We’re getting into the long, lazy end of summer.\u00a0 Back in May, I made a list of things I wanted to do over the summer.\u00a0 I did most of the things relating to travel, spending time outside, seeing music and that kind of fun stuff, plus biking and working out.\u00a0 However, I only got about halfway thru the tasks around home improvement, software, music and origami.\u00a0 Creative work can take a long time, especially in the early stages, and the same with projects that involve research into buying things or hiring custom services.\u00a0 Ah well, there’s more time ahead in the fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last weekend was the first weekend I was home since mid-July, and I spent it, as well as most of the week before, catching up on random tasks. It’s amazing how much time everything takes when you have to do it all yourself. The week before I went camping I put a huge amount of time into yardwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I got home from camping, number one on the top of my todo list was to get my saxophone fixed.\u00a0 My repair guy lives out in Nyack, and you have to call and set up an appointment to drop it off and pick it up.\u00a0 I tried calling back in June but he didn’t pick up the phone.\u00a0 This time he did, so I dropped it off last Tuesday.\u00a0 This is my Selmer Reference 54 tenor, my main sax.\u00a0 The low notes had become messed up to point where they wouldn’t sound at all, probably due to a leaky pad, plus it needed a new cork.\u00a0 I brought my bike with my so I could check out a biking trail on the shore of Hudson, that runs thru a state park from Nyack up to Haverstraw, the next town to the north.\u00a0 There and back plus a little scooting around the town around the shore was fifteen miles, lovely and a little hilly, with woods and shores and beaches and great views.\u00a0 I came back Friday to pick up my horn, and it plays and sounds great.\u00a0 Nice and fast and responsive, and can play the low notes softly in full tone.\u00a0 Woo-hoo! I brought my other sax with me, and old Selmer Mark VII tenor that I’ve been playing in the interim, figuring it could use some work too.\u00a0 Some of the low notes sound muffled and it’s hard to pop some of the altissimo notes (although that might just be the way the horn is).\u00a0 This was my main horn for many years until I bought the new one.\u00a0 It’s more than fifty years old, and I bought it in the early 1990’s, after I sold my car and just before I moved to New York (spending the money I was going to live on my first semester as a grad student at NYU).\u00a0 It’s a great horn and worth keeping it in shape.\u00a0 Much more of a smokey tone than the Ref 54, great for ballads.\u00a0 Anyway, I figure an once of prevention while it is still playable. So now I have to go back and pick that up one day this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile Michelle came back last weekend and asked us to help her move a bunch more stuff, including a big bookshelf, to her new apartment. Afterwards we had a chance to walk around her neighborhood and get dinner at a Mexican place, all of which was very nice. Since we were moving furniture around, I noticed a few spots on her wall the needed touch-up painting. Luckily I still have the remainder of a can of paint from when we did her room years ago. While we were at it we did a deep cleaning and got rid of a bunch of old stuff. Another task done. Now all that remains to put everything back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An unexpected and rather annoying thing to deal with is I have an infestation of wasps in the soffit above my garage door, right near the front door of my house. I’ve been trying to get rid of them, but the nest is hidden up inside.\u00a0 This happened once before about ten years ago or more, and I was able to remove a peice of panelling to get at the nest, but this time they’re in a different spot.\u00a0 I can’t take apart the soffit without cutting, and I don’t want to do that while they’re active.\u00a0 So I’ve been trying to get rid of them using different sprays and stuff, but so far it’s been ineffective.\u00a0 I might have to just wait for a cold day when it’s safe and hack up in there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile in my recording project Spellbound, I’ve finished all the twelve-string guitar parts and the last song, and am now adding some sweetening synthesizer parts including some high slow synth strings, and tubular bells.\u00a0 Last is the lead guitar parts, which might take a bit longer since I need to do two twelve-bar solos plus some interstitial noodling.\u00a0 Still, hope to be done tracking before the end of September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, in the world of Spacecats, we were all set to start recording our next record right after Labor Day, but unfortunately we are delayed yet again. Our piano player Josh was in a bike accident and hurt his shoulder. Sounds like he’ll be alright, but it’s going to take him a few weeks to recover, so he’s going to miss some rehearsals, and then it might be a while before he’s back to a hundred percent. We’ll probably have to postpone our upcoming gig in September too. On the bright side, we’re having my old friend Gary sit in guitar for this week’s rehearsal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’re getting into the long, lazy end of summer.\u00a0 Back in May, I made a list of things I wanted to do over the summer.\u00a0 I did most of the things relating to travel, spending time outside, seeing music and that kind of fun stuff, plus biking and working out.\u00a0 However, I only got about … Continue reading “The Summer of John”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-improvement","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6791,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6790\/revisions\/6791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}