category: music

Matthew Sweet at the Beachland Ballroom

Unfortunately, the usually-trusty Olympus XA didn't handle the lighting very well, so this is the best photo I got from the show on 25 October 2008.

 

Mixtapes

I love my iPod — don’t get me wrong. It’s portable, it holds a crapton of songs (currently 3149, plus 13 videos and 109 photos), and it’s wearing a neat Japan-inspired skin.

But I really miss mixtapes.

It’s not like I got that many of them — Aaron gave me two notable ones, but I never really traded mixtapes like he did back in high school. I made a lot of them for my own use, though — mainly with incredibly cheesy or obvious titles like “Energy Mix” and “Mellow Mix” and “The 70’s: Selections from Mom’s Record Collection.”

There was just something about the linearity of the mixtape creation experience. I felt like I had to have a plan, or at least a vague idea of what kind of flow (or intentional lack thereof) I wanted to achieve. I had to assemble the source material, usually other cassettes or CDs, but occasionally vinyl. (I don’t think I ever sourced a mixtape from 8-track. And yes, I did have a working 8-track player in the ‘90s.) If I used a song from another tape, I had to cue it up to just the right place on the tape. And then I sat down for the next hour and a half and listened to my creation as I was creating it, hovering over the pause button, waiting for the song to finish fading out before pausing the tape and cueing up the next song. Usually, right after I put the next song in to record, I’d write the artist and title down on the J-card in ballpoint pen, then find something else to do for three minutes (probably reading a Star Trek novel, or doing homework). Then I’d get near the end of side A, and wonder if I had enough room for the next song, and squint into the little window on the front of the tape deck, and make a decision. Either I’d pick a short song (or amusing filler bit, like something from the Clerks soundtrack or Monty Python) and hope I’d make it, or I’d risk wrecking the flow and just fast-forward to side B.

Creating a mix CD or a playlist or what-have-you these days requires so much less time and effort, which has its pros and cons. You’re not required to listen to the masterpiece you’re creating. There’s less guesswork in how much music will fit: either you get a graphical representation of your 80-minute allotment; or, in the case of a playlist, the sky’s the limit. Rarely is a handwritten tracklist included with a mix CD; since you’re on your computer, anyway, you’d probably either type it and print it out, or e-mail the tracklist, or just have your application of choice create a CD insert for you from the filenames or ID3 tags. Not quite as personal.

I’ve almost seriously considered joining one of those Mix of the Month groups online, where everybody creates a mix CD, burns several copies with some art (or at least a tracklist), and gives it to everyone — but I think I’d rather do something like that with my friends. Maybe just for a while. And make it a real audio CD, not a collection of mp3s that we might listen to eventually. Then all of our friends would a.) have a reason to see each other at least once a month (except the long-distance ones, like Amy, who’d probably get a zip file and a jpg via e-mail); and b.) all be able to discuss successful mixes together. Like the legendary Fries mix from Aaron’s high school days. Or his Pixies tape. Or “Hüsker Whü?” (Though everyone would also be able to talk smack about everybody else’s musical taste, too… I could see Heathbar doing an all-Billy Childish mix, or me giving out a poorly-received Emo mix.) We could even remaster those old legendary mixes onto CD — that might be fun.

And, no — despite all my nostalgia for the old days of tape trading, I wouldn’t give everybody Maxell XLII-90’s. Although, now that I think about it, I actually could record from my iPod to cassette…

 

Damn Weather

We were supposed to go to see Bob Mould at the Grog Shop in Cleveland on Saturday. Alas, Cleveland was under a Level 3 Snow Emergency. So, instead of getting ticketed, fined, or stuck in Cleveland, we just wiped our asses with the $45 we spent on two tickets.

Had the Grog Shop cancelled the show, we could have gotten our money back. However, as with the couple other times we got denied by inclement weather, the venue held what was probably an awesomely intimate evening with Bob and friends, since the band did manage to make it there in time and one piece.

It's always a crapshoot, buying concert tickets at this time of year, as Aaron has pointed out. I was really looking forward to seeing Bob again — we hadn't seen him since October 2005.

Ah, well. There'll be another time. Someday.

 

I Know People Who Have Done This

[via PostSecret]

 

Take Five

Even if you already know the tune, watch the video. It's a quicker tempo than the standard recording that all of us jazz / band / jazz band geeks know and love, and the drum solo? To die for.

If you don't know the tune, shame on you! Watch this video and get your jazz on. (Non-music people: it sounds all groovy partially because there's five beats to the measure — hence the title, "Take Five.")

[thanks for the heads-up, Wil!]

 

VH1: Love It Or Hate It... Or Both

These days, it seems that VH1 shows two things: reality TV and retrospective shows. By retrospective, I mean stuff like I Love The 80s (or 70s, or 90s, or whatever). I'm not much on reality TV, but the retrospectives? Those are a freaking time sink. Black hole. I accidentally flip to an I Love The 80s Strikes Back marathon — and the next thing I know, it's two hours later, and I'm wondering where my evening went.

My latest VH1 addiction is the 100 Greatest Songs of the 90s. Watching this show is like remembering all the highlights of high school and college on random. I started high school in August of 1990, and I graduated college in December of 2001, so the 90s were really where I came into my own. I know probably 95% of these songs (I'm not hip to the more hip-hop or rap tunes from the mid to late 90s), and all of those are associated with some time in my life. The Cranberries remind me of being home from college for a semester. Oasis reminds me of the early years of my relationship with Aaron (who used to say I was his Wonderwall, while he was my one Natural One).

You know what this means, right? Hell, yeah. New iPod playlist.

Luckily, they have the entire song list posted on their website. So far, I already have about 30 of the top 100 in my iTunes, anyway.

Some of the songs are kind of WTF — "Oh, God, I hated that fucking Spice Girls song!" — but I'll probably put them on my iPod for completeness's sake. And for the amusement factor.

OK, show's back on. Gotta go. :-)

 

Spirit of Christmas Past (1992, to be exact)

A day or two after the Holiday Concert in 1992 (my Junior year of high school), I came into choir to find a VHS tape on my chair. Someone had given me a copy of the jazz band, concert choir, and wind ensemble performances from the concert — all of which I had performed in, and in one of which I'd had a solo. It's obviously a copy of Mrs. Albrecht's tape — she was the mom who was at every single performance with her giant late 80's / early 90's VHS camcorder. I'm sure someone else must have been taping, too, but they wouldn't have focused in on the red-headed bass so often. :-)

This video brought back so many great memories of high school. I'd forgotten I had any, honestly; when I think of high school, I think of my being a misfit of sorts. Watching this reminded me of what a great time I had in choir and band, and the great relationships (if not quite friendships) I had with my classmates. Fun times were had, like taking Geometry with the choir president, who claimed he knew a hit man who would break our teacher's leg if we could collect a certain amount of money from everyone in the class. But I digress.

