Late Summer Updates

I really need to get around to writing more on here. Though I'm not sure anyone actually reads it...but it would be nice to have a journal to reflect back on when I'm old(er) and gray(er).

Well here we are in the late stages of summer. We just had a scheduled fire drill here at work, and my ears are still numb and slightly ringing from the obscenely loud alarms. Since my last writing, quite a lot has happened, but at best I'll just be able to summarize a few key points here.

First and foremost, we're expecting our first child in late October, a boy, so obviously we've been ramping up on the purchase of baby related items and going to classes on safety and doctor's appointments and all that jazz. It's been an uneventful pregnancy so far, in the sense that everything has looked good and normal and there's been no causes of concern anywhere. We just moved in May to a new house, just a couple miles north of our condo, so that we could have more room for our growing family. So far, the cats approve of the new place. We'll see how they feel about a kid...

Our condo is still owned by us, and is currently being rented out through a property management company. The economy is steadily improving, particularly on the home values end, but we're still too far under water on the condo to consider selling. We actually got a good deal on our house, just shy of 2000 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 2.5 baths, built in 2006, and in a great neighborhood close to good schools and shopping. And it was $269k at time of purchase, so we probably already have equity in the place which is good news.

We just got back from a trip to San Francisco over the weekend, where we got to visit and explore Golden Gate Park (Whitney's never been to the Japanese Tea Garden. Check!). It was fun staying in the city; our hotel was right near China Town and Union Square, so an ideal central location from which to spread out and see a little bit of the city. Prior to that we had taken a 4 day cruise from Long Beach to Catalina and Ensenada. We had actually wanted to take a 10 day cruise from San Francisco to Alaska again, especially as the rates were incredibly low this summer. But the dates we could do were just over the 24-week pregnancy deadline by which they won't let you sail. So we had to opt for an earlier, shorter trip booked on short notice. But it was nice to get away. We're still considering doing the Alaska one next summer as more of a family integrated trip - though not sure I want to bring an 8-month old along on that. We'll see how fussy he ends up being in general ;)

Anyways, it's a slow week here as we just concluded the Cal Cap workshops at Sac State, so it's time to get the lockers reset and some other things cleaned up and ready for the fall. Not sure if there will be any more last minute short getaways before the summer ends...actually Whitney's school starts next week so probably not. I'm still playing with the Freelancer's Alumni, and I'm going with them to the DCA championships in Annapolis over Labor Day weekend. So that should be an interesting experience. Time to start memorizing music I guess...

Rolling Along 2013

I know I probably say it just about every time I write on here, but the days and months are just flying by! We're already into week five of the school year, and just about finished with the second month of the new year. Where does all this time go??

It's been a busy time, as usual around here. I've been playing a little bit again, this time playing electric bass with Green Valley Theatre for Aida, though only for the opening and closing weekends as a sub. I wasn't sure if I could still physically play, what with the wrist disaster of 2009 still keeping me from being able to turn my left wrist all the way. And to be sure, there is a little pain involved, but all in all it's been holding up pretty well. Good thing too, since I'll be playing six shows of Avenue Q with Runaway Stage in March, and might be possibly playing the run of Blood Brothers with Green Valley again in April. To celebrate this, I have acquired a new electric bass from guitar Center. It's a 5-string Squier with - get this - frets. I've never played with fret before, to say nothing of having five strings. So we'll see how well I can adapt to this.

In the meantime, I'm still waiting for rehearsals of my Symphony to begin. I suspect they'll start right after the March orchestra concert, and if all goes well, the piece will be performed on the May concert. It's certainly by far the biggest work I have ever imagined, attempted, or completed, so it should be quite exciting to start seeing it come to life.

Things have been going fairly well on other fronts; I sat down and got our taxes done for the year last weekend. And, we're getting a nice return this year - not like last year where we ended up paying quite a bit extra. We had been working on a refi for our underwater mortgage, simply for the sake of lowering the interest rate. We had actually gotten a solicitation from our mortgage company, Bank of America, about the new-ish Harp loan. After spending quite a bit of time on the phone and doing credit checks, and locking in a rate of 4.375 and signing and faxing over a dozen sheets of paper, we got a huge packet of paperwork in the mail to sift through and try to make sense of. We also got a call from someone else at B of A saying, sorry, but your type of condo doesn't qualify for this type of loan. Say what now?? What's that supposed to mean?? Well if we ever get a call back maybe we'll find out. In the meantime it looks iffy, and seems like we're set to be screwed over by B of A. Not that this is the first time, mind you. The first time we had received a solicitation and called in about a different type of refi, and they told us we didn't qualify because our current mortgage was not technically a Bank of America mortgage, even though our statements have their name on them, and are sent from them, and our payments go to them.

