money i have ever made in my life. thad & ada are getting married on new years’ day.

taking it easy… for a change.

after the combined stresses of having my web server go down and the IPv6 fiasco on my local computer, i was feeling pretty wound up yesterday, but i’ve found that going to a gig with la banda gozona and playing some really difficult but energetic, challenging and fun music on my trombone (i’ve switched to trombone from sousaphone, becase another reliable sousaphone player showed up, and memo wants to “shame” the other trombone player into actually playing the written notes more of the time, especially during performances where he has a tendency to “take a solo” at inappropriate times), along with fixing the direct cause of that stress, would appear to be exactly the right thing to do to alleviate said stress. the result being that i feel more relaxed this morning than i have in a long time. my computers are working, i actually got an incense order during the time that the local computer was down, business is doing well, i’m playing a lot of music with a whole bunch of different groups, i’m caught up enough with the projects that have been on hold for 4 years because of a lack of workshop space, that now i’m coming up with new project ideas and thinking of things i can make for people as gifts. also, there’s a clarinet needing repair that appeared on freecycle, so i’m going to pick it up this afternoon, fix it, and freecycle it to some other deserving person.

and, to make matters worse, i’ve found a PDF-scanned “DIY” book from the early ’70s that has a whole bunch of ideas for simple, cheap, portable living spaces that fit right in with the dome project fantasy that i’ve been playing with ever since i got back from burning man last year for a long time. maybe it’s time to start actualizing some of this fantasy play… 8)

this is a really strange place in which to find myself… i’ve always had this… not fear, although it amounts to the same thing… of fantasies, because deep down, i know that they are fantasies, and fantasies don’t exist in reality. but i’ve been playing around with the philosophical idea that opposites are an illusion for a while now, so maybe it’s time to try seeing what it would be like to actually make my fantastic ideas into real things.

it keeps going…

i completed one of the jewelry projects that i was working on, except that i have to get a set of crimping pliers – you would think that i would have one already, considering the quantity of pliers that i own, but no.

i’ve decided that there are enough questions i have about the software that i am using that i am probably going to have to start reading a lot, finding a mentor and asking a lot of stupid questions, like what is a DNS zone and what is a masked nameserver, and why do i care? because i’m pretty sure that i do care. my impression is that understanding these things in a little more detail would make my job as web manager a lot easier.

anyway, la banda gozona has a performance at the seattle art museum that i’ve got to leave for soon.

grmf

i finished moving the majority of the stuff out of the piles of boxes that have been stored first in the dining room, then the living room and finally the office/spare bedroom of our miniscule house and into the newly constructed workshop. i even got rid of the 2 extra 4’x8′ sheets of sheetrock (although i haven’t got rid of, and i’m not sure i want to get rid of the extra 4’x8′ sheet of peg board), as well as most of the old but still functional computer equipment.

which reminds me… i advertised the complete computer system again for $200 this time, and someone called me about it and asked if he could just take the mac. i said if he wanted the mac, he would have to take the whole system, to which he agreed. i also agreed to take $30 if he would help me move the desk from the office in the house to the workshop in back of the house and he agreed to that as well. however, from the moment he arrived he was trying in many not-so-subtle ways to get me to give him only the mac, and even moreso when he discovered that he was actually going to have to help me figure out how to get the desk out of the office, that he was going to have to lift the desk in order to move it, and that the place we were moving it to was not actually somewhere in the house. because of the fiasco that occurred when we couldn’t immediately figure out how i got the desk in to the office to begin with (it was a very tight squeeze, and it would only fit out into the corridor immediately outside the office door on it’s side with the upright supports facing in one direction, even though it would fit halfway through the office door with the upright supports facing in the other direction, and we had to try it both ways before i remembered how it actually fit), i actually agreed to give him the complete system for no money at all, despite the fact that he and i both thought better of it several times during the entire ordeal.

basically what it came down to is that he wanted to come and take only the parts of the computer system that he wanted, leave the rest for me to deal with, and he didn’t want to actually do anything for it. i came very close to just saying that i would deal with both the desk and computer system myself if he would just shut up and get out of my house. you don’t arrange to come to my house at 12:00 and then show up at 2:30 and then tell me how i’m supposed to give you the things that i’ve said i’m going to give you, especially when you have agreed to do some work with me in exchange for the things i’m giving you and then you’re so recalcitrant about doing the work. if you don’t want to do the work, that’s fine. if you don’t want the entire computer system, that’s fine. but when i’ve said that i will give you the whole computer system in exchange for some work, you don’t come to my house and then say that you only want part of what i’ve said i’m going to give you and you don’t want to do the work you’ve said you’re going to do.

