dinosaur egg and fishes

I don't want to build my house today. I want to put silly things on my blog instead. Okay, that's done. Off to work now!

What is it, Groundhog Day?

It's nearly cold enough to be. And this groundhog most certainly did not see his shadow. We were working outside all day today and it felt like February to me - all dark and dreary. I'm especially not looking forward to winter this year if it's starting out like this.

I want to run away and join the circus!

For the past couple of weeks I've been enjoying a book called Girl Clown , a few pages at a time, each night before I fall asleep. I wish I weren't so exhausted because I'm always eager to find out what will happen next, but I just can't stay awake, and that has absolutely nothing to do with the book. Girl Clown is a semi-autobiographical novel written by a blogger named Bozoette, who joined the circus back in the 1970s, and had all sorts of exciting adventures during her stint as a circus clown. It is very interesting and quite entertaining as well. But it really makes me miss being on the road - a lot. My life on the road was not nearly as rugged and exciting as hers, but I loved the life of travelling and performing in a new town each night. Or being in a new port each day.

I can't wait to be finally free to get out there and do it again. I'm really looking forward to it. As soon as we finish building our house and get settled back in, I'll be looking for another road or ship gig, that's for sure. Until then, I fall asleep each night and dream about running away with the circus.

sulking

I've been living my life at a reduced capacity for three years now, due to this house project that Doug wanted to undertake and I did not. In an effort to be supportive, I have basically put my life on hold until we can move back into our house. I wanted to have the insurance company rebuild our house because that would have been the quickest and least complicated way to deal with the situation. But in "our" world, apparently, uncomplicated is unacceptable.

So when Doug goes off on short tours and cruises that pay less than what he would make if he had stayed home, I look at it as kind of an unfair delay in our progress. During the past three years I've had to turn down offers for ship gigs in Europe, the Pacific islands and Australia, and a long term hotel gig in Dubai, all for the sake of getting our house being finished "quickly." I knew all along that it wouldn't be finished in another two months, which is what Doug has been telling everyone all these years. I guess realistic is also negative. That's me alright.

Anyway, I hope he returns all fresh and rested and ready to get back to work on the outside of the house before it gets any colder, because it's not fun working outside in the cold and the wind.

Then we can do all of the drywall in the basement and all of the door and window trim upstairs, and then before you know it, we'll be back in our house. Yaaaaay!!!!!

Sarah Palin, Jazz Vocalist

Listen to this a few times, the "melody" becomes more apparent each time. I don't care who you are voting for - this is brilliant!

evening shots

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Have a Great Weekend!

The Night Has 1000 Eyes, John Coltrane vs. Bobby Vee

The combo I'm coaching at school is playing this piece on their concert next month. I had to submit the tune list to the head of the department today and I decided that I should double check all of the composers of the tunes my combo is doing. The Night Has 1000 Eyes is in a fake book we use which is called, rather ironically, the Real Book. This book is well known amongst jazz musicians for being full of errors and the composers that were listed for this song somehow didn't seem right to me. I thought I should double check.

So I did my research the fast and easy way, using Google, and found out who the correct composers were for this tune, which happens to be the title song from a 1948 movie. It has become a jazz standard as a result of John Coltrane's rendition:

In addition, I discovered that there is in fact another song by the same name and the composers are the ones that are incorrectly listed in the Real Book. This song is from 1963 and was a hit for Bobby Vee. The video is hilarious:

empty nest syndrome

It has been a year since my beloved cat Ted passed away. I had been planning to write one final post about him would include a few baby pictures that we found, but I don't have it in my heart to do that right now. Ted was the closest thing to a child that we ever will have and we still miss him alot. It has been awful not having him around anymore although we had him for a good long time. He was 18 when he died last year.

Now a very good friend of mine is going through the same thing. Her 18 year old cat Tom died on Sunday night. I feel sad all over again. I really liked Tom a lot. Doug and I stopped in to visit him one last time on our way home Saturday night. He was very thin and very weak, but still just as friendly as he could possibly be. I'm glad we got to see him although it makes me miss Ted all over again. And now Tom as well.

R.I.P. Tom Handsome

lots and lots of music

The weekend has barely gotten started and I'm exhausted already. Hopefully by the time it's over, I'll be exhilarated. I've been back at work over at the foamcorefantasy house now that I can wear an actual pair of shoes, but I've really gotten used to not working on the house during the past seven weeks. We're still putting up siding, and the backyard "pets" are still in abundance.

Tonight I heard a wonderful concert featuring vocalist Gretchen Parloto and bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spaulding. They were both amazing, but Esperanza completely blew me away. She is phenomenal and inspiring.

Tomorrow morning I'm subbing on a Sweeney Todd rehearsal, putting up some more siding, playing another little gig, then I'm going to try to make David Sanborn's late set at Blues Alley if they put me on the list. (I know someone in the band - ha ha ha, actually I know at least 3 people in the band!)

Sunday I've got my brunch and then I'm heading down to Twins to hear pianist Leslie Pintchik. She's great and so is her bass-playing husband. Then I'll probably stay up really late getting ready for my class on Monday.

A Medley for Change

We did a quick little recording session yesterday and it's on YouTube already! Here's the link to it on YouTube in case the thing here doesn't work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i2S5A-x0Ig

jazz for barack obama

Look at the groovy campaign button somebody gave me today!

One Last "Summer" Getaway

I am never ready for summer to be over. When I broke my foot we had to cancel our little 3 day trip to the beach because I could barely walk and the sand would be much too challenging. Also I didn't want to get my cast any dirtier than necessary during the six weeks that I was going to have to wear it. Since I'm almost done with this ordeal (I hope!) I figured it was time to take the make-up trip.

I don't know why this is, but Doug has a thing for bed and breakfasts. I'm more of a hotel person, but it's pretty cool staying in a really old house like the Merry Sherwood. Supposedly it's even haunted. I was very happy to learn that they were serving breakfast at 8:30 which is a relatively reasonable time. I hate having to drag myself out of bed at an unnaturally early hour to eat an incredibly delicious meal before I'm even awake enough to appreciate it.

It was raining cats and dogs the day we left and the Merry Sherwood was looking pretty gloomy. Our room was also kind of gloomy, but cozy at the same time. We slept under this extremely ornate chunk of wood:

The entire house is completely filled with amazing antiques. The transom and side lights around the front door are pretty unusual.

So we had our delicious fancy breakfast and headed off to Assateague even though the weather didn't look too promising. As it turned out, we got in about three hours of beach time. The sun actually came out. Because there had been a really bad storm there a few weeks ago, all of the soft white sand had been pushed back into the dunes. The black sand that was left was very hard and flat and therefore very easy to walk on. Apparently the sand shifts from the storms every winter and the white sand comes back in the spring. After we had our afternoon at the beach I couldn't resist taking more pictures.

The ponies were nice and clean from the previous day's rain showers.

Bambi and his mom were also looking very fresh.

This is Miss Assateague. Isn't she pretty with her Veronica Lake hairstyle?

Here's a little video of a couple of big ponies and a very frisky little one:

All over the eastern shore the bean fields are beginning to turn yellow.

On the way home we stopped in Berlin at a wine store that is associated with the Atlantic Hotel. Doug bought some marinated anchovies, olives, and a couple of interesting cheeses. We couldn't find any decent bread in Berlin to complete our picnic spread, and it was raining really hard again so we stopped at the Panera in Salisbury, took our food in, bought a loaf of sourdough, and had our picnic inside the Panera. The anchovies were delicious and tasted really fresh - not anything like those awful dried things people sometimes put on pizza.

We got back Saturday in plenty of time for our gigs. On Sunday I played my brunch, did an orchestra rehearsal, and went to the Wayne Shorter concert at UMD. By then I was really far behind in my preparation for school the next day. So I guess that was the last hurrah of summer. I'm ready to accept that it is fall now. But I still might do one last day trip to the beach - I just can't help it!!!