How about that? It's 2008 and time for a new useless blog by me. Today's story is about recent happenings.

So my Christmas present finally arrived from my parents (they sent it Express Mail on Wednesday and didn't get to my post office until Friday). Due to postal office hours being fucked up, I was not able to pick it up until this morning. My gift consisted of a nice shirt and a new MP4 player from Overstock.com (the price was right and the specs on the site matched my requirements). I charge the device up and load it with some tunes. As soon as I unplug it from my computer, it no longer wants to turn on. Arrgh!

Now I'm probably going to have to ship it back and hope they can give me an exchange. Then again, if that fails, my parents said they would get me a different one, I'm thinking a Zen would best suit my needs.

Also, this weekend, I have been very busy in rehearsals for the next show I'm doing down in Arlington. It's called The Wild Party, based on a novel length poem. It's a pretty jazzy show, but we have a really cut-back orchestra: 9 pieces (4 reeds, bass, drums, 2 pianos, and me on trumpet). It really needs a second trumpet and a trombone, but we're managing to cover a lot of the missing parts.
The cast is great, and we're looking forward to opening night on Friday the 11th.

We don't have an orchestra pit, we're out in front of the stage, nearly in the laps of the audience. I hope we don't drown them out.