Black Friday

Well another year of mad doorbuster deal shopping after Thanksgiving has passed. Though it's not even 9am right now on Black Friday, most stores have already been open over 8 hours already in their quest to entice shoppers to come and spend money. I myself went out early this morning, though with not a whole lot of specific things to look for.

Actually, with the stores opening at midnight this year, all of the crazy shoppers had come and gone by the time I set out on foot at 5am to brave the madness. And this was quite helpful too; between 5am and 7am I visited both the Wal Mart and Target in Natomas, and neither one was busy. In fact, both stores had and handful of cashiers just standing around and waiting for someone to buy something. They would literally fight over you as you approached the registers with goods in hand, each one of them hoping to finally have something to do.

I actually went out for a specific DVD which was on sale, and it seems that every door buster item was well in stock except for the one I was looking for. There were palates full of $49 Blu Ray players and shelves of half price in-ear headphones and flat screen LCD TVs galore. There plenty of DVD and Blu Ray movies for the picking. Just not, as luck would have it, the one gift that I actually set out to buy.

So, having gone in with the intent of buying a $10 movie, in good holiday fashion I came home with over $100 of other stuff. You're welcome, economy.

It's funny though how some folks just buy stuff because it's on sale, whether they need it or not or if they even know what it is. One lady picked up the movie 300 (pronounced "three hundred") at Wal Mart, and shouted to her husband one aisle: "Hey, they got Three Thousand. Three Thousand is over here." He replied back "Yeah, get that too".

Really people?

Well, it's approaching 9am, so I guess I'll take a cue from my cats and get ready for a nap.

FeNAM!

Well, just as quickly as it started, this year's Festival of New American Music draws to a close today. This one wasn't too bad actually, though I did have a 15 hour day yesterday and several other 12+ hour days this past week. But, that's pretty typical. Today I'm going for something that I don't normally do...I'm actually going to watch all three concerts today. It's rare for me to watch any concerts these days as I'm just too busy doing other things, but today I'm doing the hat trick.

The highlight will, I think, be the California Youth Symphony at Mondavi. They are an amazing youth group, better than a lot of college groups, and though my composition teacher is their director and I usually get free passes to their bay area concerts, I've never actually seen them live. Today's program features Copland's Billy the Kid and Bernstein's On the Waterfront.

This year's festival has been something of a stoner convention; I don't think there's been a day yet were clouds of vapor haven't trailed into the Music Recital Hall with our audiences. Maybe you need to be high to truly appreciate some of this stuff, I don't know. The theremin concert which opened the festival surely was a good candidate for that. The whole concert was like an acid trip from the 1960s. Seriously. I'm not even exaggerating.

I was fortunate enough to have a work played on the festival this year; the first two movements of my Trio for Oboe, Clarinet, and Viola were played both at the Student Chamber Ensembles concert and the Student Artists Performance Competition. It was good times really, and the innovation for this year was that many concerts were video recorded and streamed online at Live Stream, so you can go back and watch them again - or catch the ones you missed. It's pretty cool actually; folks have watched our concerts in over 20 different countries, including Japan, Korea, Thailand, Australia, Mexico, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ireland to name a few.

Well it's just about 8:30 Sunday morning now, so I guess it's time to try and get caught up a little on the homework I've fallen behind on. This semester's graduate Ethnomusicology course will be the last class I need for my Master's degree, then it's on to my final project!

Disneyland!

So I did make it out to the parks last weekend. I think it was the mot time I've spent in the parks on one trip, which I can get away with when I'm traveling solo as I can set my own schedule. But I drove down Friday morning and made it into the park by 2pm, staying till 9pm. Hey, I had to get SOME sleep before the weekend....Saturday I was in the parks from 8:15am-10:00pm, and Sunday I was there from 8:30am-11:30pm. That's near 36 park hours in two and a half days. So yeah, I was tired coming home on Monday. In fact, I'm still tired right now. 

Unfortunately Pirates was closed for refurbishment, and a fair chunk of DCA was still under construction. But I certainly had my share of rides and shows, seeing the Soundsational Parade twice, Fantasmic and World of Color once, Billy Hill three times, and the Aladdin musical once. Not that I could have squeezed a little more in if I had more time... I finally tried one of the food items that has piqued my interest for awhile, the Chimichangas from the food cart at the end of Main Street. I don't know why they have so intrigued me, except that I used to get the Chimichanga packs from Costco for lunches, and I've certainly had them at Mexican restaurants. Well, the one from the cart isn't as good as all that; it's essentially just a deep fried bean and cheese burrito. But it was tasty and a good snack while waiting for the fireworks to begin. Oh, did I mention that? Yes, I saw the fireworks too. I could have seen them twice, had I not left the park so early Friday night. But hey, you have to pace yourself at least a little bit. 

