An Update (Can you Believe It?)

I guess I have been neglecting this blog. It's been, what, a month since my last post? Sorry about that. I really don't even have a good excuse beyond my own damn laziness. I've been busy lately, or at least feel like I've been busy. I can't say I've been working excessively long hours at work, or have any major projects sucking up my time. I have just felt very lazy lately and haven't really done anything about it. Perhaps I should get more sleep?

Writing has never been very easy for me. The act of gathering together my many scattered thoughts and ideas and putting them together into an actual cogent sentence takes some amount of effort and inspiration. I guess I haven't really felt very inspired in the past month. This is not to say that I haven't had stuff to write about. I just didn't know how to write about it in a manner that would be interesting and/or entertaining for the reader (that's you), and there's really not much point in writing about something if I am just going to bore you to tears with it. Of course, I probably already have done that, but at least I bored you with effort!

A couple weeks ago I went back to my old college (University of Minnesota - Morris, in case you were wondering) and attended Jazz Fest 29. I think I wrote about Jazz Fest last year, but I will give an overview of what this event is to prevent you from having to search through the archives. Jazz Fest is an annual event at UMM and is the biggest event on campus. It lasts 3 days, over the course of which the school hosts a number of high school jazz bands who come and play and receive critique and advice from clinicians and the guest artists invited in, who are very accomplished jazz musicians themselves. This year we had Chris Vadala (saxophone) and Allen Vizzutti (trumpet). Then, in the evening the college's own jazz bands (there are 4, plus a large number of small combos) give a performance along with the guest artists. The highlight, for the UMM graduate jazzer like me anyway, is the Alumni Band that gets to play during the Saturday night performance. UMM has an awesome jazz program and I think it's a testiment to that that so many of us are drawn to come back every year to be a part of it again, even if for only a couple nights. It was an absolute blast. It is worth noting that this is the first Jazz Fest without Doc Carlson, the great director for the Morris music program. Doc started Jazz Fest 29 years ago and had been going without break ever since. This year is his first sabbatical. Much deserved, but it will be good to see him back next year (not to say that the bands didn't sound great without him; the interim director has done a spectacular job this year!).

I also got to hang out a bit with my college roommate, who moved back to Morris last summer to work for the ambulance service. He has kids now. It was good to see him, but very strange for me to see him as a father, since I have lived in perpetual bachelorhood since graduation (incidentally, I'm available).

I have been on call this weekend, which has kind of put a damper on my fun. For those not familar with this concept, it means I get to carry a pager for work and wait for it to go off so I can go fix someone's problem. It doesn't usually keep one really busy (the system my group supports has gotten a lot more stable than it used to be), but it does mean I am limited in my actions, as the pager can go off at any time. Case in point, a bunch of people went out to a comedy show last night, but I couldn't, as a theater is not really where you want to be if you have to answer a page (we try to maintain a 20 minute response time). Of course, the pager didn't go off all night, so I ended up missing it for nothing. The pager would have gone off if I had gone though. It only goes off when least convenient, like at 7:30 on Saturday morning (2 pages at 7:30 and another at 8:00 yeasterday, grrrr...) or when you are ready to eat dinner. You might say the pager and I have a rather tenuous relationship. The least it could do is buy me some flowers and say it's sorry.

I'm not really sure if there is anything else to write about at this point. I mean, sure, there is stuff that has happened, but nothing that I think would be terribly interesting, or could be made interesting. I've probably rambled on long enough though. I'll try and make sure it isn't another month before my next update, but I make no promises.