Why do banks send you solicitations to apply for programs which they aren't willing to allow you to be qualified for anyway?? Are they bored?? Are we on candid camera?? You would think with our impeccable track record of payments and exceptional credit averaging 800 between us, this wouldn't be such an issue.

Oh well, we're rolling along as usual.

I Tweeted

So, I took the plunge a couple of days ago and signed up for Twitter, after observing in the last year all these random hash-tag this and hash-tag that posts and advertisements that keep popping up. I figured, heck, I'll see what all the hoopla is about.

Frankly, I don't get it.

It seems Twitter is just a dumbed down version of Facebook, lacking in all of the primary features that make a social media site customizable and personal. I don't understand why I can follow a person or thing, yet I can't control what I see from them. Maybe I don't want to see the posts of others that they saw fit to share with the world. Re-tweets, I guess they're called. But why can't I at least delete things from my feed that I don't care to see?? That would seem to me to be a basic functionality that's lacking.

Now, to be fair, I had somewhat of an auspicious start on Twitter. I signed up initially on my iPhone, and apparently they were having difficulties that day, for anyone whom I chose to follow simply did not show up in my feed at all. I could go to their Twitter page and see their posts however, but this just made the experience more cumbersome. That is apparently fixed now.

To add to that, right after I made my historic first Tweet - some dumb nonsense about the weather - I immediately got a reply from someone I don't know who swore that this was my lucky day and that I could certainly be entitled to a free gift card with participation. Fortunately I figured out how to block that person, but their post still shows on my phone under the "@Connect" tab - and there's no way to delete it. Oddly, it doesn't show up there when I log on via an actual computer. So I'm left to wonder, is this just some sort of glitch?

Well, in any case these things did not leave a good first impression. And first impressions, as we all know, are of tantamount importance.

So, for the time being, I'm still on Twitter, and I'll tweet abut random nonsense from time to time. Though I'll still be wondering why I bother, because for the moment this fad seems completely inferior to Facebook. And rather pointless. Maybe I'm missing something. Or maybe I'm just predisposed to hating new things.

Well, I do fear change...

New Year Flying By

Well, it seems like we just finished tearing down our smattering of Christmas decor, and suddenly we've not only turned over a new year but we find ourselves halfway through January. Where does all this time go?

I'd like to say that I've been productive this winter, and certainly in some respects I have been, but mostly it's been a laid back restful break.

Well, technically, the break is already over. I actually started back to work on January 3. But since the students don't start until January 28, it's been slow around here and I've been only working partial days. That has left time to go visit the gym that we religiously pay for each month and often ignore, and to relax at home and slowly sit through Season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation on BluRay.

So, it's been a nice break, and I'm halfway through the run of 9 to 5: The Musical at the 24th Street Theatre. It's been some time since I conducted anything, but it's been nice to get back into the swing of things.

At work, things are even slower at the moment as our email system went out around 8:30 yesterday morning, and remains out of commission still. I know there's emails slowly piling up, as yesterday as I was able to briefly glimpse a list of them sitting on the server, but I could not access them and now I cannot even see that they're sitting there. Heck I can't even log on to the server at all.

Such are things at Sac State.

As it turns out, I'll be playing bass again, for one week at least, of shows for Avenue Q. It's been awhile since I've played anything as well, so we'll see how much like riding a bike it is. But that's not till March, so I still have some time to reflect on that. And maybe work my wrist up a little; I never did regain full movement of my left wrist after playing Rent several years ago.

But, as they, time marches on. The New Year was fairly uneventful; I actually had a rehearsal till 8pm anyway, so we just stayed at home and ate pizza and watched a movie. It had been cold, and is even colder now, so going to any outside fireworks shows was a bit out of the question anyway. And as it turns out, due to a shooting in Old Town, the midnight fireworks there were cancelled anyway.

What will 2013 hold? Well, hopefully my symphony written as my graduate project will be performed in May, we plan to spend a few days exploring Yosemite over spring break, and if the airfare comes down, a trip to England may happen this summer. Other than that, the year will be played by ear, and we'll see what happens.

So far, so good.

