Q1 Resolutions Update

Back in January, I mentioned that I had two over-arching goals for the coming year. They were "to read more and record more of my own music." I actually had three, but I was keeping one of them under wraps. My third goal was to maintain, at least, and perhaps extend the weight loss I'd achieved in the fall of 2005. I hadn't mentioned that here as I feared I'd fail and have to eat a lot of crow. That's still a possibility, as I've found weight loss is a war you never truly win. It is, rather, a series of pitched battles where you and the opposing army fight to move the front line a few feet one way or the other for years.

Via email, I mentioned to my friend sjarvis that I thought the entire concept of New Year's resolutions was flawed and that if people made goals, they should make them quarterly, as businesses do, and adjust the next quarter's goals in light of the success or failure of the previous quarter. As a general rule, I have little patience for business concepts applied to personal life, but I think this one has legs. Steve liked the idea enough that he blogged his Q1 resolutions and a follow up about his results.

I never blogged my Q1 goals, but I scratched them down in my notebook and have had them at the forefront of my mind all year. They were these:

• Finish Pimsleur's French, Level 1
• Finish Russo's novel, Empire Falls and anything else decent
• Record and fully master one James, Not Jim track per month
• Get started on a print edition of Wheat's BassBook
• Keep the weight off

Though working on my French wasn't an official goal for the year, it's been a goal of mine for along time. When I discovered the Pimsleur method, I knew I'd found a way of reviewing and extending what I learned in college that would actually work for me. Since I have a twenty minute commute to and from work, these thirty minute lessons loaded on my iPod are the perfect thing. There are three levels, each of which has thirty lessons. The lessons focus a great deal on pronunciation--something my college classes didn't--and use repetition to help you get the ideas down solidly. I finished the last lesson of level one a week ago and am now reviewing the lessons to make sure I'm comfortable before I progress to level two.

The "read more" goal went very well. I finished Russo's novel and am now reading a collection of his short stories (I have one story left to finish it). I also finished Elie Wiesel's Night.

I didn't fare as well on recording my own music. I named my project, set up a web site and a MySpace account for it, and released one official track, "Ocean," and one unofficial one, "Soundcheck," that might get remastered and added to the list of official releases. I didn't think it was good enough, at first, but it's growing on me. I'm also very close to finishing another composition, called "Prodigal Son," but it's still not quite there. So I think my goal here was too ambitious. For Q2, I'm going to shoot for just two songs and see if I can make it.

I got a decent start on what will eventually be the print edition of Wheat's BassBook. I'm laying it out with InDesign and am looking into some self-publishing services, though I may try to shop it to "real" publishers as well. I hope to make a little money on it and I intend to build a companion web site for it to house the audio and, perhaps, video files that should go along with it but would drive up the price too much if I had to include them on a CD. It's been odd, after such a long absence from it, to do print design work. And it's painfully slow. I am essentially rewriting the book from scratch. I'm using what I can verbatim from the online version, but I've learned a lot since that version was conceived. I've been taking lots of photos, recreating all of the diagrams, and creating lots of standard notation examples with lilypond.

The best news is I've managed to keep the weight off. I'll devote a separate blog post to the specifics and some of the techniques and strategies I've learned. But I'm very happy to be at a much healthier weight. And I'm confident that I can, in Q2, push the ball a little further down the field toward my long-term goal [first martial metaphors and now sports metaphors--what has happened to me?].

Lowell's Blog...

Lowell Grisham, an Episcopal priest and Rector at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, has a blog. Though my shadow doesn't darken the door of a church too often, on a few of the few occasions that it has I've enjoyed Lowell's sermons. I've been on his email list since I left Fayetteville. He also writes a column in what used to be my local newspaper (the web edition of which is lovingly put together by my friend Steve). I've always found Lowell to be a very accessible person, one always willing to discuss things and not one who has a problem with you seeing things differently (a sharp contrast to the religious tradition in which I was raised). So I look forward to giving his blog a spin.

Cronenberg reconsidered

Back in July of last year, I swore off ever watching any more David Cronenberg films. The occasion for my oath was his film Spider, which is as beautifully shot as any of his others, but to me was a pretentious and overly drawn out affair. Well, now I have to eat some crow. My wife brought home A History of Violence and it is a truly great film. I enjoyed every minute of it. And the DVD extras that I've watched so far are also great. Every actor in the film turns in a memorable performance. I like the look of the film. And its message, as I take it, is also significant. All in all, I'm glad I watched it and I'd gladly watch it again.

Google Pages

Last night I found out my request to join the Google Pages beta had been granted, so I worked up a simple page to test it out. So far, I like it quite a bit. Seems like a great rapid development tool for simple sites.

This one goes to eleven...

Today is our wedding anniversary. Eleven years! I wish I'd flickered up some then and now photos, but I didn't. I have reservations at this place tonight. I've never tried it, so I hope it's good. Here's to eleven more [tips a caffeine free diet coke in your general direction].