anyway, i’ve still got 4 or 5 more boxes of holiday stuff, my “odd food” collection (which includes a package of ramen-like stuff labeled “mixed food flavour”, a gummy foot, “men’s pocky”, colourless M&Ms, “Nihilist” chewing gum [it has no flavour] and several other prizes), a box of bongs, and some other miscellaneous, stuff which is wholesale going in the loft of the workshop.

then i went to a banda gozona rehearsal last night, where it was decided that instead of playing sousaphone, i would be playing trombone, which is a lot smaller and easier to carry, and because of the fact that it was my original instrument, there’s a good chance that i’ll be a lot better at actually playing all of the notes, despite the fact that i’ve been learning the sousaphone parts for two and a half years and swiching to trombone will mean learning entirely new parts for all of the songs.

by the time i got home last night i was in an absolutely vile mood, and i woke up this morning in an almost equally vile mood, which wasn’t helped by the fact that when i was in the process of replacing the broken doorknob in the office, i succeeded in locking myself in the office, and i had to escape through the window. i’ve never actually been what i would call drunk in my entire life, but i’m seriously thinking about getting drunk tonight, simply because it would be something else vile that i’ve never done, and i’m not likely to want to do it once i’ve come out of the vile funk that i’m in currently.

heat wave continued

bakon vodkathe heat wave continues, but it was typically overcast this morning, and now, at 4:45 pm, it’s only 88 so it’s considerably cooler.

i got started taking down the existing shed today. i got it completely emptied out and all of the shelves deconstructed and then i broke myself. i was taking out the last shelf and suddenly there was a sharp pain in my lower back, and if i hadn’t stoped right then and gone inside and lay down, my guess is that it wouldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes until i had passed out from the pain. i took a couple of ibuprophen and iced it for about half an hour and it feels considerably better, but i’m going to have to take it really easy tomorrow if i want to get the shed taken down without injuring myself even further. i figure now that it’s empty, it shouldn’t be too difficult to take the walls down, take the roof off potentially in one piece, and take the framework apart in such a way that i can use most of it for other stuff later on.

i got my bottle of bakon vodka yesterday. i haven’t opened it yet, and i’m debating whether i want to open and try it, or whether i want to keep it unopened and pristine as a collector’s item. a lot of it depends on whether or not i am able to obtain another bottle of bakon vodka. i put my name on the list at the liquor store on 4th avenue in downtown seattle two months ago and they said they would call me when they got more in, but according to the person i talked to yesterday, they have had at least two previous deliveries in the past two months and they didn’t call. the guy would only allow me to buy one bottle because it sells out so quickly, despite the fact that they hadn’t called me. i plan on going back tomorrow and seeing if there’s a different guy that will sell me another bottle.

banda gozona is playing for somebody’s quinceañera (15th birthday?) in west seattle tomorrow, and i’m thinking of going to the FSM on sunday.

ERGH!

for a holiday weekend this has been pretty much a total bust. i hope that i’ve gotten all of my hardships out of the way for this summer, otherwise i’m going to be a very unhappy camper indeed.

i had folklife gigs with banda gozona on friday and the BSSB and simon’s birthday party with the fremont phil on saturday. i went to the banda gozona gig because i had this bizarre notion that “the show must go on” (even though i was sick AS A DOG and probably should have stayed home regardless of whose “sacred tradition” i was violating). i didn’t go to the BSSB gig or the fremont phil gig, and by sunday i was feeling a lot better, although my appetite was still not what it should be and taking out the trash fatigued me to the point where i had to sit down and breathe heavily for half-an-hour afterwards (and it’s still not much better today)…

i got the web site up and running, more or less, friday or saturday, but i was sick AS A DOG those days. i had some problems figuring out the database stuff, primarily because its my impression that every host server that runs mysql does it slightly differently than every other host server that runs mysql. once i had gotten the database quirks worked out i had to upload a whole bunch of graphics because they didn’t download correctly from the old server – which doesn’t really surprise me that much except for the fact that i was sick AS A DOG and could barely sit up without going into another round of vomiting. and then, once i had the graphics uploaded i noticed that some of them still weren’t displaying correctly, so i had to deal with the new server’s tech support queue – which is quite prompt, although i really wish that there was a phone number that i could call instead of having to file a ticket and then wait for a response – to get that straightened out… and it’s still not entirely straightened out although the parts that aren’t are not visible to the outside observer (they have to do with rewrite rules in my .htaccess file which are currently commented out so that the graphics are visible).