As I reviewed this tape, I also remembered every note and almost every word of every song. As I watched Ms. Beall cue the choir's first note, I found myself singing along, accents and all: "GLO - RY to God in the hi-igh-eeeest—" She was a great director, especially considering that she had to accompany at the same time. (I'm sure she still is a great director, too, although these days she's directing the junior high kiddies.)

The first thing I noticed while watching my solo (bookmarked in the above embedded video — just hit Play to hear my, um, glorious voice) is that the camera really does add ten pounds. As does that damnable outfit — mainly the cummerbund. When I was sixteen, I weighed about twenty pounds less than I do today, as I recall, although you'd never know it from this video.

The next thing I noticed was how nervous I was. It was funny: I hadn't watched this video for years before digitizing it yesterday. Still, as I watched my younger self descend the risers and take her place in front of the microphone, my heart started to pound and my breath quickened with the memory of my nerves. It had definitely shown in my voice, too, as my normally smooth vibrato morphed into a nervous tremolo, and any semblance of breath support whooshed away with every quick catch-breath.

After not having seriously sung for so long, I'm taken aback by how mature I tried to sound at age sixteen. I've been known to sing to myself every now and then these days, and I don't even have that dark and mature of a sound now (unless I'm being silly and singing all "looly-loo," as Aaron puts it). To my ear, so many years later, it sounds a little forced. Overall, though, not bad for a high-schooler.

I won't subject you to the jazz band or the wind ensemble. The memories are fun, but the music is painful. Especially the one *really* wrong note from the saxophones in the middle of Russian Christmas Music. The entire jazz band performance is pretty painful, too, come to think of it. (Remind me later to tell you about Ryan Galmarini, our drummer, aka Eternal Freshman. Priceless stuff. Jazz band rehearsals were awesome.)

I never found out exactly why I was given a copy of the performance, or by whom, or if anyone else was given a copy, too. I'm grateful either way, though, because this is the only visual record I have of myself performing with any of my high school ensembles.

Hope you enjoy. Happy Christmahanukwanzakah!

PS - For the music geeks in the crowd, here's links to the specific songs in the concert:

"Be Not Afraid" — Jacobson/Lojeski
  Bass feature: Bill Coersmeyer and Matthew Albrecht
  Women's trio: Jenny Waddle, Diana Cook, Cheri Burdell, and Amy Gumm
"Pat A Pam" — Simeone
  Flute soloist: Melody Marco
"Christmas Hymn" — Baker/Jungst
  Echo chamber group:Jennifer Waddle, May Ying Thao, Cheri Burdell, Brian Murawski
  Conducted by Bill Coersmeyer
"I Wonder As I Wander" — Niles
  Soloist: Diana Cook
"December Child" — Moline/Hayward
  Soprano duet #1: Jennifer Reisner and Elise Bond
  Soprano duet #2: May Ying Thao and Amy Thao
"Twelve Days After Christmas" — Silver

 

End of an Era

I finally did it.

After turning the thought over in my head for months now, I finally submitted my resignation as LSM webmaster.

It's nothing against them. It's just a reorganization of priorities for me. I can only handle so many projects at a time, and can only keep focused on so much. I'm sure that there is someone actively participating in the corps who has HTML skills and can do just as good a job as I did. Or better, probably.

I just haven't been devoting the amount of time to the website that the corps deserves, and it's been like that for quite a while now. LSM deserves more than I'm currently giving them. And I deserve to be cut free of the guilt I've been giving myself over that very issue.

The announcement feels like a weight lifted from my mind.

 

Rediscovery

Since I fussed with my iTunes library earlier this week, I've been rediscovering some of the music I've downloaded and ripped over the years. Until Aaron got me my 30GB iPod, I didn't have enough room on my 8GB iPod mini to just add my entire mp3s folder. After he got me the new iPod, I didn't really think about it. Actually, I didn't think about it until I started running out of room on my C: drive, and needed to finally move all my music to my external USB drive.

The result is that I've been listening to songs I haven't touched in years. Remember the days of Scour, around the year 2000 or so? When you could think, "I'd really like to hear this song I haven't heard in years," then you could go online and download the mp3 from Scour, over the web, with no fuss? I still have so many songs from those days.

The RIAA's gonna come and get me. Probably shouldn't blog about how many mp3s I have on my computer, eh?

Anyway, I have my iPod/iTunes set up with Smart Playlists, so I can listen to either my favorite songs or songs that I've just put in my library and have only listened to once or twice. My "New / Unloved" playlist has suddenly ballooned from about 600 songs to over 1400. Hell, my old mini could only hold 600 songs total! Damn. But I've been listening to that playlist for the last couple of days, and have been rediscovering songs I hadn't realized I'd missed. Lots of Folk Implosion, some Catherine Wheel B-sides, pretty much my entire collection of awesome '60s and '70s songs (Strawberry Alarm Clock, Chicago, The Association, et al.), plus a bunch of albums I'd forgotten about, like Dashboard Confessional and Chris Botti and Dream Theater.

This is fantastic. Great background music for writing.

 

The Flaming Lips at the Agora Theatre

The Flaming Lips at the Agora Theatre, originally uploaded by dianaschnuth.

 

The Flaming Lips in Concert

[Posted on Flickr by dianaschnuth].

This was quite possibly the most fun I've ever had at a concert.

Not only are the Lips an incredible band from a musical and lyrical standpoint, but they put on a great show. The audience participation bits actually don't seem cheesy or silly. —Well, I guess they do seem a little silly, but no one really seems to mind. Who cares, when you're beaming a laser pointer (provided by the Lips) off of a giant mirror, or participating in a "scream-along," or bouncing a giant balloon through the crowd up to the very top of the upper balcony?

You MUST check out the rest of my Flaming Lips photos. They tell some of the story. As for the rest of the story... you really just had to be there.

Best concert EVAR.

ETA: Here's the first couple minutes of the show, recorded by Yours Truly:

 

Disappointment

I've been watching the 2007 DCI Finals on ESPN2 this evening, while recording it on Aaron's computer with the intent to burn a DVD of it before bed.

I just came downstairs and deleted the file. On purpose. I'm never going to be inclined to watch it again.

