Category: General

Summertime Blues

Last weekend’s gig went well. An important milestone, our first full-length gig. We played for a smallish but appreciative crowd and the set went over well. Eight originals and ten covers in two sets. It’ll be a few weeks before we can get together again because of vacation schedules and whatnot. Hopefully in the fall we’ll start picking up more, bigger gigs and work on getting a rhythm section.

Meanwhile work has been busy and stressful. At least this weekend, there’s nothing going on and I can some time to recharge.

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Over the weekend the kids’ school had their annual carnival. This is the major fund raiser for the school, and a pretty large-scale affair, taking over the whole north parking lot and athletic field with rides like a ferris wheel and roller coaster and fun house, and food and your classic midway games. It went on for four days and every family has to volunteer. I spent an evening working one of game booths, handing out bean bags to throw, and the occasional stuffed animal to a winner. At the start it wasn’t too crowded and I had a chance to go around and study a few of the games and figure out what makes them so hard to win. It’s a similar design psychology to trade show exhibits and magic acts. I figured out a reliable method for a couple of them, and all the ones involving throwing darts I’m good at, and the ones involving throwing balls or beanbags not so much. I accidentally won a giant lizard tossing a ring onto a milk jug. We named him Carlos Sebastian Bach in honor of the Mets’ no-hitter. Between hanging out and working we were there three of the days. The kids had a great time. The last day had some dramatic, intense but brief rainstorms. At one point it was torrentially pouring and bright sunlight at the same time.

In other news, Lizzy painted her nails to look like the flags of various nations.

Goings On

Lotta stuff going on with the kids lately. Friday nite Lizzy and some of her friends from school went to see The Hunger Games, along with Jeannie and some of the other moms. We’d all read the books and Lizzy in particular was very excited about it. I’m supposed to go see it with people from work this week, so meanwhile, they’re trying hard not to tell me too much.

Saturday nite was a father-daughter dance at Lizzy’s school. It was very nice. Mainly the kids danced while the fathers stood around and watched, but it was fun and I got to know Lizzy’s friends and some more parents from the school a bit better. Sunday was the Lower Hudson Honor Band concert, in which Lizzy performed. The concert was excellent and Lizzy did and excellent job. She had a few friends in it from school, and we all ended up going out for lunch after the show.

Still lots going on with my origami and music, but it’s work in progress, so nothing to say until it’s somewhere. Soon. Also I’ve been under the weather lately. Our summer preview has come and gone and now it’s back to cold and stormy.

Spring Up!

They changed the clocks and it’s back to getting up in the morning before its light. On the upside it’s light out now when we get home from work. Anyway, the days are getting longer fast this time of year. Last weekend we went ice skating, thinking that we’re almost out of winter so we better do it while we have the chance. And shaw’nuff spring has come on all at once right after that. Only two days later the weather was up in the 60’s and I went rollerblading for the first time of the season. The next day the first buds appeared on pretty much all the trees and shrubs around here. There were a few cold, rainy days, but the weekend was beautiful. We did the first round of spring yardwork, mainly raking out the winter debris and old leaves, and taking down the last of the xmas lights. Plus I went rollerblading a second time. Today it was up into the 70’s and I went staking for a third time. I’ve also gotten the Mustang out for a drive a couple times already in the last few weeks.

Staycation

The days have been getting longer and the winter has remained mild. It’s now daylight again when I get up in the mornings for work. Still the night comes early and I’m really longing for spring to arrive. I’m off work this because the kids are home from school and I have some extra vacation days from last year that I need to use or loose. It’s a funny thing: we knew last fall that the kids get a week off in February at their new school, and at the time I was all like “we are so going on a ski trip, or to the Caribbean!” But all fall and winter we were pretty focused on day-to-day life, and when it came down to it, airfare to the islands for a whole family is crazy expensive, because everyone else who has kids is also taking the same week off. And there’s been be no snow to speak of.