So it was quite a fun trip, and nice to see the park decked out for the Halloween 'season'. This was actually the first weekend of that transformation, so naturally there were long lines at the Haunted Mansion and Space Mountain. And with Star Tours being an all new set of adventures, that had a tendency to back up as well. Good thing for fastpasses! 

I also got to see Ariel's Undersea Adventure in DCA for the first time, as it opened just after I left from my last trip in May. It was, I have to say, somewhat underwhelming. With all they hype I was really expecting something incredible, but yet I found it to be only mediocre for the most part. Still an entertaining ride, especially for the younger kids towards which it is geared. Just not much of a 'wow' factor. Better luck with Cars Land! I do have a small sampling of photos online as evidence of the good times had. Next up will be Vegas, followed by (you guessed it) another trip to the Magic Kingdom in January.

Playing Again

So I find myself once again playing on a G bugle, this time a soprano and with the Freelancers Alumni & Friends (I fit in the "Friends" category). I hadn't played a horn with any regularity since the summer of 2007, so it was interesting trying to ram the old chops back into shape. Fortunately it was all ballad-esque patriotic music for various 9/11 tributes, so the music wasn't that hard. And since I was playing 3rd part, it wasn't that high either.

But the two gigs we did over the weekend went...okay. Both were the kind of "hurry up and wait" situations where you get in position at the performance site and wait. And wait some more. And then finally bring the cold horn to your face and try to produce something resembling music for a couple of minutes. It's not that Idid terribly poorly...but we'll just say that it is easier I think if your chops are in good working order to start off playing out of the blue.

But if I continue to play throughout the fall, hopefully the chops will get a little more in check. We will see, we will see.

It's now Tuesday just before lunchtime at work. I'm really just waiting for it to be Friday, because on Friday I take off for an extended weekend at Disneyland. It's been a long time since I've been there after all, almost...4 months! Yikes. But it has been years since I've been there for Halloween time, so I'm looking forward to it.

There Went Labor Day

Wow, it's amazing how fast that three-day weekend went by. Is time getting progressively faster?? I hope my self-imposed three day weekend in Disneyland laster this month doesn't go by nearly as fast!

But, the official end of summer has come and gone. I actually had a fairly active weekend, as weekends go. Did a 24 mile bike ride around the outskirts of Natomas and Rio Linda and around the Sacramento International airport on Saturday; that was a trip. Capped it off with a stopover at Yogurt Garden on the way home. Not sure why, but just about everything tastes far better after you've exhausted yourself out on something like a long bike ride.

If that wasn't enough, we did a 21 mile ride from our house to Old Sac and back on Monday, stopping for a bit to enjoy the Gold Rush Days. Which of course meant eating exceptionally unhealthy snack foods. But we also did the Underground Tour that the History Museum gives, which shows you some of the basements in old town that used to be the street level store fronts, before the floods of the 1850s forced the raising of the town by an average of 9 feet. It was quite an interesting tour, and worth the $15 price tag I think.

OUtside of that, spent time doing laundry and grocery shopping, and all of the other things I normally have to do on the weekend. And then - poof! - it was over. Now back to work.

Week One = Done

Well, I'm not sure if I can go so far as to call it a 'hell' week, but the first week of school is done and in the books. As is normal, my days flew by with a constant stream of students and paperwork. Nothing but lockers and key issues and finishing up recital paperwork. Well, at least it makes the days fly by.

It's nice now to have a three day weekend to recuperate from the madness. And for once, I actually get to observe a three day weekend, as I have nothing pressing on my calendar for the next three days. So it will provide some time to catch up on some recorded TV programs, take some bike rides around town, and maybe do some organizing around the house.

I'm actually taking a grad class this fall, ethnomusicology. It's not a subject I normally study, but it's the only grad class offered outside of the Intro to Grad Studies course, which I've already taken. And at this point, I have one more class and my final project to do and that's it. So, I'll be taking this class as an elective. And thus should end my classroom career. At least from the student side anyway.

Next week, despite or perhaps because of it being a shorter week, will be a busy one. We start having concerts at school, and I've got rehearsal on Wednesday for a Friday gig with the Freelancers Alumni in a 9/11 ten year anniversary tribute. Still don't know much about the gig exactly, except that it's in Auburn and we're playing lots of ballad- and patriotic-type tunes. Should be interesting. It was nice to pick up a G soprano after so many years. So we'll see how it goes.

As for the fall semester, we're off and running, and we'll see how the ride goes...