The corps' programs just didn't grab me this year. I knew that early on, and that's why I didn't attend the Toledo show or travel north to any Michigan shows.

I haven't heard a ballad that brought me to tears in years. It's been a long time since I left a stadium singing a riff from a show, wondering what song that was. The members still totally throw down; it's the design teams that are leaving me scratching my head lately.

I don't think I'm getting old and out of touch, per se... but maybe the activity is moving forward without me. I'll stick with my '88 Bluecoats and my '92 Blue Devils and my '95 Scouts and Cavies and my '96 Phantom and be content with the fact that my favorite years in drum corps seem to coincide with my favorite years in popular music, as well.

Just label me as stuck in the '90s all around, I suppose.

 

Air For Band

This takes me back to high school band, back in 1992. I joined band my Junior year, and I believe this may have been the first song I ever played with the concert band — in warm-ups. Air for Band was almost always next on the agenda after our brief and basic long-tone warm-up every day. (Music majors, please note that the clarinets are featured, *and* that the main melody is in the difficult "throat tones" of the instrument. Excellent warm-up... in retrospect.)

It got to the point where Mr. W. would just start right into Air for Band before we even got our music out, and we'd have to spend the first phrase or two shuffling papers with one hand and playing with the other. Eventually, I think I had the whole first page memorized; even now, fifteen (!) years later, I can still recall the fingering of the first phrase, and I haven't even touched a clarinet in nigh on ten years. (I can still sing my part all the way through, though, of course.)

Hearing the North Texas Wind Symphony play it so perfectly is almost surreal. In my memory, I can still hear the saxophones (behind me and to my left) completely missing the key change. (One in particular, usually, although they had their days.) Jim would be on the snare in the back; and Jeff, Eileen, or Katie would have the cymbals.

During my Junior year, I was first chair clarinet (yep, my first year in band — it was more because of my attitude than my ability, IMO). That meant I got to sit next to my best friend, Melody, who was first chair flute. We had a vibe goin' on, be it in Concert Band or Jazz Band or after school in the cafeteria. Anyway, I remember it was strange when Mel graduated and I had to spend my Senior year playing Air for Band (and everything else) next to Heather instead.

They weren't the "best years of my life," not by a long shot... but sometimes I forget that they did have their moments. Air for Band was always one of those moments.

 

Everybody Dance Now

Earlier this week, a co-worker got a song stuck in my head. Actually, just a chorus, since that's all I could remember. The resulting resurgence of mid-to-late-80s hip-hop memories has been disturbing, on one hand, but a hell of a lot of fun on the other.

Last night, I fired up Ye Olde SoulSeek P2P client to see what I could find. Amongst other gems of non-hip-hop-ness, I gathered enough songs to combine with the few staples already in my library in order to start the following "Hip-Hop / Dance" playlist:

Granted, the list is still small, and a couple of the songs are from the 2000's, and one or two of them are more dance than hip-hop. I'm still working on it, though, and I need your assistance.

I'm working on locating I've downloaded "Pump Up The Jam" by Technotronic tonight — after that, though, I'll need to sift through the Billboard Top 100 from 1986 to 1991 or so to find the songs I need. I'd rather have your suggestions first. I'm trying to focus on hip-hop and dance-pop music from 1986 or 1987 through 1991 or 1992. (That's when I finally found friends who helped me hone my musical taste from the standard Top 40 to "progressive alternative," like The Cure and Depeche Mode and their ilk.)

So, think back to the all-night skate, or the junior-high dance, Dance Party USA, or the clock-radio in your room, and hit me with some good hip-hop tunes that I'll be almost embarrassed to admit that I used to totally love.

 

Drum Corps Cameraphone

[Posted on Flickr by dianaschnuth].

Taken at the Toledo All-Star Review, 17 June 2006.

(Yes, I just got the film developed...)

 

Drum Corps Withdrawal

Some years, I just don't get "into" corps. I always go to the Toledo show in June — usually the first show of the season for most corps involved — but sometimes, I can't really get excited about making two-hour drives to see other shows during the summer. This was one of those years.

Tonight, on ESPN2, I watched highlights from the DCI World Championship Finals. I recorded it on the PVR program on Aaron's computer, and am currently burning it to DVD. In a few more minutes, I will have a DVD of the two-hour program I just watched, complete with chapter stops to skip the commercials. Tomorrow, this DVD may even have a fancy label printed right on the disc, if I get around to designing one.

Some years, I get "into" corps right about the time the highlights are broadcast on ESPN2 or PBS or whatever medium they're in. I'm not sure if this is one of those years or not.

We'll see tomorrow, after I listen to the On The 50 podcast that's been sitting neglected on my iPod for weeks. If I bring my old DCI tapes downstairs and start digitizing them and burning them to DVD, that's a sign.

 

Twilight Sheen

I ended up taking a brisk walk around the neighborhood this evening, just before dusk. I'd strapped on my iPod, and the first podcast I queued up was On The 50 (a weekly podcast of drum corps opinion), and I'm sure that affected my mood on some level.

As I finished my first lap around the neighborhood, I'd also finished the podcast. The sky was that particular shade of blue that means the sun has set, and that it's going to be very dark in about five minutes. The stars had begun to come out, and a light breeze was cooling the sheen of sweat I'd managed to accumulate. Circles of light pooled under the streetlamps, spilling over curbs onto the street.

I queued up another podcast as I started my second lap, but my brain was still focused on a memory. Drum corps in the mid 90's.

read more...

 

Chiropractor, Conclusion

This morning at ten o'clock was my last visit (hopefully) with Dr. Sue. I'm feeling much better now, and very close to normal again.

Last time, she had mentioned that her younger son — Drew, was it? — plays piano and trumpet and xylophone / marimba / bells. She also has a picture of the local chapter of the Sweet Adelines up on her wall. So, I decided to wear my Dick Does Drum Corps shirt to my visit, as a conversation-starter. And did it ever work!

We got talking about music, and how her son has braces, so he had a real problem with the trumpet for a while. (I was thinking that he needs to work on his mouthpiece pressure, then, and use that weird wax that Amber used to use when she played mello with braces. I kept that to myself, though.) Then I talked about being a music ed major for a while, and how I only started playing clarinet in high school, and how I was a choir person before that.

Cue segue into Sweet Adelines discussion.

Turns out that my chiropractor is a baritone in the Pride of Toledo, and that they rehearse not very far from my house on Tuesday evenings. I may go check out a rehearsal, but even with their completely reasonable dues of $30 a month (and their super-close rehearsal location), there's no way I'm devoting that much time to a musical group again. Not yet. Maybe I'll see if I can still sight-read for the hell of it, though. ;-)

Back to the actual chiropractor visit.