So the plan is mainly to hang around the house. I’m actually pretty happy about this. It seems every time we have time of there’s travel involved, but it’s nice just to catch up on things, and have an opportunity to focus on writing my book and working on new songs. To be sure, we’re probably going skiing later in the week for a day trip overnight (if it doesn’t rain), but nothing epic. I’m guessing it’ll be the last chance for skiing this season.

Quincunx

Happy New Year everyone! I had a relaxing and enjoyable holiday. Saw lots of friends and family, did some traveling, some partying, got some rest and got some work done, some shopping, and some good music making and origami time. More on that stuff in upcoming posts. It’s been an extremely mild December, for which I’m grateful. Most days were up in the 40’s and some in the 50’s the last few weeks. Today it was back to work and also turned cold and windy.

Can you believe it was five years since I started this blog? Oh, oh what I want to know, where does the time go?

‘Tis The Season

Been doing lots of holiday stuff the last couple weeks. A trip to the museum, two family holiday parties, three kid’s performing arts shows, and four work-related parties, town halls and similar functions. Whew.

I took the kids to the AMNH a couple weeks ago, and we had a great time. Spent a long time with the dinosaurs and the frogs, and in the hall of minerals. The Origami Tree is in the south hall this year, since they’re doing renovations in the lower hall on the Central Park side. My elephants were featured in the “folding the museum” display at the base of the tree, and they saved a number of my models from years past, which are in the tree.

I also folded some models – a dragon and a moose – as ornaments for the tree at the kids’ school.

Yesterday was the big family xmas party for Jeannie’s dad’s side of the family. A good time and great to catch up with all for Long Island cousins. Today was a party for her mom’s side. Had to skip that one to get some things done.

Our kids a in this after school theatre program, in which they do singing and dancing and acting. They had two different shows last week, one for the younger kids and one for the bigger ones, and it’s pretty impressive the level of the performance. Later this week there’s some kind of holiday play. Lizzy is an angel and gets to say some lines.

There’s been a lot of end-of year holiday parties, for my immediate team, for the platform group, and for the whole company. Our corporate parties tend to be rather boozy affairs, but I survived alright. I’ve been there long enough that I have friends in all different divisions, so it was good to catch up. Then there was a town hall in which our corporate overlords are telling us out of one side of their mouth how the company had a great year and made tons of money, and out of the other how internet piracy is destroying our business and killing innocent people and must be stopped. Umm, yeah.

All this has been great fun, but it’s really hard to get stuff done. Looking forward to taking a few days off this week and getting caught up.

Back in the New York Groove

I was sick with a cold Thanksgiving week, and it took me a while to recover. My energy was really low the last couple of weeks and I mainly worked from home and even (gasp!) took a couple of sick days. But the last few days I’ve been feeling better and I’m back at work. It’s good to have my strength and energy back. Been catching up on a few things.

I finished the diagrams for origami Inchworm. Now it’s on the my new Butterfly II and my Rocketship. Hoping to re-establish a groove with that.

My neighbor lent me a stack of Bob Dylan albums a while back. Believe it or not it takes me a long time to listen to music, because the first time I hear it, I want to listen to the record the whole way thru with no distractions. It’s harder to find the time than you might think. I did manage to get thru a few when I was sick, and only have one to go now, but it’s a double live album. Listening to it now.

I finally got together with Blick to jam over the weekend. It’s sounding really good and fun as always. I love that he’s really focused on working out vocal harmonies and making them sound good. I think my singing is better after the Cabaret show; all that horn playing got my breath support back in shape. I want is to get together with the Cabaret rhythm section soon, but it’s the scheduling question makes it hard. And I think it’s about time to start looking for gigs.

My only issue is that I want to spend more time on originals, because they take longer to develop. But this is partly my fault. Every time we get together we spend the first part of the session just jamming songs that one or both of us know, rather than working on getting our originals tight. And I keep calling tunes. This time we tried to figure out a good Zeppelin and Floyd song to do. It’s harder to pick one than you might think, since both groups have lots of long songs with many complicated parts that may not come across stripped down. Ah well.