It's so weird that September 1st marked an IMMEDIATE cooling of the weather, an immediate drop in humidity.  I'm not complaining, I love this weather right now.  It was miserable playing outside music in high heat and humidity.  In addition to affecting pitch, it's not great for the instruments.  This last weekend I had gigs three days in row, and ( Read more... )

Life is a series of rolling through the bad so you can appreciate the good.  I opened the mystery mail and sure enough it was harassment mail.  So I bagged the package and the letter that came with it, put a date on it, and replied to the last email I'd sent last year where I kindly stated that I had no desire for any kind of relationship.  This ( Read more... )

Within days of my medical category being recommended for boosters, a regional grocery store chain announced they were doing walk-ins.  I was the first third vaccine at that store.  It was like my birthday.  Two days of side effects that were manageable and made me happy my body was responding, and I'm now officially boosted.

I'm glad I got the shot ( Read more... )

Ohio had some TERRIBLE storms over the last two days, holy cow.  At one point my phone went off with a TAKE SHELTER warning and I ran into the basement with my dogs, went up to get the cats, one of the cats peed all over me, and I just had to sit there downstairs shaking and covered in pee while 80 MPH winds roared everywhere.  This is one of my ( Read more... )

Yesterday I saw my doctor for my back and afterwards I called my dad to tell him all about it.  My dad is a grab bag of back problems so I figured he'd be a good person to commiserate with about it.

Well, I forgot who I was dealing with.  My dad thinks he's an expert on everything, and if you have any experience that even slightly overlaps with ( Read more... )

I KNOW I need to buy a car before mine becomes even more unreliable and I throw more money into it.  I KNOW this.  But every step I take towards the process gives me a mini panic attack over whether I'm doing it correctly.  I don't know why. I worked in a vehicle finance adjacent industry for a very long time.  I know what cars cost and what ( Read more... )

I got my piccolo in the mail and have been playing it for about a week.  Unlike many other flute players my age, I never played picc.  I have a really bad old student one I would toot around on, but it had issues and wasn't enough for real, actual practice and could only play in one octave.  So at almost 40 I'm learning a new skill.

It's hard - I' ( Read more... )

Seeing the news about how the willfully unvaccinated are spreading COVID variants to those of us who are fully vaccinated is just steaming me up today.  I'm on immunosuppressants so we're not sure how strong my immunity is despite being double vaccinated since March.  Also, since I was double vaccinated in March, will I need a booster?   Yes, the ( Read more... )

For all my fretting and stewing about money and planning and worries and all the things that can and do go wrong, today I woke up and went online to check the prices on the instrument I've been thinking about for years, and BOOM, a high end student model was on sale from a reputable music store's ebay website for half off.  It's a better brand and ( Read more... )

I think I have the reverse SAD blues lately.  You know the SAD, when people in winter with reduced sunlight feel depressed?  I have the opposite - I don't like hot sunny muggy weather. Too many people out and about, too much social pressure to cram a lot of things into the weekend, too much yardwork and maintenance with no privacy because everyone ( Read more... )