After she was done with my adjustments, and after I was decent, she asked me again about my insurance. I told her that they pay 80%, I pay 20%, and reminded her that I hadn't paid her for the last visit. So she opted to have me pay $30 for both visits, and she'd see what my insurance would cover. I wonder if I'll get a refund if the insurance actually pays for what it's supposed to, or if she'll just keep the change.

Either way, I'm still curious about Dr. Smith. I mean, Dr. Sue is very cool and gentle and easy to talk to, but Dr. Smith has The Thumper™. With any luck, though, I won't have to schedule another series of chiropractic visits for some time.

 

Making Things Difficult

So, I finally decided it's time to get off my ass and work on the LSM page again. Figured I'd start with installing phpBB, the standard generic PHP-based forum. Simple to configure, free... can't go wrong. Right?

Well, I came across a problem. LSM's hosting only allows one SQL database. That spot is currently being used by my home-grown content management system, which is kind of important. So... now I get to figure out how to write a forum FROM SCRATCH. Or at least steal appropriate someone's code.

I'd just gotten myself all excited over figuring out how I might make an alumni database work. Now this... this is a little more daunting. I don't doubt that it's possible, but I also don't doubt that it'll be buggy as hell. I just hate to disappoint. Shout-out to all web geeks: any help here? Where can I find my holy grail of forum code?

I guess the bright side is that my users a.) will be able to access the forum with their site login, and b.) will *have* to sign up if they want access to the member forums!

Update, 6/9/06: Thanks to Sheryl's and Dan's patient explanations, I now have a brand-spankin' new forum installed on the LSM site! Now all I have to do is write a post about how to sign up, how to play nice, etc; add a forum link to the main site; and email the board of directors so they can be my guinea pigs to test the thing. :-)

 

For Diana's Listening Pleasure

I found out pretty early on in our relationship that Aaron was a big music fan. We went to Ann Arbor for our third date, a triple-date with Mary/Drew and Heather/Garza. Aaron definitely tended to gravitate toward the record stores while we were there, and was bummed that he didn't have more money to spend on records (especially since I was jobless and had made him pay for my lunch at Amer's). So, naturally, I was curious about the music he was listening to, as I had never heard of ANY of it.

Before Spring Break, he made me a mixtape. The spine of the insert read: "For Diana's Listening Pleasure: selections from Aaron's CD collection." On the tape were the following songs:

Side A:

1. Wally Pleasant - Stupid Day Job
2. Sugar - Your Favorite Thing
3. Frank Black - Fazer Eyes
4. Catherine Wheel - I Want To Touch You
5. Pure - Lemonade
6. Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Someday I Suppose
7. Ash - Jack Names The Planets
8. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Blue X Man
9. Pixies - All Over The World
10. Man or Astro-Man? - Sferic Waves
11. Sebadoh - Magnet's Coil

Side B:

1. Dirty Three - Better Go Home Now
2. Folk Implosion - Lo-Fi Suicide
3. Pavement - Give It A Day
4. Clutch - Big News I
5. Henry Rollins - Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
6. Rollins Band - Right Here Too Much
7. The Amps - Tipp City
8. Afghan Whigs - Debonair
9. Sentridoh - Perfect Excuse
10. 24 Gone - Girl Of Colours
11. Sugar - Explode And Make Up

I listened to this tape nonstop during my week of Spring Break in Parma, so much so that my step-Gary would often get up without saying a word and just hit the stop button on my boom box, then quietly sit back down again.

Over the years, I continued to listen to this tape. This tape was so much a staple of my listening repertoire that I frantically performed cassette tape surgery with scotch tape when it got caught in my aging boom box. After that, I hesitated to play it very often, just in case the Afghan Whigs would get caught in the heads of my tape player again. I eventually stored the tape away with my other tapes, listening instead to the follow-up tapes of Rollins spoken word and Sugar and 24 Gone and Afghan Whigs and Catherine Wheel.

A few weeks ago, I unearthed the tape from a box in the bottom of a closet, and spent a couple of days hunting down digital versions of the mixtape songs. And now, I'm sharing all 100MB of 90's goodness with you:

[music_sampler.zip - 103MB]

I didn't include the Rollins spoken word, but everything else is there, in the exact version I have on tape. (Note: Three files are in iTunes .m4a format; the rest are mp3s.)

I now have this set up as a playlist on my iPod. Funny how things change. Funny how all things old are new again.

 

My Musical Tastes

So, this handy tool will probably make its way into my About page as soon as I get around to it: my top ten artists, as calculated by Last.fm. Fun!

Keep in mind, though, that this only counts the music I listen to at my computer at home. It can't count my iPod plays (yet), which would totally change the dynamic of artists and tracks. (Much more J-Pop, and Death Cab For Cutie would definitely be higher up in the Top 10.)

As it stands, Depeche Mode is #1 due only to the fact that they provided the correct mood for writing last month's vampire story. And most of the music in my Top 10 is basically just good music for websurfing — or for web designing, in the case of the Moby and the Oakenfold. I like to design to trance, don't ask me why.

But, yeah. Fun. If you decide to join up on Last.fm, be sure to friend me! I need some friendage, yo.

 

It's Done.

I turned in my mellophone after last night's Lakeshoremen Open House.

There were several reasons I decided not to march in 2006, but the membership was definitely not one of those reasons. Everyone was supportive of my decision, and they all seemed to understand, but they really didn't want me to go. Kemo tried to convince me to attend a few early rehearsals, so we'd have an easier time recruiting mellos, and Ann and Mona kept asking if I'd changed my mind yet.

Really, though, after two years (winter, spring, and summer) of driving to Michigan every other weekend, I'm finding that I'd rather enjoy my weekends with my husband instead. Maybe we can be social sometimes, instead of cramming all our chores and laundry and shopping into one day. Maybe attend some of the weekend-long anime conventions we had to pass on last year. Yes, this is a bit of a selfish decision, I suppose -- but this is the time to be selfish, before Aaron and I start a family.

I felt a little more secure about leaving the mello line after seeing the new talent, though. Amber's returning, and there's two or three new mellos (depending on whether Courtney ends up being drum major); so, even with me leaving and Duane opting to focus on writing and cleaning drill instead of marching, there's still a solid core of three or four strong mellos (assuming we don't scare any of them off). The goal for 2006 is five mellos, so we're well on our way.

I was pleasantly surprised at not only the number of new people at the Open House, but also at the quality of the overall sound we produced. LSM just keeps getting better and better earlier and earlier every year. The hornline had 19 returning and prospective members total, and there are still a few returning members who couldn't make the Open House. I think that, if everyone does their part with recruiting, we'll fill out the hornline this year with no problem. Three tubas (or contras, if you prefer), five mellos, ten baris and ten trumpets (or sopranos, again, if you're old-school). I think we can do it.

And, yes, I still say "we" because I'm still involved with LSM, despite my not marching. I'm still the webmaster, and I'm still a member at-large of the Board of Directors. (That said, anything I state on my personal site should not by any means be construed to be the official word of the Lakeshoremen. Check lakeshoremen.org for official news.)

It's like Dan said:

Once you grow up and move on, it's nice to actually MOVE ON. If you have something positive in your life to devote your attention to, why spend your time and energy on a chapter that is admittedly closed? The glory days of youthful summers are gone, but the heady days of mature summer can kick just as much ass, though in a different way.

I say you can give back to drum corps any way you want, but explore the next chapter of life with the same enthusiasm with which you explored your youth.

As much as I hate to let go of performing, I think I have to agree.

 

Conundrum

Here's the thing.

This past summer, I was waffling weekly about whether I wanted to march drum corps in 2006. I would be getting ready to drive the hour and a half up to a "camp" (aka six-hour-long rehearsal), or to a parade, or to a carpool site before a weekend trip, and I'd be absolutely positive that, no, I'm not doing this next year.

Then I'd arrive at said rehearsal or performance and wonder how I could possibly think to give this up. Not once would I contemplate what was going on at home, or the opportunity cost of marching drum corps. I was berating myself for not practicing more at home, and concentrating on my own personal performance at the moment. That's what corps is all about: focusing on a common goal, working toward a vision, doing my best not to be the weakest link.

Now that I've had some time away from it, though, I've been thinking about my reasons for wanting to march next year, and I'm finding them weaker than I'd previously thought.

First, I wanted to be a part of the very first competitive Lakeshoremen season. Since our debut at DCA was unexpectedly upgraded from mini-corps to Class A corps, though, I *was* a part of the LSM competitive debut. And we did well. We didn't come in last — in fact, we were quite near the middle of the pack. I even had my very own little mellophone solo (not actually a solo, per se, but a good measure or so where you can hear my very own countermelody line over the rest of the corps).

Second, I was under the impression that I'd be very interested in playing whatever music we ended up playing in 2006. Several ideas were bandied about at the end of the 2005 season, but I was particularly underwhelmed with the near-final song selection that was played at the banquet earlier this month. I could really care less about playing that music. No disrespect to the show design team, of course. It just was a total turnaround from the ideas that had been shared late in the 2005 season. So, the musical selection isn't such a pull factor anymore.

Third, and most importantly, I had wanted to march one more season of drum corps before Aaron and I decide to start a family. One more summer of selfish indulgence in what *I* want to do. Because, after we decide to pop out our progeny, the selfish days are over. Now that I think about it, though... wouldn't I rather spend my possibly-final childless summer with my husband? Not in a car driving to Michigan every other weekend? Or more? I think I'd rather go to anime conventions and on vacation and hit garage sales and go thrifting and do all the things that my drum corps activity curtailed last summer.

I might turn in my mellophone at the Open House next month.

I'm still an at-large member of the Board of Directors, and I'm still webmaster. I'd also like to take some photos for the corps, for PR and for the website. I want to stay involved. But not at the expense of my family, or my relationship with my husband.

I think I've convinced myself. But what do you think?

 

Bob Mould: Detroit 10-1-2005

Here's my first attempt at a homegrown MySQL photo album: 10 photos from the Bob concert last weekend.

Fantastic show. Bob started out with three songs from his early-90's band Sugar, which I'm fairly sure gave Aaron and me simultaneous geekgasms. The entire gamut of Bob's solo career, Sugar, and Husker Du were all represented in the setlist, which almost made up for my missing Sugar in concert by a few years.

Aaron's better at concert reviews than I am, so maybe he'll post something more in-depth in the comments. Until then, suffice to say that this was the best concert I've been to in a very long time. I hadn't seen Bob for fucking years, and this show was extraordinary. Awesome.

 

Google Ads Amuse Me

How utterly amusing. I'm sure there's some witty comment that should go along with this Google Ad, but it's escaping me right now. Something about various defunct corps — yes, the entire corps — gathering dust in some insano fan's basement after having been purchased at a price-slasher discount on eBay.

VK 1996: Hey, man, can we come out now? Our NASA jumpsuits are starting to smell funny, and our families think we got deported.
High Bidder: Only after you play that song from Star Wars again...
VK 1996: Dude, you suck.

 

Kilties Member Dies During Preliminary Competition

By Drum Corps Planet
Sep 3, 2005, 19:37

Joel "Lothar" Magnuson, mellophone player with the Kilties Drum & Bugle Corps, tragically passed away this evening after collapsing on the field during the corps' performance at the Drum Corps Associates' preliminary competition.

Following his collapse, the Kilties cleared the field mid-performance while medical personnel attended to him. The corps then restarted its performance after Joel was taken by ambulance toward a nearby hospital. Following the corps' official photograph, they were told of Joel's untimely death.

Joel was a charter member of the Kilties, from Racine, WI, when they reformed as a Senior corps in 1993. When not marching with the corps, "Lothar" worked as a chef at Amelia's Restaurant in Milwaukee, WI.

The entire Drum Corps Planet family extends our thoughts & prayers to the Joel's family, friends, and the Kiltie organization during this difficult time.

And I was there.

read more...

 

Corps Season is Almost Over

I'm leaving tomorrow evening after work to head off to the Drum Corps Associates finals in Scranton PA. Rehearsal is on Friday, with a brass ensemble performance that evening. Saturday we rehearse some more, and head out to the stadium in the early evening for our competitive debut.

Deep down, I'm nervous and excited... but I'm having one of those *meh* sort of days today, so I'm not excited about it right this moment. I'm feeling like I wish I could spend the long weekend with my husband instead. I feel like I haven't practiced enough over the past, oh, entire summer. It feels like the end of the semester, when I know that no amount of cramming will make me pass the final exam. But I know that when I get out there, in front of whatever crowd there may be, under the lights (if they have them on yet), I'll be excited and happy to perform and I'll feed off the energy of my corpsmates and the audience.

*checks Google maps for drive time*

Um.

OMFG.

Since I'm not taking time off of work tomorrow for a travel day, and my ride is swinging past Toledo around 6pm, we're not going to get to Scranton until TWO O'CLOCK AM. *facepalm*

I have made a bad decision. Shoulda just taken my last remaining half-day of personal time, I guess. Ah, well. As I recall, the guy I'm rooming with for the weekend isn't leaving until after work, too, so he'll probably be getting there around the same time. So, the plus side is that I won't wake his ass up. The minus side? I'll only get maybe four or five hours of sleep before breakfast and rehearsal.

Damn, damn, damn. What a double-edged sword this senior corps thing can be.

When I aged out of Junior corps, I would have given anything to be able to keep marching. Now that I've found a way, I find that I'm not entirely sold on it anymore. It would be different, maybe, if Aaron were into it too, and came with me. As it is, on drum corps weekends, I have to choose the corps or my husband.

I don't know how much longer I can force myself to have to make that choice.

One more year, maybe.

*sigh*

 

Last.fm

Audioscrobbler was, at first, a curiosity for me. I downloaded a plugin, and it gave me stats about the music I listen to. It could also spit out an RSS file of what I've been listening to in the recent past, which was also quite cool.

It suddenly got cooler.

Audioscrobbler has rebranded itself Last.fm, and can now give even more statistics. Click the "recommendations" link, and Last.fm will look at your favorite artists and give you some other artists you might want to check out. (For me, Last.fm suggests The White Stripes, Wilco, Weezer, Badly Drawn Boy, and Ben Folds Five, among others. I'm already a White Stripes fan, but I don't listen to them much anymore — Last.fm doesn't know that, though.)

The absolute coolest part of the new Last.fm, though, is the free Last.fm player. Without paying for a premium Last.fm subscription, you can download the player, click the "Start Radio" link, and select "neighbour radio" to listen to music selected from your Last.fm Neighbours, people who share similar musical tastes with you. Plus, the Last.fm Player transmits the songs you've heard, so that they count in your own Recent Tracks and get added to your stats. If I thought shuffle play on my iPod was sweet, this kicks it up a notch. BAM!

But wait! There's more! On certain artists' Last.fm info pages, you can click a "preview track" button to listen to a stream of 30-second previews of the artists' songs. Very cool feature, and it saves the time of going and searching for the most popular song by an artist and downloading it and deciding whether it rocks or sucks before downloading (er, I'm sorry, I meant buying) the entire album.

No, I was not paid for this plug. I've just enjoyed discovering this new aspect of my cute little Audioscrobbler. I mainly use Audioscrobbler / Last.fm for finding new music, and this makes the process much more streamlined.

There are some bugs with the system, though. The Last.fm Player is still a touch new, and the buffer stutters sometimes, but I haven't had too much trouble with it and it's starting to bug me, especially when it totally stops playing and I have to relaunch the app. Also, the Audioscrobbler plugin for iTunes doesn't upload the play count from my iPod — which is unfortunate, as I listen to most of my music on my iPod these days (several hours at work vs. a couple hours at home).

It's fun, though. Go sign up. I'll be your friend, and it'll be keen.

 

A Confession

I'm still pissed at myself for my lame rehearsal yesterday. The entire rehearsal wasn't lame ? the corps made some fairly decent progress overall ? but my own personal performance was sub-par all day. What really gets me is that my poor performance is entirely my fault; I can't just chalk it up to a bad day. It could have been avoided had I actually practiced during the past two weeks.

It had to be painfully obvious that I hadn't practiced ? at least, it was obvious to me. My endurance was pathetic. I could barely play by the end of rehearsal, and my lips are still swollen, even today. I tried to admit it and shrug it off at the same time by admitting to my closer corps friends that I'd been working on the website instead of practicing my mellophone.

The truth is, I did neither.

 

Greg Dulli to Release New Album

David Nadelle of Pitchfork: Daily Music News reports:

Former Afghan Whigs frontman and silver-tongued devil Greg Dulli has spent little time in the spotlight since the collapse of his former band. The singer would be the first to admit that rather than cranking out the tunes Ryan Adams-style, he tends to return to past ideas and noodle them into completion. Sometimes it's deliberate, sometimes fate-- following the 2002 loss of a dear friend (director Ted Demme), Dulli turned his back on the album he had been working on, issuing a wholly different record in tribute to Demme. The resulting Twilight Singers album, Blackberry Belle, came out in 2003 on Birdman Records, and now its unreleased older brother, now entitled Amber Headlights, will see release on September 6. The album is the curtain-raiser for Dulli's Infernal Recordings imprint and contains many friends and past collaborators, most notably multi-instrumentalist Petra Haden. Tracklist:

01 So Tight
02 Cigarettes
03 Domani
04 Early Today (And Later That Night)
05 Golden Boy
06 Black Swan
07 Pussywillow
08 Wicked
09 Get the Wheel

Dulli has also co-written songs with Screaming-Tree-turned-roots-rocker Mark Lanegan in the eventual hope of issuing a record as the Gutter Twins. Until that day comes, the Gutter Twins will manifest themselves solely on two dates with Italian band Afterhours. Meanwhile, Dulli hopes to finish the new Twilight Singers album Powder Burns, and to mount a full-scale tour, both of which have tentative arrival dates of "early 2006".

 

Musical Poseurs

It's a slow day at work today (again). So, while I'm thinking of it, I wanted to mention something I found on my work's intranet.

There was an employee profile I read online, where the employee being interviewed said, "I love all music, Willie Nelson, Barry Manilow, Enya, Shania Twain and the Beatles." I found this pretty amusing, being a person of fairly eclectic musical taste myself. If she loves all music, where's the jazz? The industrial? The classical? All I'm seeing is country and easy listening and the Beatles. (I wonder if she likes their later, stranger albums, too?)

I'd like to be indignant and declare her a poseur and say that I really DO love all music... but I know I don't. I'm not a big fan of modern country, or gangsta rap, or even recent "modern rock" in more than small doses. And I'm sure there's other music I've never heard that I don't like, either.

That's the thing: everyone says that they like just about all kinds of music, but they don't ? and can't ? consider music that they rarely or never hear during the course of their daily lives. They may think they really do like everything... but it's only everything within their own sphere of influence. Most people want to think they're eclectic and tolerant and far-reaching in so many ways... but they're not.