Winding Down

Well, the end of the semester is finally winding down. This is the last week of classes, followed by finals week next week. Which of course means that there is a multi-day Disneyland trip in my near future.

It's been a good semester I guess; not horribly busy but busy enough to keep me out of trouble. The highlights are easy to point out - I received my Masters diploma in the mail after finishing and submitting my project in August. I'm currently churning out the parts for my Symphony No. 1, which is slated now to be performed in March. And, I started and finished a new composition for trombone and cello, which is being premiered today at the student composer's recital.

We don't always provide program notes at our composition recitals, but we are for today's program. Here's the notes from my work:

"The title of Into the Dark was inspired by a day recently when I locked trombonist Kari Estrada in her locker. She was literally in the dark. Compositionally, the duet (instrumentation suggested by Kari) utilizes a lot of minor triads and sevenths as well as diminished sevenths, which give the piece a somber or melancholy feel. It is essentially written in an ABA form which is illustrated most obviously by the tempos as well as the ostinato figures in the cello that open each section. I often feel as the piece represents an old growth forest at dusk, leading into the night hours. Kari says it makes her feel like she’s in a dungeon. I think she’s just remembering the locker incident."

It should be a fun piece to present, and I'm sure the audience will like it. Lots of other things going on in the next couple of days, concert-wise, so I've still got some work to do before I can finally relax. But the holidays are upon us!

New Music

It's not often that I rant about new music. Certainly, as a composer myself, you would think that I would bear an open mind, and appreciate the artistic identity of it all. We're in the midst of the Festival of New American Music at Sacramento State - the 35th Annual Festival. It certainly has become it's own sort of animal.

Attendance has been quite good this year (as it was also last year), after years of paltry attendance. But it's a whole sort of different crowd that comes to FeNAM. On the one side, there's the whole slew of intellectual types that exude that stereotypical New York avant-garde persona. Even if they're only faking it. And then there's the hippies - original ones from the 60s, now in their 70s, mellowed out by years of rehabilitation from their former rambunctious lifestyles. And then there's the modern-day hippies - those caught somewhere in the middle of their lives in a cloud of marijuana, and tangled up in their own long hair.

And then there's the crazy people.

There's one lady who has shown up every night, talking in a very loud voice about how she parked in this lot and wasn't sure if it's the right lot and is she going to be fine there because she can't afford to get a ticket. You'd think that after I explained on the first night that the 6-story parking garage right next to us is free after 7pm, she would get it and just park there the next night. But no, she parks in a different spot each night and proclaims her location upon arrival at the music building. Sometimes she actually talks at an unsuspecting passerby who made the unfortunate mistake of making eye contact. Sometimes her words just fly out like a snare hoping to catch its next victim.

I have to hand it to the audiences though, they are dedicated. The same ones keep coming back night after night. And the ONLY come to the Festival. You won't see them at any other events of ours throughout the year.

But I said I was going to rant about new music. So, here goes.

Last night we had a string quartet here, and I was really looking forward hearing them. Partly because of their supposed reputation and talent, and partly just because I have long been considering writing another string quartet and was hoping to be inspired.

The first piece was by John Adams, and used harmonics exclusively. I'm not joking, the players' fingers never touched the fingerboards of their instruments. Even in the program notes, Adams was quoted saying that if he could figure out how to produce those sounds without them even touching the instruments, he would do it.

Now, actually, it was kind of a cool effect of interweaving harmonics. But after the first 5 minutes, you got it. After 10 minutes, you were pretty much done with it. But then the piece went on for another 10 minutes past that, just to annoy the hell out of you.

And it went downhill from there. The subsequent three pieces will all bizarre conglomerations of random hits, knocks, scratches, and occasions things resembling notes. To call it music would be false advertising. To call it atonal would be far too generous. Really, no melody or harmony or discernible rhythms to speak of for a majority of the works. We could have given a violin to a three year old and said, "Here kid, scratch on this for about twenty minutes". The end result wouldn't have changed much. You know it's bad one one of the performers quips backstage before going on for the last piece, "Let's go subject them to more sound torture".

To be fair, some people really like this ultra-cerebral style of "music". I can accept that. I can even appreciate it in small doses. But when the ENTIRE program is of the same style as this; well that's just bad programming.

Incidentally, the crazy lady stormed out after the first 10 minutes of the program, loudly proclaiming that if "this is all it was going to be", then she wasn't going to sit through it. Maybe she's not so crazy after all.