The House

The week before last we took a picture of the 'house.'



Just a foundation with some pipes sticking out of it. The next step was the framing which was supposed to start tomorrow. We checked in to see if the lumber had been dropped and what we found instead was this:




We were supposed to get a phone call from the construction manager the night before framing started but did not. The reason for this was so we could take pictures of the various phases as the frame was going up(we also wanted to pictures of the foundation being poured but didn't get the agreed upon call then, either).

We did take some pictures after we got used to the thing already being there. Behold:





Garage



Kitchen



Living Room



Loft



Master Bedroom



The view from upstairs


So there it is; our new house. Next week the plumbing, a/c, & electrical should be done.


We're looking at early October as a move-in date.

ITF/Las Vegas

We went to Vegas May 30-Jun 6. The primary purpose was to go to the International Trombone Festival but we had decided beforehand to stay a few extra days and meet some friends there and have some fun.

The ITF was a nice experience. It was nice to see some acquaintences that I hadn't see in a while and then there were a couple that I don't think that were that happy to see me. My UNT trombone teacher was there and was extremely busy but we got to talk for a few minutes. It seems that one of his students won the second trombone position with the Vienna Philharmonic. I was blown away. I didn't even know that they allowed Americans to try out. And it was his very first professional audition. Also, the 'TF' trombone quartet(also coached by the same teacher as Jeremy Wilson) from UNT won the quartet competition.

I also saw someone that I knew from BYU there, along with his son(whome I can't believe is 15 now). He's the Trombone professor at BYU-Idaho now. Good for him. He is one heck of a player.

I am a little curious why my former BYU roommate, now the BYU trombone prof, didn't show. Its only 7 hours straight down I-15 to lv from Provo. Maybe I'll shoot him an email.

ITF itself had many fine performances and lectures. I'm not remembering them all very well right now so I won't talk about it. That's what I get for not making my blog entry right when I got home.

The highlight of Friday was that night when we ate at the buffet at the Wynne Hotel. It was incredible having shrimp, crab legs that were split lengthwise(making meat extraction easier), pastas, chinese food, bbq, just EVERYTHING. Two thumbs up from up from us. Drawback? It was $36 each.

The ITF ended on Saturday. Monday afternoon we saw the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay. The ads look very cool, showing a huge great whit with its gaping maw against the glass but the actual exhibit was a bit of a letdown. The biggest the sharks got was what I would say 'medium-sized.' Eh.

Our friends, 'Bob' and 'Elaine' arrived on Monday. That evening all of us went and saw the Blue Man Group. What a fantastic experience! They had a giant pvc pipe with bends and sliding sections and they made all kinds of cool sounds with it. There were a lot of flashes of color, long streams of recycled paper rolling over the audience, and other audience participation. I would HIGHLY recommend it.






The next day we walked around a lot, checking out the casinos. We tried to ride rollercoasters at both New York, New York and Stratosphere but they both closed down because of high winds. We checked back on each but no luck. By afternoon I was really wishing that I had brought my newer tennis shoes because my feet were hurting, blisters and all. We stopped at a drugstore-like enclave and I played dr on my feet but I'm not sure that it helped all that much. We ate dinner at Mandalay Bay buffet which was not quite as good as Wynn's but not nearly as expensive($20), either. Bob suggested that we check out Mama Mia, the ABBA vehicle, that night so we ended up seeing that. I didn't think too much of it. The next day Bob and Elaine went back to LA and we came back to TX(a 1200 mile drive).

A good vacation but a loooong drive.

To all my fans out there(both of them): a lot has been going on for the last month and a half and I'm going to try to catch everyone up somewhat. I'll take it one event at a time.


20th Class Reunion

The 3rd week(end) in May the wife and I piled into out 1999 honda accord and went to my 20th anniversery in Magnolia, Arkansas(about an hour due east of Texarkana if that helps anyone). The reunion consisted of 3 events: a Friday Night mixer, a Saturday morning high school walk through for the purpose of seeing all the changes that have been made to the high school in the last 20 years, and a Saturday night dinner and dance at the local country club.


Friday Night Mixer

This was definitely the most surreal of the three. I knew in my brain that everybody would look older but my last memoryof these people was how they looked on graduation day; May 14th, 1987 when everybody was 18. As people started to come through the door it was like a time machine in my head went off, trying to reconcile how people looked when they were 18 with how they looked 20 years later. This happened over and over for each person that I recognized which was kind of trippy. There were quite a few people that I didn't remember, even after looking at their name tag. And many of these people seemed to remember me as their good friend. I was the tallest in school so maybe they remember me that way. I did see a couple of friends there that I used to hang out with quite a bit but not nearly as many as I had hoped. One of these friends only lives 15 miles away from where we live, which was great. We're planning on getting together for lunch soon as he's an attorney and comes to the county courthouse in Denton quite a bit.


Saturday Morning HS walking tour

Our guide was the current hs principle. I think when we graduated, he was the asst principal at the jr high. Most of my memories of him consist of him being a pe teacher when I was in fifth and sixth grade. Anyhow, we met in the library where he started off by telling us how technologicly advanced the school had gotten, how wired the placed had gotten and how lessons were now transmitted from the library to the classrooms. Most of the library books are now on cd(if I heard him right).

Next we walked over to the band hall. We first entered a large bandroom about the same size as the ensemble rehearsal rooms that I rehearsed in at BYU. Then mr principal man informed us that the was the small one. We all walked over to the other half of the building and saw the other bandroom. It was HUGE!!!! WOW!! Not just big but cutting edge, too. Attached to the ceiling was a white satellite opject that we were informed was a sound system(or part of anyone). Actualy it was part sound and part projection(projector) but it was extremely sleek and modern. I'm guessing that that part of it alone was between $50,000 and $100,000. Apparently Magnolia has money to spend. A lot of it.