I include myself in this generalization, as well. As far as music goes, I enjoy alternative, some modern rock, some punk, ska, classic rock, jazz, classical, drum & bugle corps, barbershop / a capella, progressive rock, easy listening ("adult contemporary"), some techno/electronic, some j-pop, new wave, synthpop, old-school rap, folk, pre-90's country, some international music, and some other music that can't quite be pigeonholed. I know for a fact that I don't like gangsta rap, modern country ("crossover" country is almost worse), really heavy industrial, a lot of modern rock and pop... but I can't think of much else that I can't stand, mainly because I don't find myself in situations where I would experience music I may not like.

So, yes, feel free to claim that your tastes are eclectic. Claiming that you love "all" music is a bit of a stretch, though.

 

Remembering Drumcorps

I was just reading a column on DCI.org, and one particular section caught my attention:

It?s funny how we all easily forget memories that are so important to us. What would we do without each other to remind us of all the funny things that happened? Would we try and remember the day that our caption head fell right on his butt trying to imitate how horrible we looked during a phrase? Or would we simply forget and let the memories fade with time?

The last thought is the scariest for me that comes along with leaving the activity for good. My caption head, Jamie Oakley, always said that we will never remember the bad days, only the good. That our struggle in the heat and torrential downpours would make us better but would never be our first thoughts when reminiscing about the entire season with our friends.

Maybe I just haven't schmoozed with enough alumni from my years in Northern Aurora and the Bluecoats, but I find that I think equally of the bad and the good times. They were fairly evenly dispersed throughout my three years in Junior corps, but I wouldn't have it any other way. (Well, maybe.)

read more...

 

Drum Corps Reflections

My practice gloves smell like sunscreen and sweat. I reach into the horn case and put them on. I lift out my mellophone, still shiny from the bath and polishing it got Saturday afternoon before the performance.

That shine was the first thing, back in the summer of 1995, that made me truly realize that I was part of a drum corps. I remember being on the practice field at the Memorial Day camp, looking around the circle of horns warming up, and seeing the sun shine bright off the silver. It spoke to me somehow, made me realize that I was part of something I'd never dreamed I could do.

Now, standing in the basement of my house, I pick up my LakeShoremen horn, blow some long tones and lip slurs to warm up, then play through the show, opening my music to look at a few bars in a couple songs that I can never seem to get right. I run through the trouble spots again, then warm down with "Contact," the horn feature.

It's up to me now. This isn't Junior corps, like Northern Aurora or Bluecoats. No one is going to make me practice. If I want to perform better at DCA than I did at DCM, I need to apply myself. Now that I've tasted performance again, now that I've roll-stepped out onto the turf and seen the stadium lights flash off the silver horns, now that I've heard the applause again and been congratulated by one of my own for a job well-done, now I can find the impetus to practice on my own.

How could I have thought of leaving? I'll have to take time away from LSM eventually, I know... but not quite yet. There's plenty of time to have kids and stay home on weekends. For now, I'm just starting to remember why I love this activity.

 

Lou Barlow

Neither myself nor Aaron had ever gotten to see Lou Barlow live before this show. (Lou Barlow = Folk Implosion, Sebadoh, Sentridoh, Kids soundtrack... remember the song "Natural One" from the late 90's?) Being a giant fan of Lou, and wanting to support the Hannelore Barlow charity tour, we bought ourselves tickets and headed out to Coventry.

Anyway, he performed back in March at the Grog Shop and, despite my less-than-stellar Tegan and Sara results, I brought my trusty lomo along. This was one of the two shots of Lou that I got; after a while, I realized that they weren't really going to come out well, and I gave up on snapping pictures and just enjoyed the show.

 

Bob Mould: Body of Song

No, I haven't found the leaked album. But it's not for lack of trying.

It's late, so this will be kind of disjointed, but I wanted to get my first thoughts written down.

I was surfing through my blogroll, hitting sites I hadn't hit in a while, when I surfed over to Bob Mould's blog. He's been promising us a guitar-driven album for a while now—several years, in fact—and, lo and behold, Body of Song is finally due for release next month! I also learned from Bob's blog that the album had been leaked.

Which, of course, set me to trying to find it.

I did manage to find it on Soulseek, but the guy logged off before I could get ANY of it. Now, you watch: I'll wake up in the morning and Aaron will have read this and downloaded a torrent of it overnight. [No, wait, there it is. Only 3.5 KB/sec, but it's going. I'll have it by the time Aaron gets home.]

Anyway, I did find a couple of sanctioned tracks: (Shine Your) Light Love Hope, and Paralyzed.

read more...

 

P2P Is Not Evil

My husband and I have recently downloaded several forthcoming albums by our favorite artists. We don't feel bad about it.

Sure, we've had the new Beck album for months. We had the Nine Inch Nails weeks before its release. We just downloaded the new Coldplay and Clutch albums. (OK, mainly this is all my husband's intarweb sleuthing, but I enjoy the fruits of his labor.) The thing is—and here's the monkey-wrench in the RIAA's sales-slump complaints, IMO—we still plan to buy the albums.

Music critic Sasha Frere-Jones makes a point about this in her blog, but from another perspective—from the people who actually get (or don't get) the advance copies from the record labels:

50 Cent was all over the P2P networks for weeks before The Massacre dropped and he's already done five million. Coldplay will move their four million with or without P2P. Why? Because people want the record. The marginal loss of sales to downloading?already disproven by one study?would not even kick in for in-demand artists, because the fans and curious tourists will want the CD no matter what's on the web (sometimes because the web is simply not their thing [see: age curve]). With another kind of album—those that nobody wants or knows they want yet—the "harm" of downloading is equally irrelevant, though for a different reason: any barriers to a less-desired album's dissemination only further dissolves an already shallow bond between the artist and their potential audience.

Take, for example, Keane. I was bored with my musical selections, so I checked out my Audioscrobbler neighbors. There I found Keane. WTF, I figured, and fired up Soulseek to download their album.

I loved it. I ate it up. I bought the album from BMG, and I bought two singles (with non-album tracks!) off of Amazon.

What if I hadn't downloaded the album? I don't listen to mainstream radio anymore. Hell, I don't even listen to internet radio. I would have had absolutely no exposure to Keane. P2P networking just made Keane and Interscope Records another three sales.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Oh, and these bands who are including DVDs along with their audio CDs for a similar price? You guys have the right idea. We consumers like extra goodies. Take a tip from the Japanese, who get jacked on their domestic CDs so bad that it would be cheaper for them to buy imports. How do you get people to buy your overpriced product? Throw in goodies. CD-Extra content. DVDs. Plushies. Pencil boards (OK, that wouldn't work so much in the States). Ultra-cool packaging. Display value.