My alma mater

Catching up on the email I left largely unread while on vacation last week, I found an email from my alma mater's alumni association which, among other things, contained a link to this news item about "a new tradition" (let the irony of that sink in) manufactured, no doubt, by the PR department: a wishing fountain of a hog. When I left the U of A at the end of 2003, creating "new traditions" of this sort--to increase bonding between student and campus--was beginning to be the new rage in certain quarters. It continues unabated. I'm a fan of statuary in general. But I imagine the green grass that this monstrosity now occupies would bring more grace to the campus. I long for a day when the U of A will put more emphasis on scholarship than sports. But I suspect that is never going to happen.

Updates...

Gina's been on spring break this past week and I took off several days from work to hang out with her and our friend Heather, who came to visit. This means we've had lots of chances to check out new restaurants and see new sites. We spent several hours walking the trails at the Magnolia Plantation & Gardens (and its Audubon Swamp Garden). The website doesn't do either one justice, but Gina took quite a few pix. I've uploaded a few to flickr and will add more soon.

Among the restaurants we've tried this week, all have been good but High Thyme (on Sullivan's Island) has been the standout. I had the seared tuna and a ceasar salad, both of which were superb. Gina and our guest had the gnocchi, which was also excellent.

New kid on the block...

Bass guitar wasn't the first musical instrument I ever played, but it is the one I love playing the most and the one with which I feel I can best express myself. I also play acoustic guitar, and I enjoy it, but I don't think of myself as a guitar player. I always think of myself as bass player temporarily playing guitar. I've never been in a band where I played guitar, though I've sat in on guitar with other musicians for fun. Last year, we had an event at work that required some musical entertainment. And a group of us got together for a few rehearsals and played a set of covers for the event. A bassist had already signed on, so I sat in on acoustic. We were well received, and this year, we've been asked to play again.

I decided to step out a bit and play electric this time around, but I didn't have an electric at the time, other than my weird old Kay semi-hollowbody--a guitar found in a dumpster and given to me by a neighbor, who thought I might fix it up and enjoy it. Back in the early 90s, I briefly owned a Squire Telecaster, so I started reading reviews on the net and found most people had high praise for the Squier Telecaster Custom. Since I'm not really a guitarist, I didn't want to drop a lot of money on a guitar. But because I am a musician, I knew I wouldn't be able to play something crappy. So the goal was to find something cheap that didn't suck.

After reading some reviews, I went to a local music store and tried out the Tele Custom; I liked it instantly. I'd always liked the 70s style Tele's, but I feared the humbucker in the bridge would ruin the classic Tele twang. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, on this guitar at least, it doesn't hurt at all. And, in contrast, soloing the neck pickup provides a really beefy sound, good for leads. The two pickups run together give a nice rhythm jangle. The instrument itself plays well and is suprisingly well put together.

Slumming on guitar provides its onw set of challenges. Since I'm a bassist, I'm used to pressing the strings down a lot harder than is necessary on the electric guitar. On the acoustic, this isn't much of a problem, as acoustic strings are fairly heavy anyway. But the Tele came with cheap, insanely light strings. After a consultation with my friend Page (of Vore fame), I decided to try some Dean Markley's on it. I gave their Blue Steels a shot. I bought a "JZ" set (short for "jazz," I think), which are 12-54's. They only make one heaver set in that line, the "DT" set, designed for metal guys who tune way down. I strung up and intonated the Tele last night. I have a rehearsal today, so I'll get to put them through their paces, but so far, I'm quite pleased. The sound, which was good even with the flyweight strings, is much improved, and I'm having a much easier time keeping it in tune.

Grey Bob (April 16, 1991 -- March 4, 2006)

Reading progress

I've been trying to stay on track with my goal of reading more this year (one of my two goals for the year). The anthology used for the freshman composition classes at my school contains a selection from Elie Wiesel's Night:



I liked it enough to put it on the syllabus this term, though I've always shied away from teaching anything related to the Holocaust. I thought I'd give it a fair shake and read the whole thing, as it's a fairly short book. I finished it a few days ago. And, while I grew a little tired of Weisel's stylistic over-reliance on fragments and rhetorical questions, I did like it and felt it was worth my time to read it. (And don't worry, my snobbish brethren: That Oprah's Book Club logo is just a sticker. You can remove it.)

Of Holocaust narratives, the three that I hear most often mentioned are the aforementioned, Night, Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, and, of course, The Diary of Anne Frank. I may check out some of Levi's work, as I"ve heard good things about it. I also would like to finish an interesting book I started years ago called Reading the Holocaust

But I'm done with history and high seriousness for the moment. I'm about half-way through Richard Russo's very funny Empire Falls and I'm trying to focus on that until I finish it up: