- Hard work often pays off over time…

But laziness always pays off now -

I am the ultimate procrastinator… I’ve been meaning to post to my blog forever… but I kept putting it off… until finally, now, when I’m deleting all the spam comments that magically find their way to my blog… I decide to post a little update.

I’m still me, at least that’s what I hear. I haven’t been running at all lately, which is a bad thing. It’s partly been due to a nagging ankle injury and a budding knee injury. After resting for over a week, I finally ran this morning… I did about 2.5 miles. It felt great! I’m going to try to get up tomorrow morning and run again before I have to go to work. In the past, whenever I didn’t run for a week or so, I would just punish myself by running 7 or 8 miles to “make up” for not running. This method has been a major contributor to my injuries, so this time I am trying to do it right. Start off with short distances, then run more frequently and gradually increase until I’m back to some sore of consistency.
Ahhhh….. consistency… wouldn’t that be nice. Not just in my running, but in every area of my life. The only thing I’m consistent at is being inconsistent. School work, work work, exercise, eating, drinking, playing drums, ironing clothes… It’s really quite amazing that my life seems to keep going strong through all of my inconsistencies. Or am I just doing that good of a job of hiding everything?

If only… …

enough procrastinating… time to do more homework! oh wait… football is on!!!!!!!

I went to the Bela Fleck and the Flecktones concert here in Madison last night, it was one of the best shows I’ve been to in a while. To me, the perfect show is one where the band connects with the audience, and that definitely happened last night. The Orpheum Theater was packed full, it had to be close to being sold out. I was really surprised to see that many people at the show. And even more surprising, was the fact that most of them actually seemed to know the music, and were dancing, cheering, just having a good time.
As some of you may know, musicianship is a big thing to me. If I go to see a band, and they aren’t good musicians, I just can’t enjoy the show at all. It’s just not in my blood to put up with crappy music. It’s been my experience at shows where good bands are playing, there are usually only a select group of people who “get it” ; people who understand what is going on in the music, and the musical ability required to perform what we are hearing. Last night, the entire crowd was getting into the music and cheering every time one of the musicians pulled off a little solo or complicated lick. I was very impressed, and very proud to know I live in the same city with so many people that not only enjoy great music, but people who also “get it.”
With so much crap out there being passed off as “art”, it was a truly fulfilling experience to witness true artistic freedom and musical purity. If you are a fan of REAL music… you will thoroughly enjoy a Bela Fleck and the Flecktones concert. Bela Fleck on banjo and guitar, Victor Wooten on bass, Jeff Coffin on sax, flute, others, Futureman on drums and percussion. Simply AMAZING!!!!

Exactly six years ago from today, I enlisted in the National Guard.  And thankfully, for every few years you stay in the military, you get a little pay raise.  I should be getting my re-enlistment bonus sometime soon as well, so that will be even better.  I just hope I don’t go out and spend it all on peanut butter crackers and chocolate milk!

Once again I am doing my two weeks of annual training with my National Guard unit.  So far things have been going pretty well.  we started off with a parade up in Appleton, WI, where I got a nice sunburn on my face.  Then we spent three days in Platteville, WI as the house band for a conductor’s art workshop.  It was an interesting experience to hear the clinicians’ comments to the participants.  It was also an honor to be conducted by one of the clinicians, Dr. Francis McBeth, who is a famous composer of our time.  He is an older guy with many great stories about other composers he has known and worked with through the years.

After spending the next couple of days in Madison  to rehearse, we headed up to Stevens Point for a Jazz and Rock band concert.  This was my first real experience being with the sound crew.  We arrived a couple of hours early to get everything set up, which was a very good idea considering we just got a lot of new equipment and we needed some extra time to tinker with everything.  What sucks about being in the Rock band and the sound crew is that I’m having to pull double duty and there are many times when I need to be doing sound stuff like programming effects for songs, but I also have to be playing drums on those songs, so it’s kind of hard to do both at the same time.  Oh well.  The concert went pretty well, it’s just going to take some time to get everything ironed out.

The next morning the Rock band headed to Osh Kosh, WI for a gig at a Farmer’s Market.  We were kind of scared when we got there because it was mainly older people and they were doing line dancing before we were supposed to play.  I decided to do more of an acoustic set, partly because the weather was starting to look bad too.  Things were going great, and then it started to rain so we had to cut it short.  Afterwards we drove up to meet the rest of the band in Ephraim, WI for a concert band gig at the Fyr Bal Festival.  Ephraim is a little town on the coast of Green Bay (the body of water, not the city) it’s in the North-Eastern tip of Wisconsin, and it’s absolutely gorgeous up there.  For this particular festival, they attract many tourists and they light a whole bunch of bonfires along the coast as well as a big fireworks show.  Unfortunately, we weren’t able to stay for all of the pyro-fun, but I did manage to eat some roasted sweet corn… it was mmm mmm good!

We stayed at a hotel in Bailey’s Harbor, WI for two nights because our next gig was close by in Egg Harbor, WI.  The hotel was on the beach, and the staff was fantastic.  They set-up a bonfire for us the first night complete with smores (and mosquitoes), they let us stay in the pool as late as we wanted, and they set us up with a free breakfast at the five-star restaurant across the street on the morning we had to leave.  And on top of that, I found a great eight-mile running route on a nearby peninsula that had an amazing view of Lake Michigan.  I was really impressed with the whole Door County area, it is so pretty up there.  I can’t wait to go back and do some more sight-seeing sometime.

Yesterday we drove to Fond Du Lac, WI for another Jazz and Rock band gig, but the weather was getting bad so we only did the Jazz band.  They played 4 or 5 songs, then it started raining so we canceled the rest of the gig.  When we got back to the hotel, a band member’s family who lives in the area bought us all pizza and beer (and assorted non-alcoholic beverages for the young’ns) so that was awesome.

Today we are heading to Milwaukee to play for the opening of the National Wheelchair Games.  We have four or five small ensembles that are playing throughout the day, so it is going to be a chore for the sound crew, but I think overall the experience should be cool.  I haven’t taken nearly as many pictures as I did last summer, I’ll post them on here when I get a chance.
We finish up on Sunday, June 24th.  Which will give me one week before I start Jury Duty for two weeks.  I’m not looking forward to it at all.  I was supposed to start my new job on July 2nd, but because of Jury Duty, I have to push it back to July 16th.  Oh well.

Welcome to my new blog!!! I got tired of myspace a long time ago… I like LiveJournal, but I’d rather have something I have complete control over, so here we are.

A few years ago I was a very frequent poster on LJ, so hopefully I can get back in the swing so all of you internet stalkers can know what’s going on in my life.