Then we went over to the huge, new gymnasium. It is very large for a hs gym, has arena style seating, and is convertible for several differnt activities - like graduation. A very nice facility.


Saturday night at the country club

I had never been to the country club before. It was fairly nice but not overly so. The shindig was scheduled to start at 6:30 and that's when people started to stream in. I think dinner itself wasn't served until 7:30 or so. The dancing started after dinner, 8:30 or so. I got to talk with several people whom I hadn't seen yet. It was fun & interesting. Fun to see old acquaintenances and interesting to see what people had done with their lives. Some people did great things, started families, got good educations and good jobs and some pretty much stayed like how they were at graduation. There were a lot of both.
At 9 or so a couple of friends and our wives got bored with the whole deal and went to McDonalds of all places and sat and talked about our childhoods for a while. It was nice reminiscing, talking about movies, talking about how our lives were going. They are some good people. The kind of people who make me think that maybe the world has a chance.

My AIMS Audition

For those not in 'the know,' AIMS is an 5-week annual musical festival held annualy in Austria. And, every year, there is an annual audition 'tour' where auditions are held in different locations from January to March. Eastman, Julliard, Chicago, LA...most of the big cities are covered. On Sunday, Feb 11, I auditioned at the one held at SMU in Dallas. I had to drive around a while to find parking, but I still got in the music building with plenty of time to warm up.

I had expected that there would be an actual audition committe but when I entered the room, it was just the orchestra manager and a microphone. In retrospect, I guess that I should have expected it.

The required audition repertoire was a movement of a concerto and 5 specific excerpts.


Here's how it went, in order:

1. I chose the first movement of the Grohndal for my solo. It went ok..the tempo was fairly steady but I did miss a few notes and made an error at an entrance. The orchestra guy stopped me after the halfway point. The AIMS provided accompanist was sightreading everything and did a so-so job.

2. Mahler 3rd - Fairly well. A tad sloppy in the lower register but I felt like I kept the style fairly consistant and played the various 'tempo' markings well.

3. Tuba Mirum - Went well.

4. William Tell Overture - Went very well. The judge comments, though not that loudly, 'excellent' afterwards. Don't worry, I'm not reading too much into it. I'm glad that this one went well because I had really been busting my hump on it.

5. Schumann Symphony #3, 4th mvt., 1st 8 measures - I played through it and I wasn't that happy with it(The high Eb was a bit thin and I flubbed one or two other notes) but didn't say anything. After I finished, The orchestra manager said 'Let's try that again.' So I played it again and I'll be durned if I didn't play it WORSE the 2nd time. I flubbed the high Eb, barely getting it at all, and cracked 2 or 3 other notes. ARRRRGGGGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was so frustrating because I had played it and played it well before. Here, I had two shots at it and screwed it up both times. I think that I just didn't concentrate enough on a big enough second breath. A week later, this still bothers me.

6. Lohengrin, Prelude to Third Act - This went well. The orchestra manager comments 'good' afterwards(again not reading too much into that).


So it was an ok audition. To be honest, I think that any chance that I had of making the orchestra died when I flubbed up the Schumann a 2nd time.

It would have been fun, though.

Buffalo, Here I Come!!

So, I'm all set for Buffalo. Got my plane ticket, rental car reserved, hotel room reserved. I'm excited for the trip. My actual audition is in Feb. 25th with the finals on the 27th. I'm flying in on the afternoon of the 24th and flying out the evening of the 27th. I could have just anticipated not making the finals and scheduled my flight back for the 26th but I figured I needed to be hopeful about things.

Even though its a 2nd trombone position and pays about $40k a year, I figure there should be around 100 trombonists there. The preliminaries take 2 days and they'll probably pick between 3 and 5 players for the finals(if they like that many). It'll be a good experience, at the very least.

I've been practicing quite a bit lately and I'm in the best shape that I've been for a while, at lease since I've been out of school. Its been a bear preparing for this thing because of the huge amount of material that's being asked; 16 excerpt and a portion of a Bach Cello Suite. Its stretched me thin to get it all ready in time.


Because of my flight schedule I have 1 day, the 26th, with absolutely nothing to do. So I figured that I would go over to Palmyra and look at some LDS church history sites(i.e. Book of Mormon publication site, Joseph Smith farm, Hill Cumorah visitors center) since its only about 90 minutes away. Should be a fun day.

Wish me luck!

My Trombone Life so Far

So I've been back in music & trombone full time since August now. I can't honestly say that things are going well in that department, at least from a financial perspective. I don't have any students although I hope that will change soon with the start of the current semester. I haven't played much 'professionaly' although I did have the one Christmas gig. Didn't pay that well, though. And I've done one piece on Finale. I'm advertising in the International Musician, though, so I'm hoping to get more work there.

The good news? My playing has been getting better. I've been steadily playing every day, doing my warmups and working etudes and then excerpts. The excerpts still need some work but they are getting better. I need to get it all cleaned up before I go to the Buffalo audition in late Feb.

Oh, and concerning that - I'm looking for a couple of excerpts that I'm having a hard time finding:

2nd Trombone - Bartok Concerto for Orchestra
2nd Trombone - Hindemith Symphonic Metamorphosis

I know that they are available in excerpt books but I would rather have the original part, for accuracy's sake. No seems to sell them or rent the individual parts. If anyone knows how I can get these I would appreciate the info.

Time for a Change

I have been wanting to play more and more over the past few months. I practice daily now, trying to get my chops up and pull my level of playing up to at least a respectable level. I play sometimes after work and sometimes before I go to work. I go up to the school(UNT) and use their practice rooms on my days off. This has helped somewhat but what I really need is performance opportunities. There are several that I could perhaps take advantage of except for my work schedule.

Some have asked, 'Can't you change to days?' 1. The last guy who asked for dayshift waited for a year before the change was made. 2. The schedule would then be 7am-7pm which would still make it difficult to do any performing(I live in Denton & work is 35 miles away in Plano) 3. I would also not be able to go to church 6 months out of the year. 4. I am no longer interested in working in the command center(reasons are named in an earlier post).


So I've made a decision. On August 1st, 2006 I will quit and pursue a career in music.

This is a bit scary as I don't have another job waiting for me but I am more scared of seeing the life & joy drain out of me in what should be the best years of my life.

Financialy it will be tough. A 50% cut in income means that we'll have to tighten our belts so to speak and I will have to come up with ways to meet the gap between bills & income each month. I have come up with the following ways to make money with out compromising my ability to play.

1. Music Copying - I worked my way through grad school mostly by preparing composers handwritten manuscripts on the computer for publication. I am in the process of setting the computer up to do the same thing again.

2. Teaching private students - I'll need to get cleared by the local school districts to do this.

3. The occasional odd gig - might provide a few bucks but nothing to count on.

4. A part-time job - as the situation dictates


As far as playing goes, my foremost priority is to find a position with one of the local community orchestras. I really want to get orchestral experience. Also, there's a local trombone group around here called 'Slide Area' run by a local freelancer. That looks like it could be some fun. I also wouldn't mind being in a brass quartet or quintet. Lastly, I'll keep an eye out for any local musicals that need trombones in the pit.

My ultimate goal is to either 1. Get a full time gig with an orchestra or 2. Teach college full time. For #2 I'll have to back to school for a DMA but I'm not doing that just yet.

I had a lesson with Jan Kagarice on Tuesday(wife of my former UNT teacher). She is such a wonderful teacher. We mainly worked on breathing & relaxation. I've incorporated the exercises that she had me do into my daily playing routine.

I visited with Dr. Vern Kagarice a couple of weeks ago and he was very gracious and gave me some solid ideas for playing opportunities in the area.

Tony Baker(the other UNT full-time trombone professor) also had some good ideas. He was very kind in replying my email and also agreed to give me lessons. Tony and I actualy have a tiny bit of history together. We went to the same bandcamp one summer(Henderson State University). We were placed in the top band together. I was first chair, David Herring was second, and Tony was third. Now David Herring is the Principal Trombone of the Minnesota Orchestra, Tony Baker is a full-time professor and free lancer, and I'm...uh...well...I'm trying to get back into it.



That's it for now. I'll update this more as things progress.

Prodigy is first woman tuba player for top orchestra

Carol Janistch, 21, was just awarded the principal tuba position with the Philidelphia Orchestra. She just graduated from University of Michigan and now she has a $102k/year-10-week-paid-vacation job playing her tuba. She beat out 195 others auditioning for the position.

This girl just impresses the heck out of me.

I am worth $2,052,060 on HumanForSale.com

Here are the pictures that I promised.

Lets start with the Alamo. We went there when we were trying to kill time before out Temple session started.





Then we did our session at the San Antonio Temple. What a nice temple! A smaller one but well designed and very nice to look at both inside and out. Much nicer than the Oklahoma City Temple.

Here's a running total of the temples that I've been in(session, sealing, or some other ordinance:

Dallas
Houston
Jordan River
Laie Hawai'i
Los Angeles
Manti
Mount Timpanogas
Nauvoo
Oklahoma City
Provo
Salt Lake
San Antonio

I just need Lubbock and that'll complete the 4 in Texas! Its 5.5 hours way out in the barren west part of the state so that's not exactly a high priority right now. We don't travel these places just to go to the temple there, but if we are already somewhere with a temple that we haven't been in(visiting friends or vacation or whatever) we make a point of going.

We were getting bored of Denton, and the missus had just completed another school year so we decided to go out of town for a while. After some discussion we decided to go to Blanco State Park.

Blanco SP seemed to consist mainly a camping area and of two a sections of the Blanco River that was dammed off on both ends. Not much to it really.

So we get there Monday afternoon and set up the tent. We were a little rusty on this one as the last time we set it up was during our Grand Canyon trip two summers ago. We got pretty good at it too, but like I said, it had been a while. We swam some in the afternoon and cooked some steaks on the grill for dinner and just chilled.

The next morning we got up & took showers(the showers/br facilities were actually decent) and ate breakfast. Omlets & bacon. Yummm...the missus is good at that. Then we went to the park office and checked out a couple of inner tubes. Only $5 each and they were nice - handles and everything. So we took them to the upriver portion of the river(right by the 1st dam) and got in. Strange thing; we actualy started floating TOWARDS the dam that the water had just flowed off of. Not much of a current but it was there and we had to paddle against it. After about a hundred yards or so we decided that it wasn't working so we bagged it and got out. On a hunch, we got tried again down stream at the second dam after lunch and guess what? We floated up-stream quite nicely. Go figure. We had hamburgers & hotdogs for dinner.

The next morning we left dodge. I thought that the whole camp thing was rather boring as you probably can tell.