also, one of my clients – The Cirque de Flambé – is registered with godaddy, which won’t let the registered owner of a domain change the DNS settings of the domain he owns to a new host, and requires fax confirmation, plus a week turnaround time to change the DNS settings, which is so totally ridiculous that it is beyond imagination.

not only that, but i called car toys and talked to a guy who said that he could do what i wanted to do with my car stereo, and that i should bring my car down on sunday so that he could take a look at it, but the simple act of walking down to my car exhausted me so much that i decided to put it off until today, however when i went to car toys today, the guy wasn’t there and won’t be back until thursday, and the guy that i talked to said that to do what i want to do (upgrade the stereo and put in a feature so that i can play music on the outside of the car) requires “body modification” and the only guy who could do it was the guy who won’t be back until thursday…

on the positive side of things, i got written confirmation that SSDI has approved my claim (finally) and not only that, but i got a whopping enormous check from the united states treasury (only about half of the check that i got when i quit openwave, but still, it’s not often that a person sees a check written out to them that is 5 figures). the bank is closed today, of course, but my impression is that this will pay for a workshop for me with quite a bit left over to do things like pave the driveway, replace the windows, put in new floors and generally spiff up the house a fair amount.

i’ve been sitting up too long, however, and there’s a star wars marathon that starts in a few minutes. more later

grf

so the past week or so has been full of emails planning for a gig in mt. vernon for la banda gozona on sunday. there was extra planning involved because the guy who normally does the planning for the group is actually going to be skiing sunday, and was not able to attend, so someone who is not a part of the band – he’s actually one of the dancers that we perform with on occasion – was planning the gig.

except that now he’s not. he has apparently cancelled the gig at the last moment, because the organizers of the gig – the people in mount vernon who wanted to hire us – have apparently decided that they don’t have enough money. that, combined with the fact that there really weren’t enough musicians to cover all the parts (which we don’t usually let get in the way of playing) caused max, the guy who was the temporary organizer, decided to cancel the entire gig.

i had been planning on going up to bellingham after the gig, to visit friends i haven’t seen in a couple years. i’m still going to go to bellingham, but instead of bringing my sousaphone i’m thinking that i’ll bring a couple of long flutes and my delay unit… and my mac laptop that has reason on it…

heiney

i did something to my back within the past three days that is causing me enormous pain when i stand or sit… currently i am under the influence of ibuprophen, which diminishes it from enormous pain to a nagging reminder, but at the same time, i think that loading, unloading and re-loading hybrid elephant at the FSM yesterday, and then unloading it again at home this afternoon was no help at all. at this point, i can hope that it goes away or fixes itself soon, because any further medical intervention is more than i can afford.

i made $70 at the FSM. not my best day, but not my worst, either. the next time i know i can go will be in three weeks, because i have a banda gozona gig (in mt. vernon?) in two weeks. also, since i redesigned the site, hybrid elephant has shot to the #1 position when you search for swastika button, which is especially cool since the #2 position is currently occupied by a white supremacist… 8) furthermore, i now occupy position #2 when you search for finest incense in the world, which is exactly what i was hoping would happen!

ned had to cancel, because he’s sick, and his son goes to one of the schools shut down by swine flu H1N1 (pronounced “heiney”). he says that he and his wife and kid have been sick for about a week, and while he doesn’t think he’s got H1N1, the fact that his kid goes to stevenson means that he doesn’t want to take any chances. another school that was shut down due to the overblown H1N1 scare is woodmont, where i went to first through third grade.

hee…

i’m still sick. i went to see a doctor (i am uninsured, so it cost two arms and half a leg!) today. the good news is that i don’t have pneumonia, but i do have bronchitis, so now i have an inhaler (which cost the other half a leg) which is good for 20 days. the doctor said that i would probably be feeling better in a week or so, but that the inhaler would help me get through the banda gozona gig that i have on saturday, the fremont philharmonic rehearsal on monday, and the snake suspenderz gig on thursday. dr. wackaloon (no shit… okay, so he’s not really dr. wackaloon, but his real name is closer to “wackaloon” than you might think) said my blood pressure was a little high – 150/100 – my pulse was high and my oxygen level was low, so he told me to check my blood pressure again in a week, which is another reason to have a sphygmomanometer, one of which i have wanted for about 15 years. he also didn’t believe me when i said that my profession was “freak”. oh well.