Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Christmas arrived like a summer storm, and I’ve been running a little ragged.  I’ll be back here soon.  Meantime, here’s a nice number from our holiday concert last Sunday.  I’m in the group of trumpets on the right of the stage. (turn it UP!):

More videos from the concert collected here:

http://vimeo.com/album/159297

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas day.

So I continue to play in a concert band.  We’re busily rehearsing for a holiday concert on Sunday, 12/20, and the trumpets just have a ton of playing to do.  Stamina could definitely be an issue, so I’ve been practicing at home a little bit longer, and working to extend my comfortable range a bit higher.  The basement spiders should be hibernating now, so I don’t think I’m disturbing their ecosystem.

Another amusing director quote: Anita, the associate director, was rehearsing a piece we’re playing called Three Klezmer Miniatures.  In places there are intricate rhythms that need to be traded back and forth between sections, and the other night we started out a little out of sync.  She stopped the band and said, “If anyone were dancing to you guys, they’d be hurting themselves.”

To get you in the mood, here’s the piece we’ll be starting our concert with (again, not our band):

[audio:http://phil2bin.com/sounds/31733.mp3]

Ducking in here to see if any pipes have burst during this cold wave.  Since the door was frozen shut, I’m thinking the property manager has neglected it (as have I).

I just looked up my last post.  I’d completely forgotten what I wrote about last.  In retrospect, it looks like my Macbook battery died and never recovered.  Well, it’s still sick, but I’ve been mostly plugged in, so it’s on life support.  Federal death panels may soon intervene, as I’m traveling again Friday.

We had a nice, relaxing time in South Carolina, aided greatly by the Buckeyes’  continued dominance over Michigan.  It’s been so long since they’ve beaten us that I wonder if we should invite counselors to the oyster roast in mufti, to cosset us in the event that we ever lose to them again.

The weather was cool, but mostly sunny.  On Friday, we embarked on a cruise out to Fort Sumter, where the Civil War began when the Union garrison there was forced to surrender it.  It seems the fort’s significance was more symbolic than strategic, though it did help guard the mouth of Charleston harbor.  It seems to have spent most of its existence as rubble.  What you see in the pics below is brickwork in interesting patterns, mostly the result of a rebuild after the Civil War (click to enlarge):

On Saturday, the game was watched, some fish were caught in my brother’s pond, and oysters were finally roasted.  Another pleasant November weekend in the Low Country.