We then went to San Antonio and saw The Alamo. We will always remember it;-) This is the second time that we've been to it and it never ceases to amaze me how small it is. Not much to it really. A medium-sized room with some small ones, a couple of which are arranged as shrines. A good-sized gift shop though. We got a few pics while we were there that I'll post later.

After spending an hours at the Alamo we did a session at the LDS San Antonio Temple. It is a very nice & beautiful temple. A very well designed & constructed 'smaller' temple that the Church builds in addition to the larger ones.

Then we went and visited the missus' sister(K) at Heart O' the Hills Summer Camp for Girls where she is a counselor. K seemed deleriously happy to be there for which we were glad. K is head of the art program there.

Then we made the looooong drive home, courtesy of yours truely. Lots and lots of diet mountain dew. Lots of stops for urination purposes. We stopped once for dinner. Anhyhow, we finaly pulled into Denton around 3am Thursday morning. Its over. Yay.

Life Explained

Nash's MVP Trophy

A follow up on my last post

1. Its a data drive, windows xp is on another drive
2. In 'My Computer' it show up as a drive but when I click on it a box comes up that says; 'This Drive is not formated. Do you wish to format it now?' I called a local shop and the guy said that that meant that it was a bad hard drive.

My hard drive went bad this week. 10 years worth of photos(vacations, family reunions, holidays, etc) as well as my huge iTunes library - gone. All gone. I know I should have been backing up regularly(which I preach to others) but I really got caught with my pants down on this one.


I'm not very happy right now.

My wife got me a remote car starter for my birthday. It is super cool. I can start the car before I exit the apartment, before I can even see the car. Ditto for the horn & locks. Oh yeah, that's good stuff.

I got my wife an iPod Nano for her birthday(our birthdays are 4 days apart). She seems to like it. 100% flash memory - no skipping. The perfect mp3 player for working out.

My maternal grandmother's birthday is today. I sent her a card and talked to her on the phone tonight. She seems to be doing really well. She is such a wonderful person.

Woman ditches wheelchair, flees police

This story amuses me.



http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/11/wheelchair.runner.reut/index.html

I get too wound up sometimes when posting on message boards, mainly Cougarboard. Maybe I'm just wound too tightly anyways. Whatever.

The wife is looking for a position at another school. She's an Elem PE teacher but she wants a change of scenery. Also, I work close to Dallas and commute 35-50 minutes a day and we want to buy a house closer to the city. Her current school is a pretty poor one and many of the students have no or very little parental support. Not much in the way of a budget, either. She can put up with these things but she's just ready for something different. She seems to like being a PE teacher. I think that it would drive me stark raving mad, though.

My job situation remains unchanged although I had an interview 9 days ago. I haven't heard anything yet and I take that to be a bad sign.

Shawn Bradley & I(I'm 6'7", BTW).

Taken in the Spring of 1991 at the BYU Deseret Towers basketball courts. It was Shawn's Freshman(& only) year at BYU.

Keeping Emergency Rooms in Business

Oklahoma City
Day 2

The primary task that we wanted to get done on Tuesday morning is to attend a session at the OKC LDS Temple. We got there at 9:30 or 10 and had to wait for the 10:45 session.









We did get to do the session ok but it was rather tedious. I was waiting for 45 minutes or so and there was no chapel so I resorted to pacing up and down the hallway. There were a few other things too but I won't discuss them here.


After we finished at the temple, at 1:30 or so, we went to the National Cowboy Museum. There was SO much stuff there, some of it even interesting. There was an 'Hollywood' section, a 'rodeo' section, a 'calvary' section, and several more that I can't think of right now. Pretty interesting. Also, there was and extensive Native American bead art exhibit that was moderately interesting.

I took this photo out in the foyer. I had the wife stand in front of it to make it clear how humongous this statue is:




Then we had some bbq for lunch and it was on to the 45th Infantry Division Museum.

This was really interesting to go through although we only had 20 or 30 minutes until closing time. The interior(no pictures) had a large firearms collection, a nazi memorabilia room, US infantry vehicles, canons...all sorts of stuff. I wish that we had had more time to look through it all.
Outside was just as interesting though; there were all kinds of US armed forces vehicles & aircraft on display.







It was really cool to see all those vehicles.

After that we picked up some dinner and headed back to Texas. It was a nice getaway.

We're Back from Oklahoma City!

So we got back from OKC Tuesday night after 2 days of a rip-roaring good time. Not riproaring, really, but it was still an ok trip.

We arrived Sunday night after a 3 hour drive from Denton. I hadn't slept in more than 24 hours but we seemed to make it ok thanks mostly to copious amounts of diet Mt. Dew. It worked. We got to the hotel(Holiday Inn Express) and were too exausted to do anything else so we just watched tv.

Day 1
Monday we set off to get on the water taxi but got lost on the way there. We found the Alfred P. Murrah building museum & memorial, though, and spent a couple of hours going through that. It was quite a sobering experience hearing the stories of the survivors & the ones who perished.

The memorial:



On each end of the body of water(very shallow - at the most an inch deep) there were stone walls. One bore the inscription of 9:01 and the other, 9:03. 9:02 is when the bombing occured.


Another part of the memorial are the metal(bronze?) chairs that represent those who lost their life in the tragedy:



The upper left hand part of the picture where the chairs are is where the bomb went off. As you go left to right the chairs represent those who died in each floor.


Except for these chairs which represent the five who died in nearby buildings:






This tree was planted in gratitude for all those who came from far wide to help with the disaster recovery effort:



About 4 that afternoon we mosied over to downtown okc and the canal that ran for a mile or 2 though a section called 'bricktown.' From there we took the water taxi and the mini tour that came along with it.



