Concert Day

Another 4 am low blood sugar episode, reading 70. That was despite an on-time dinner and a generous ice cream dessert. That knocked me out pretty good, and when I woke up at about 9:45, Kaan was curled up against my back. Twice in the early morning (like 2 am and 3 am) Domino hauled herself onto the bed and sat next to my pillow. She was fine with me petting her, but as soon as I started feeling for mats, she made a hasty retreat.

I had plenty of time to recover, relax, put on my band uniform (black pants, polo shirt and baseball cap with band logo) and get there an hour before downbeat. Someone already had my parking spot, but the one behind was free, and the backup cam seriously helped my parallel parking.

The crowd was smaller than usual, I thought, but at halftime I saw that the senior center inmates had been parked in their lawn chairs on the stage right side, sort of in the shade of the big trees, instead of in front of us on the lawn in the sun.

It was an easy program except for the last two numbers, which were written way too high for Baritones. I was telling the guys that I was trading my 4-valve horn for a 3-valve, and they all thought that was silly, because the 4th valve is actually the same as pushing down valves 1+3, but with a cleaner tone. I tried it out, and they were right. But I'm used to and prefer to only use 3 fingers. The 4th valve really doesn't buy me anything unless I'm playing the lowest G in our range.

After the concert, an older man asked me when the next one was (the conductor made an announcement but it was kind of vague). He liked it so much he is coming all the way from Benicia for next month's. The vague part is we play the last Sunday of the month, the conductor doesn't always have the date burned into his memory. He did remind us that our next rehearsal is the 12th.

Just before our last piece I snapped a photo:


Went from there to the new Starbucks on San Antonio and stopped in at the office for the apartment complex it is in (which is still adding buildings). They want more for a 1-bedroom than I am paying for my over-priced 2 BR. $4k and up for the 2BR units, which won't be available till November. They are being scooped up by people from India and China.

There was a lot of eye candy at Starbucks. And I was stuck at a table in front of two Indian guys, one was tutoring another in programming for network communications, which was distracting because (a) I speak that language and (b) the tutor was being extremely rude, condescending and demeaning to his student.

But I was soon absorbed in my latest aroundtoit project, bought a 1-month membership on ancestry.com and started making a family tree. After a while it gave me info from trees which two of my first cousins had started, and there was one hint from a more distant cousin's free membership. But for the most part it was not impressive. It had no information on the son of my father's sister, who died in LA a few years ago, even after I gave it all the particulars it needed except his first name, which I can't remember. While it found most of my maternal grandfather's dozen siblings, it didn't find any of my other grandparents', which would have been about 20 more people, at least. My oldest and youngest sisters' marriages were there, but not the middle one. Not even looking it up by adding her husband's name.

Maybe it needs time to background search. I'm mostly on there to find out about my paternal grandfather's family, but it has nothing except his WWI draft card and a census record which says he was a plumber when my dad was 18 months old. It had his name, his wife's name, and both his sons' names spelled wrong. It got my uncle's name completely wrong (but it was only quoting the census taker).

I'll let it percolate a while before I waste more time on it.

Watched the 49er game, played it from the Tivo recording instead of tuning in live at the start of the 4th quarter. They do not look like a championship team, but there is some excellent talent here and there. Way too many stupid penalties. Late hits, showboating/taunting. A couple of the rookies need to be spanked.

Dinner while I watched, turkey & stuffing frozen meal with Tillamook mint chocolate chip ice cream dessert. Shot up the insulin before dinner, maybe that will help.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Fry's, return the bogus nexus case/stand
No BASFA, it will be a ghost town with most of the regulars en route to or at Worldcon