This one is a little silly, but I’m feeling it anyway.

During the summer between grades four and five I took a summer band program given by the Tewksbury school system.  I started to learn to play the saxophone.  My sister played the clarinet and I thought that was cool, but it was also a little too girly of an instrument to follow in her footsteps.  I was told that girls play the clarinet and boys play the saxophone.  I took the saxophone.

By the time I was 15 I was also learning the guitar.  I took to the guitar much faster (I could already read music, so I had a huge head start on the normal beginner) and I seemed to enjoy it more, but I was never as good at the guitar as I was at the saxophone.  When it came time to try to get into music school I auditioned as a sax player.

Now 20 some odd years after those college auditions I am a guitar player more or less exclusively.  I don’t play a lot, but I still break it out from time to time.  The saxophone… not so much.  Partly because my much beloved horn is full of leaks and holes and sounds like crap, but also because it is much more demanding from a physical stand point than the guitar.  If you take a long time off and then pick up the guitar your finger tips will be in some real pain as you wait for the calluses to redevelop.  Saxophone though relies more on muscle control and after 5-10 minutes of playing my jaw is just done and I can’t do it anymore.  5-10 minutes a day for a couple of weeks would bring me back to respectability, but I have rarely been that driven.

That might change soon though.  My step daughter is now in fifth grade and she is having her first in-school saxophone lesson today.  She is using her dad’s old horn.  He was a sax player in school too.  This weekend we’ll probably go to a music store for whatever book she is going to need, and maybe a music stand, and maybe a little reed case or something.  She can already read music from all of those piano lessons so she is going to be light years ahead of the other fifth graders.

She narrowed down the decision on which instrument to play to sax and trumpet.  She chose sax because she already had one.  If she chose trumpet I would be just as pleased.  I played the trumpet a little in high school too.  Either way, she’s taking her first step toward being a band geek.  Bless her sweet little heart.  More importantly, she’s taking her first step toward high school jazz band, which is where all the cool band geeks end up.  Sax players get lots of solo time in jazz band. 

Break a leg, you kool kittie kat.

Check it out, Google Music has a new interface. Well, it does on my iPad at least. Is it an iOS thing? Is it just a mobile version of the site? It has a link to the desktop version so my guess is it is just for mobile browsers.

As the daughter of the sausage shop owner said in the film played at the start of each stop on the Rush Time Machine Tour:

“It doesn’t suck so bad now, papa, no.”

PS, I still want an iOS app. Hear me Google?

Archie Bunker’s Chair, a photo by robj_1971 on Flickr.

Honeymoon memories… some one viewed my picture of Archie Bunker’s chair from our trip to the Smithsonian.

Our honeymoon was an absolute blast. Jen and I should do it again. Soon. Now.

I left the house this morning at 7:11am. 

I got to work at 9:24.

Rain and the first week of school combine to bring out the inner idiot in the majority of people.

I must sound like a broken record because I go through this every single September, and somehow I never get over it.  I never learn to accept it.  I just get pissed off.

Today is the third business day after Labor Day. It is also the third straight day of rain. Last night when I got home the temperature was in the 50’s. This morning it is still in the 50’s.

I hate this time of year. I want my summer back.

Sweetie is kicking the crap out of bad guys.

It’s that time of year again.  The time when those of us who have long commutes complain about the traffic.  That annual event when all the people who don’t drive to work during the summer suddenly start driving to work again, causing traffic jams at every imaginable (and many unimaginable) place. 

If that’s not bad enough, we get to add heavy rain to the equation this year.  My neck of the woods has been swimming through rain storms the last two days.  Normally all you need to mangle the traffic patterns is a little commute time drizzle, but this week it has been pretty heavy.

Add those two factoids together and you come up with everyone everywhere being late to work.  That includes me.  It is so damn frustrating, and there is absolutely nothing any of us can do about it.

End rant.

2011-08-12 – The Last Morning 351, a photo by robj_1971 on Flickr.

Guess why the birds are surrounding this boat.

photo, a photo by robj_1971 on Flickr.

have I shared this already?

While in San Diego we ran into my grandfather. Or a representation thereof. I don’t know if he was a smoker, and I don’t know if he ever had a beard, but he was a fisherman, so this guy reminds meof him.