As far as I could tell, Bricktown consisted mostly of restaurants. Those were the shops that were open, anyways. The canal ended at a Bass Pro Shop. Bricktown(and the canal for that matter) seemed like a lame attempt to artifically make downtown okc somewhat interesting.

The Pro Shop was pretty cool though. They had just about everything there related to fishing or camping. The coolest thing to me was the giant aquarium that was there.



I'll bet that it really helped with business.
They had several different kinds of 'fishfinder' radar equipment. Essentialy(from what I could tell) it could scan the bottom and tell you exactly where the fish is. Doesn't seem very sporting to me.

So we went out of the Pro Shop to meet the water taxi right on time, at 5:10 just like the driver told us. So we waited. And waited. Finaly at 5:30 we guessed that the taxi had already come and gone so we started walking. The canal really wan't that long anyways. So we walked over to the Sonic world hq building and went in and wandered around a little bit.

There was nothing to see, really, because everybody had already gone home and they didn't give tours anyways. We did go to the adjacent 'sit-down' Sonic restaurant and had some ice cream. They had booths and tables and we ordered by using this phone that was at our booth and they brought the sweet yummy goodness out to us.

Then we walked up the canal a little ways and were getting bored with ourselves. Then we spotted a movie theater(Harkin's) and decided that that would be a fun thing to do. We saw, 'The World's Fastest Indian' which was a fun movie. I was really impressed with the theater. Retractable armrest, big comfy chairs, and the chairs also reclined some. Primo movie watching conditions.

After the movie(which was a 6:40 showing) we went to Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill. We like the name so much that we just had to go.

Toby Keith has a hit song called, 'I Love This Bar',BTW). It was nicely themed restaurant with a projection of Toby Keith videos playing overhead.

Later, they switched it to a live tv feed divided into 4 secions on the screen(4 diff channels). I liked the videos better. The food was ok but not great.

After we were done there we found the car and went back to the hotel.

I understand that the city is proud of the canal and bricktown but I just didn't think too much of it. An otherwise enjoyable day.

Oklahoma City Bound!

My wife is a teacher and since next week is her spring break we thought that it would be a good idea to get out of town for a couple of days. We kicked around some ideas about where to go until I mentioned that I had wanted to see the federal building memorial in Oklahoma City as well as go through a session in the temple there. It was only intended to be a passing idea but she really liked it. So OKC bound we are.

We are leaving Sunday sometime. I already have the hotel reservations(Holiday Inn Express - ff miles!) made. It could be a fun trip although I understand the okc is not the first thing that pops into people's minds when they are considering vacation destinations. We'll get back Tuesday evening.

A some interesting-sounding things from the okc convention & visitors bureau website that piqued my interest:

National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum
Oklahoma City National Memorial and Memorial Museum(Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building memorial)
Water Taxi of Oklahoma
45th Infantry Division Museum

It'll be nice to get away for a while and it sounds like there are plenty of interesting things to do & see there.

Yeehaw!

The following 15 Police Comments were taken off of actual police car videos around the country.


#15. "Relax; the handcuffs are tight because they're new. They'll stretch out after you wear them awhile."

#14. "Take your hands off the car, and I'll make your birth certificate a worthless document."

#13. "If you run, you'll only go to jail tired."

#12. "Can you run faster than 1200 feet per second? In case you didn't know, that is the average speed of a 9 mm bullet fired from my gun."

#11. "So you don't know how fast you were going. I guess that means I can write anything I want on the ticket, huh?"

#10. "Yes, sir, you can talk to the shift supervisor, but I don't think it will help. Oh, did I mention that I am the shift supervisor?"

#9. "Warning? You want a warning? O.K., I'm warning you not to do that again or I'll give you another ticket."

#8. "The answer to this last question will determine whether you are drunk or not. ! Was Mickey Mouse a cat or a dog?"

#7. "Fair? You want me to be fair? Listen, fair is a place where you go to ride on rides, eat cotton candy, and step in monkey DOO."

#6. "Yeah, we have a quota. Two more tickets and my wife gets a toaster oven."

#5. "No, sir, we don't have quotas anymore. We used to have quotas, but now we're allowed to write as many tickets as we want."

#4. "Just how big were those two beers?"

#3. "In God we trust, all others we run through CPI C/NCIC.."

#2. "I'm glad to hear the Chief of Police is a good personal friend of yours. At least you know someone who can post your bail."

And.................... THE BEST ONE !!!!!!!

#1 "You didn't think we give pretty women tickets? You're right, we don't. Sign here."

I'm down to 249 lbs! Yay for me. It seems like I was hovering in the low 250s for forever. I ultimately want to end up under 240 and maybe even less.

Its progress.

It was announced tonight that the guy who sits behind me at work got another job and is moving on. He's only been here a few months. I am jealous.

I'm taking a class at the local community college; "How to Buy, Lease, & Manage Rental Houses for Profit." I've been interested in real estate for about a year now but haven't really done anything about it. I guess I'm an unmotivated cad or perhaps just scared. That's a lot of (my)money to play around with. So I'm taking this class finally and it is informative. So far the teacher(a local real estate pro who has many properties of his own) has talked about the history of the re market in the dwf, including recessions and bubbles, depreciation tax advantages, some scams that are currently going on in the area(as well as a past one), and he talked a while about the recession of 1987, why it happened, and how it just killed the real estate market nationwide for several years. That may all sound dry to some but I found it quite interesting. There are 3 more sessions to go(for a total of 4 sessions). $89 for the whole class. Not bad, eh?

