cce blog

bad blogger

so i've been a bad blogger lately. like tom chi noted in his blog (8/26/03 entry), ironically i'm least likely to blog when my life is even just a bit interesting. plus NOT updating one's blog is much easier than updating it. as the list of stuff you've been meaning to write about increases, so, too does the groan factor -- "oh, man, i have to write about so much crap! i can't be arsed" -- and it feels more like a chore.

so let's review! the week before last, i was superbusy worrying about & practicing for a gig at the gallery of wearable art. guitarist-designer-painter-friend peter -- i used to be in his band the continental (mp3's) -- had recently graduated and moved down to the city, and rang me up for the gig, a red-carpet-and-models gala for the boutique's 20th anniversary.

however, unlike beijing, i didn't end up playing much trombone in hong kong. worse yet, because the gig was on the sidewalk (at the end of the red carpet), they wanted just two players, a trombone-and-guitar duet, leaving just me to carry the melody with my rust-encrusted chops. i suppose that's when i stopped blogging and started practicing.

after practicing a couple times with peter, i got restless during his solos (plus he had to keep playing periodic downbeats to keep the pulse from dying), so i borrowed a bass from my buddy elana in the army (who recently got married, btw) and walked some bass lines when i wasn't on the horn. instantly a whole new range of nice jobim bossa grooves (note: easy bass lines) & funk songs opened up for us. i'd play the head to, erm, jobim's "how insensitive," take a solo, then quickly switch to bass while peter began his solo.

note my head & tbn in the foreground

and that was the gig (photos)! it ended up being a lot chiller than i expected, and lots o' fun, free champagne, juggling instruments, etc. in all, it was a big wake-up call from my long-dormant inner musician -- "hey, you like this! do this more often!" jeff came up to inwood and sat in on the sax during one of our practices -- after not having played sax in a year -- and had his inner jazzman similarly invigorated.

since then i've been worrying about the CS GRE. it looks like i'm going to take a more serious run at applying for PhD programs than i did last year, so i registered for the upcoming november 8 test date. i took the practice test for self-diagnosis and got a 760 (82 percentile). now i have to review all the undergrad CS stuff (computability, complexity, architecture, languages, grammars, etc) that i thought i'd never need to remember. argh. i also will probably want to retake the regular GRE sometime in december.

so that's what i've been up to, apart from furnishing the apartment and slowly unpacking/rearranging (still). roommate michael wants to have a big halloween party. whee.

Posted by cce at October 6, 2003 05:29 PM | TrackBack