With popular music being the atrocious pile of shit that it is these days, of course we're going to want to sit down with the music and decide whether or not we want to support the artist by actually purchasing their album. If we like it, and especially if you throw in stuff we can't download off of teh intarweb (yet), we will be more than happy to give you our money.

 

iPod Randomness

The shuffle play on my iPod today is fantastic! I added the new Coldplay, Clutch, Beck, and White Stripes last night, and it's randoming to each album just enough. I also have WOXY's Modern Rock Minute on my iPod, so it's like listening to my very own radio station that doesn't suck. Early 90's Depeche Mode, Tegan and Sara, a massive collection of 80's synthpop, some indie emo stuff, and a smattering of funny novelty and hip-hop tunes (The Terrible Mr. Grimshaw, The Thong Song, Baby Got Back, Poison by Bell Biv Devoe), among other songs and albums, makes for a great work mix.

Makes the day much less tedious.

 

Sneak Peek

I don't think I'm quite ready to ask the Executive Director or the Assistant Director to look at my LSM website redesign ideas. I've put my first three Photoshop comps on one page with notes, and I think I'm going to wait until I have an even half-dozen before I give them the URL and ask them for a critique.

However... I think I'll let you guys have a look-see and let me know what you think of the designs I have up so far. Leave me some feedback, good or bad, in the comments here—maybe I can improve on my next three comps.

Oh, and I'd really appreciate it if no one, ah, *appropriates* my layout ideas? I'm really proud of myself for coming up with the second two, and I may recycle any layouts I don't use for the LSM site. ;-) Not that I think that any of my regulars here would swipe my ideas, but I get 30 entire hits a day, and that means that there are about 20 strangers reading this shit. o.O

 

Memorial Day 2005

My Memorial Day in a nutshell: drive to Michigan, 2½ mile parade, lunch, 3½ hour rehearsal, dinner, performance for returned Marines, drive home. Total time away from home: approximately 14 hours. Total driving time: approximately four hours.

Overall impression of the day: productive.

read more...

 

A Musical Baton

Hey! I get to be the first to introduce a new meme to my little clutch of friends, thanks to Ellie passing me the baton. Thanks!

Total volume of music files on my computer:
14.94GB (2702 songs; 9 days, 3 hours)

The last CD I bought:
Keane - Everybody's Changing and Somewhere Only We Know singles

Song playing right now:
Nothing - Aaron's websurfing too, so I don't have anything playing, out of courtesy to him. Thanks to this meme, I have a bunch of different songs playing in my head right now, too, so I can't really pick one out. Maybe James - How Was It For You?

Five songs I listen to a lot, recently:
James - Ring The Bells
New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle
Lou Barlow - Mary
DJ Funk - Ass and Titties (an old RCC favorite)
Fischerspooner - A Kick in the Teeth

Five people to whom I?m passing the baton:
Sheryl
Beth
Erk
Jason
Aaron (you can post in the comments, since I know you won't update schnuth.com)

Good stuff. Ready... go!

 

Elephant Riders From The Northwest Bring... A New Album

CLUTCH SET TO RELEASE THEIR SIXTH STUDIO ALBUM ?ROBOT HIVE / EXODUS? ON JUNE 21, 2005

Co-Headlining Sounds of the Underground Tour Beginning June 24

New York, NY — DRT recording artist Clutch are set to release their sixth studio album titled, Robot Hive / Exodus. The album was prodcued by J. Robbins (Jawbox, The Dismemberment Plan) and recorded at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, NY, and mixed at Water Music in Hoboken, NJ.

The follow-up to the acclaimed Blast Tyrant, Robot Hive / Exodus firmly implants Clutch as one of the most talented hard rock bands making music today. With wildly creative songs that feature amazing musicianship and thought-provoking lyrics, Robot Hive / Exodus solidifies Clutch?s hard rock legend status. The band will showcase their new material on the upcoming ?Sounds of the Underground? tour which they are co-headlining along with Lamb of God. The tour begins June 24th in Lowell, MA, and will cross the entire country through the first week of August.

 

New Toy

So, this is what's been occupying my time for the past two days: Aaron's (early) birthday present to me. *squee*

See, a few days ago, I told Aaron that I was going to splurge one last time with my new Amazon Visa before I lay off the spending. Of course, he asked what I was going to buy, and I told him: an iPod Mini. And he got this look on his face and said that maybe I shouldn't really buy one right now...

*facepalm* I should know better than to buy myself stuff right before my birthday. I've done that before, and thrown Aaron for a loop. Luckily, I hadn't actually purchased a Mini yet, so all was well... except that I'd managed to ruin a really, really keen birthday surprise.

It's still keen, though. I'm still all a-squee about it, although I can tell that it'll soon become part of my normal gear, like my wallet and my lomo.

Wanna know what's on my iPod?

The Afghan Whigs / Air / Bob Mould / Catherine Wheel / Coldplay / The Cure / Depeche Mode / Fischerspooner / The Flaming Lips / Flogging Molly / Folk Implosion / James / Keane / Lou Barlow / Peter Gabriel / Smashing Pumpkins / Sugar / Tegan and Sara / The Violent Femmes / The White Stripes

...among other things. @whee!

 

So Close

I was just congratulating myself on getting the first draft of the 2005 LSM brochure done, and remembering to print directions to the corps director's house, since I'm carpooling up to Saginaw with him tomorrow (instead of my normal carpool buddy). Not quite 11:30, and I can go to bed in time to get a satisfactory amount of sleep before having to leave at 9:15am or so.

Then I remembered: I haven't polished my horn yet.

Shit.

*trudges upstairs with silver polish and an old towel*

 

You May Be Right: I May Be Crazy

But I'm still planning to go to the LakeShoremen January Camp in Attica MI tomorrow. Leaving bright and early, before 8am, to get to Clawson (north of Detroit) by 10am, to carpool up to the Michigan Christian Youth Camp in Attica by 11:30 or noon. Rehearsal lasts from noon to 6pm, after which there's an optional pizza party and some cleanup to be done. Then back to Clawson, and back home to Toledo.

This could suck.

Aaron and I usually do our laundry and shopping on Sundays, so we went out and tried to find an open laundromat tonight. Hit the ATM, topped off the gas tank, no luck finding anyplace to wash our damn clothes. Everyplace closed up early due to the FUCKING SHITTY WEATHER. So, Aaron's going to just do everything tomorrow while I'm off drumcorps-ing. That's awfully cool of him.

Plus, I've promised to turn around and come home if the road conditions suck, and to keep the phone on while I'm driving. (Quite