The wife and I are pondering over where to go on vacation this summer. Of course we could LUUUUUUUUV to go back to Hawai'i again(we went last summer) but we don't have the requisite ff miles(which is what we used last year) and neither of us wants to drop the considerable coin that the trip would cost. My idea was to go to the east coast and take in the colonial/Revolutionary war sights. Philadelphia, Boston, etc. And that sounded fine until I found out that Philadelphia was 1500 miles away. Yikes. That's quite a drive. I don't mind flying but we're not that into spending a lot of money on the heels of our Hawai'i trip. We're thinking about going to Big Sur or another of the many parks in Texas and just camping for a week. Maybe rent a jetski. Another idea was to go to Florida and check out the beaches & sights. Something to think about.

Does anyone read this? I've been on the air for several months and still not a single comment.

Dennis Miller, The Rants(1996)

I really enjoy Dennis Miller. The way that he thinks everything out and then strings his ideas together while all the time making the whole situation seem absurd, just breaks me up. He is a very intelligent comic(although that seems an inadequate term for him) who has a unique spin on the country and a unique way of explaining it. I got this audio book last week and have already listened to it 2 1/2 times. I prefer this book in audio format because its even funnier when Dennis deliver the lines.

Warning: Miller has a bit of a potty mouth. He uses the 'f' word about two hundred times in the course of the thing(gross estimate). I still think that its funny and introspective but maybe its not for everybody because of this.

Excerpt:

"The media just claim that they are doing their job, feeding the news apetite of the American people. And I guess that its not really their fault that we happen to be bulemic in that area. The key thing we must all remember about the OJ trial is that it is trial by flurry. Lawyers on both sides bicker incessantly over matters that have precious little to do with discovering the truth. This thing is going slower than Jimmy Stewart reciting the mahabborada on the back of an arthritic tortise that is munching a quaalude on a humid Sunday afternoon in a hammick hung between two trees in the intensified gravity of the planet Jupiter. And despite the fact that our belief in the American legal system has been stretch thinner than Robert Shapiro's conscience, we are simply going to have to wait for the cheap gears of justice to grind a decision out of this fake wood peppermill. But I for one am through will this trial and I have been for a long time. He's guilty. You know it, I know it, we all know it. So wait for sweeps week, schedule the jury's decision after Seinfeld, announce that he's guilty and throw away the f***** key. You're a PUNK OJ, you're a bad guy. You go to hell.

Of course that just my opinion. I could be wrong."

The World's Longest Trailer Mounted BBQ Grill - 87 Feet

We sighted this one while we were visiting my parents in Magnolia, AR(population just under 11K). We were just out one day on the highway that runs along the east side of town:




I thought that the rocket look was a nice touch.


This is the kind of thing that causes you to crane your neck around after you've passed it(and hopefully not have a wreck in the process) which is exactly what I did. Later, I went back and took some photos. I met George Black, the gentleman who built it, and had a very nice conversation with him. He said that it was 87 feet long and the longest trail mounted grill in the world. Here's a webpage that explains it more fully.








Anyhow, I took some pictures of that one as well as some of the many others that he had built.






This one has a metal hogshead mounted on the front. It shoots steam out of its nostrils when a button is pushed inside(Mr. Black performs the task here).






It had never occured to me that someone could/would make grills in so many shapes and sizes.







This is one that he made out of a riding lawnmower

I mentioned earlier that I have 2 music degrees, neither of which I use. I didn't care about that for a couple of years but now I'm kind of getting a hankering to play again. The Messiah was fun to do and reminded me what it was like to play great music. Last year I played with the Denton municipal band for a few rehearsals & a concert. The band really wasn't that good and I wasn't playing(practicing) between rehearsals and I didn't sound very good. What I would like to do is play in one of the community orchestra around here. The horn player who sat next to me during Messiah said that she and her husband played for the Flower Mound symphony. For some reason, that sounded really good. There are two obstacles: 1. I am still rather out of shape. and 2. My blasted work schedule. The 3rd or 4th week in Feb I(and the rest of the shift) go back to the Thur-Fri-Sat & every other Wednesday 7am-7pm. #1 could be largely cured by a month of steady playing. #2 seems to be just the way it is. At any rate, the work schedule is really handicapping me getting back into performing.

Incidentaly, my work benefits are changing for the New Year. There were/are $10 copay for drs visits & inpatient hospital visits and $100 copay for er visits. 100% of everything after that was covered. On the 1st my insurance will be $250 deductible(or $500 per family) and 80%-20%(meaning that I will be responsible for 20% of all medical expenses after the deductible is met. So the philosophy that needs to be employed here is 'don't get sick.' And if you do get sick you had better not need to be admitted to the hospital. Here is the way that the company explained it to us in an email:

'Each year, we carefully analyze our benefit plan design and cost to balance our ability to hire and retain top quality associates with our ability to competitively price our services. This balance is critical to Perot Systems’ continued success—as an employer and service provider. Based on this evaluation, you will see changes in the structure of the 2006 health benefits plan design. Our competitive research revealed that the market trend is moving away from plans utilizing co-pays, and replacing them with deductible and co-insurance plans. Our revised plans will reflect alignment with this market trend by providing a choice of plans with varying levels of deductibles and co-insurance.'

I shall do you a favor and translate this:

'We looked around and saw that other companies were getting away with phasing out copays so it looked like a great time for us to do it as well. After all, it saves you, uh...I mean us, a LOT of money.'

One of the few good things about working here was the great benefits. Not anymore.


