On Stage

Daily writing prompt

Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?

Have I ever performed on stage? You can bet your sweet ass that hells yes I have.

The first time was when I was in elementary school playing with the elementary school band. That would have been 5th grade so… 1981 or so. Every year from then on saw me do at least a xmas and a spring concert with some school band. That ran all the way through my first trip through college when I was a music major. Besides that, I have lost track of how many times a band of my own played in front of an audience. The last time was February 1, 2020, just before the pandemic hit.

I am a shy introvert who doesn’t feel comfortable dealing with people, but for some unknowable reason, I absolutely love being on stage, playing with a band. As long as I have a guitar or a saxophone to hide behind. I fucking love it. I Love It. Also, I can’t wait to do it again.

1988? Might have been 1987, but I think it was ’88.

1985/86, I played trumpet in the concert and marching bands my Freshman year of high school. I still played saxophone in Jazz band though. That was my only time as a trumpeter, thankfully. I enjoyed sax 100000 times more, and I was 100000000 times better at it.

I Don’t Wanna

Sorry, gentle readers, but this is going to be a running theme over the next few days.

I don’t wanna go to the office tomorrow… or the next day… or the next day. I just want to work from home. Even worse, all three in the office days require me to work in a building that is 70-something miles from home, instead of the usual 40 miles.

I said it before and I will say it again (and again and again)…

I. Don’t. Wanna!!!

Night Stand Bug?

I just updated my iPhone 14 to iOS 17.2 and now the clock doesn’t work when the phone is in Night Stand mode.

Oh, good.

It took me about 35 seconds after updating to find a bug. That does not seem like a very good sign to me.

Work Attire

This is more a reminder to myself than anything else.

My company’s hybrid work schedule currently has us working in the office once a week, and working from home four days a week. It’s going to change to two days in the office in March, but that is not relevant today.

Part of the agreement is that if you have something important going on, like a meeting or a training or something, that requires you to be in person, then you may have to be in the office more than once for that week. That’s happening to me this week. I have a meeting tomorrow that requires me to be in the office for the full day. I have another meeting on Wednesday that will require me to be in the office at least half of the day, and I have still another meeting and a training on Thursday that will require me to be in for at least half of that day too.

The thing is… after losing 200 pounds in the last year and a half I have needed to rebuild my wardrobe and… well… I only own two work-appropriate collared shirts. Two shirts… three days… This post is a reminder to myself that I need to do laundry as soon as I get home from work tomorrow, or else I won’t have a shirt to wear on Thursday. I hang dry all of my shirts now so that they won’t shrink, and it usually takes a full day to completely dry. So I need to have tomorrow’s shirt hanging before I go to sleep tomorrow so that it will be thoroughly dry before I leave for work on Thursday.

Damn it. I suppose I could just go buy a third shirt… but I don’t wanna.

Just call me spoiled rotten, I guess.

HoHoHo

Still trying to force some xmas spirit onto myself. We’ll get there eventually.

Favorite Physical Activities

Daily writing prompt

What are your favorite physical activities or exercises?

View all responses

You know there is one physical activity… the real, honest answer for nearly all of us… you know… when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much…

Now that that is out of the way, what is my second choice? There are two that come to mind. One is going to seem obvious if you read the previous post. The other is a little bit of out of the box thinking.

First, I like to go for walks. Imagine driving into the city with my beloved wife and a camera or two, then just picking a neighborhood and walking around while enjoying the company and the sights, and snapping off a ton of pictures that I can post to this page after we get home. That’s a quality piece of physical activity right there. The setting can be swapped out for other places. For example, instead of walking around Boston we could walk around a Disney World theme park. Perfect.

My second, less conventional idea for a favorite physical activity? Band practice. Yeah, you read that right. There’s no running around or anything like that, but band practice generally results in a bumped up heart rate and working up a serious sweat. You heard it here first. Band practice is cardio, babie. Rock and Roll.

Both of those are much more fun than the exercise I did just before I wrote this post. I ran in place for 45 minutes. My legs feel like rubber. I’m toast. I literally sit down and post something after my morning faux jog (pronounced “yog”, with a soft “j”) just to give myself some time to recover. That’s what I do for exercise every day, but it sure as hell ain’t my fav.

Getting the Bug Again

I had the curse of the mashed potatoes tonight. One out of every 10 or 20 servings of mashed potatoes goes wrong for me and my rebuilt stomach and after a couple of bites I have full on nausea like you’ve heard about. Tonight was that night. Two bites of delicious instant mashed potatoes had me in the bathroom praying to the porcelain god.

Too much information? Yeah, probably.

As usual, once I yakked it all up I felt fine. Weird, eh? Anyway, as I sat in the living room waiting a while before trying to eat something else I popped on some youtube. Five seconds into a video on a new color film was all it took to reignite the film photography bug. I mean… woah…

I have never thought of Boston as an xmas display kinda city the way New York is. Maybe The Google and I should look into any potential photography places. Maybe Jen and I can go into town next weekend? Assuming the weather is okay.

Until then… I just love shooting film, even though I am not very good at it.