On the sunny side of life the, BYU men's basketball team is 7-3 after clobbering Eastern Washington at home 97-66. I'm not reading too much into the good start by BYU as most of their wins haven't come against good competition. We'll all know more after the game against Air Force next Thursday. BYU plays Tulsa(4-6) at home on Friday but they don't look too strong as of yet.

I got bored the other day and started up looking up old roommates on the web and found this. We were roommates for 2 years in a basement that an older couple was renting out to us and 3 other intrepid souls. I'm glad that things worked out the way that he wanted them to. He looks very intellectual in that picture, huh?

We performed Handel's Messiah at the Stake Center Sunday night. It went pretty well from what I could hear and from what I've been told. A friend did tell me that the choir was miked wayyyy too much. Said that it was hard to hear the orchestra, if you can believe that. My wife said that she had a hard time hearing me and she only sat 7 rows back or so(and I play the trombone). It sounded pretty good at the dress rehearsal. The only thing that I can think of is that someone thought that the extra bodies in the audience would deaden the sound somewhat so they jacked up the sound a couple of notches. I wish that I could give a better first hand account but I was playing in the thing and not in the audience.

Still several audience members said that they enjoyed the performance very much. Also, it was great to play again. It felt good and it wasn't as hard as I thought to get back into decent(not necessarily 100%) playing shape again. The horn sitting next to me and her husband both perform with the Flower Mound Symphony Orchestra and it sounded like they have a blast doing it. I sure wish that I had the time to do something like that but my job schedule(nights) kills that idea right away. No fun at all.

Some background on my earlier post:

I graduated from BYU in 1995 in music education. That may sound ok to most but the problem was that student teaching pretty much convinced me that high school students are manipulative bastards and killed whatever desire I had to teach. I felt that I leaned more towards performance(trombone).

So I went to graduate school at the University of North Texas. It started out poorly and never got better. My auditions didn't go so well right off and I didn't get placed in the ensemble that I would have liked. Things got better in those regards but I never got into the ensemble that I want. In retrospect, it looked to me like you made a good impression right off or you were screwed. Its a HUGE college of music(biggest in the country last I checked) and once you were pigeonholed, that was it. I take responsibility for some poor decisions that I made while there at school but there was definitely that aspect. My (trombone)teacher & I got along pretty well for the most part and I actually worked for him for a while doing music copying work(I learned Finale while I was at BYU. That really helped me with cash to get through school. He was great in those regards. We had a bit of a falling out towards the end of my time there due to some deception on his part. I graduated with a MM in 1998. But just barely. I was sick of playing the trombone by that time and I was just tired of the whole thing. Surely some of you can relate to that.

Anyhow I decided I wanted to take a break from music and do music copying and some web page construction. Neither of those worked out very well; the copying was inconsistant and I wasn't all that good at the web page thing.

I was basically unemployed for about a year.

Then I met someone who was in my stake(a group of LDS congregations is organized into a stake) that worked for Perot Systems. He was really sold on the company and I was enthusiastic about getting into a technology based corporation. If you think of what the economy was like in 1999 then you might understand. Anywho, I talked myself into a job via a recriuter and they agreed to place me in the mainframe tape library, night shift. At the time all one needed to do , seemingly, was get a foot in the door and work hard and opportunities would present themselves.I did just that and got moved from tape ops to the command center after 7 months. I was moved to various platforms(Data General, Mainframe Operations) before I was moved to my current position: mainframe cycle management. Everything was going well & I seemed to be moving along and then two things happened. The stock market crash in October of 2000 & Ross Perot stopped actively managing the company. Ross Jr was in charge and I don't think that he was much interested in it. Anyhow, the end result was very low annual raises(usually 2% across the board) and limited upward mobility. Everything just froze.

About a year ago I got some hope of moving into the project management field within the company. It was a hot occupation(and probably still is) and the company offered internal classes. Then I went to see him on the morning of January 4, 2005 to ask if I could work on some on some of what whatever projects might be going on to get some experience. He seemed to think that that was a good idea and said he was glad that I told him that I was interested in that field. He would be glad to help. So I left that meeting hopeful, happy, & upbeat. I went back to my regular job and waited. And waited. After several weeks I emailed him a couple of time following up on this and got no response. Then I asked my shift manager(the guy on the same shift as me who also reported to the 'boss' in question. He said that he hadn't heard anything. After a couple more weeks I emailed my boss asking if I could apply for begginer type PM/Coordinator type positions within the company. No response.I asked my shift manager to follow up with him. The message that the boss gave him was 'He can apply but tell him if he does then he's going to be out of a job.' Great. I went to HR to make sure that my job was safe and then I sat down with my shift manager and my boss. Basically nothing got changed except that he said that I could apply for jobs without getting canned in the process. Gee, thanks. Problem is, I have no experience. Hmmmm....seems like we talked about that earlier. I should add that he hasn't let anyone in my shift take another job in the company for at least three years.

So I sit here having worked nights for 6 years, in a job that is killing off my brain cells, with no possibility for advancement, sitting next to a guy for 12 hours at a time who is both immature and has no repect for me(but that's another topic), and I commute 40 minutes a day(each way) to do it all.


But I have 2 music degrees.

This just in: MY JOB SUCKS!!!

7pm-7am mainframe cycle management.


Please let me know if you know of any openings for a person with 2 music degrees who has experience in mainframe ops & cm. There may be a chili's gc in it for you.

BYU 34, Utah 41

This was a tale of two halves. BYU came out lethargic and unable to execute their way out of a paper bag. Utah recoved a fumble(that was ripped away from Tahi) and returned it inside of the BYU 5 and punched it in from there. Also, Bronco took a pass on an easy field goal attempt and elected to go for it. The 4th down play failed. Score at halftime? 24-3, yewtah.

BYU came out on fire in the third quarter, scoring 3 tds in the period. They followed it up with 10 in the fourth, but it just wasn't quite enough. It went to OT but the yewts took advantage of BYU's porous pass defense and BYU couldn't score when it counted. You can read about it here.

Oh yeah, the yewts players & fans flooded onto the field and their band kept playing during the postgame ceremony honoring the BYU seniors. Isn't that nice?

BYU 35, Wyoming 21

I got to see this one with my Dad while visiting my parents in Arkansas, about a 4 hour drive from where we live in Texas. It was a good visit with the folks topped off by watching a nice win by BYU.

BYU clearly outplayed Wyoming in the first half, scoring 14 points in each of the first two quarters. Wyoming put together some nice drives but turnovers really killed them. It was BYU 28, WYO 14 at the half. The third quarter was pivotal as Wyoming scored a td to bring themselves to within seven. After they forced a BYU punt, they drove all the way down to the BYU 9 yard line and were on the verge of tying the game....before fumbling the ball. BYU recovered. BYU then drove 93 yards to reestablish the 14 point lead.

The story of this game was 5 Wyoming turnovers(0 BYU turnovers). Wyoming moved the ball very well but the turnovers just killed them.

The most astounding individual performance of the night belonged to Justin Luettgerodt. Luettgerodt recovered 3 Wyoming fumbles and had an interception as well. I'm not sure how someone would do this even if they tried. Three fumble recoveries in one game? That's just incredible. This almost makes up for that biffed xp snap in the TCU game.

It was somewhat disconcerting to me that BYU didn't score in the 4th quarter and only scored 7 points in the second half. BYU needs to assert itself and be better at putting teams away. I fear that the BYU offense may have lost some momentum. I sure hope not. On the other hand, the defense deserves some credit for holding Wyoming to 7 second half points.

Now on to Utah.

BYU hasn't beaten Utah since 2001.

Utah is without its starting quarterback(Brian Johnson - knee) & its leading receiver(Madsen - ankle). Both got hurt Saturday in the utes home loss to New Mexico. I felt sorry for BJ - knee injuries just suck. I'm sorry that they got hurt but I'm not sad that we don't have to face them Saturday, either. Johnson is an excellent qb. Due to these key injuries most BYU fans are wildly (over)confident. I am not. Utah always prepares very, very well for BYU - even in the years that they aren't doing well. I am quite sure that the Utah players are preparing for this game with a focus and effort fueled by the white-hot hatred that they feel for BYU. You can read more on my feelings about it here.

So Utah is without a couple of key players but I have every reason to believe that they will be well prepared for the game saturday. It should be tough, especially if BYU is overconfident(which they very well might be). I hope that they practice with a sense of urgency this week.

Yeehaw!

BYU 55, UNLV 14

I don't get to see many BYU games(being in Texas and no ESPN gameplan availble through my cable provider) but someone I met through CougarBoard graciously invited me over to watch it. He had a nice setup - a projection tv(a projector hooked up to his satellite signal) which used a blank spot on the far wall as a screen. The projector was directly overhead from where we were sitting. It was very nice. I brought the chips & soda.

The team started slow but UNLV turned it over a couple of times(via interception) deep in their own territory and BYU seemed to have no trouble scoring inside of the redzone. It was 27-7 at halftime after BYU scored 20 2nd quarter points. You can guess the rest.

It was pretty cool watching the game in such a nice setting but I sure was bushed by the time it was over. My work schedule has screwed up my sleep schedule to the point where I often get really tired in the evening. The game didn't get over until after 6pm Saturday evening and I was lucky to get home in one piece. Its a solid hour drive from Rockwall(where I watched the game) to Denton. Still, it was great to be able to see the whole game and to see the Cougars do so well. 2 more games to go - @Wyoming and at home against Utah.

Winning either one would clinch BYU's first winning season since 2001. Winning both would be better, of course. 7-4 would be an attractive record to shop around to the bowls. I, unlike some on CougarBoard, am not going to assume or predict victories in either of these games. BYU lost too many games in the first half of the season for me to be too confident about victories from one week to the next. Every week, I just kind of hold my breath and hope for the best. Call it 'The Crowton Effect.' Anyhow...

I think BYU has a good chance at Wyoming but Laramie is a difficult place to play in so I'm afraid that the Cougars may stumble here. I sure hope not.

I'm not even going to try to call the Utah game. They have really had BYU's number the last few years. They have a good passing qb and BYU's pass defense has been really porous. Good news: Utah's running D has been equally porous and BYU has a HUGE(think 310 and go north from there) offensive line and a couple of pretty good running backs. Utah really hates BYU, though. Really. Quite a bit more, it seems to me, than the other way around. This often translates to BYU preparing like its just another game and Utah preparing like they are on fire. BYU shows up a step slow and hands made out of clay and then Utah goes crazy; long pass plays and long punt returns and the like. And home field advantage doesn't seem to matter that much to BYU in this game because the schools are less than an hour apart and Utah always travels well to BYU. If BYU can control the clock by moving the ball with the running game it will improve their chances of winning quite a bit.

Here's hoping that we win out!!!!!

GO COUGARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm a big Star Wars Fan.

and.......






ROTS is out TODAY!!! Yayyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't wait to see all the extras, how they filmed the scenes, how the made the special effects, interviews, etc. Should be cool.