Last night I watched the 1st half of the 3rd part of the Ken Burns thing about the Holocaust on PBS. Yeah the video's hitchy but it does work well enough. I'm pretty sure I can buy it for $40 on DVD and I might do that, buy some Ken Burns stuff as a way to support PBS.
While doing so, I got out the flute book, practiced a little, felt frustrated and got the trumpet out, got the first valve slide un-stuck (so it's good I got the thing out) and messed around a bit, then put it away and got the flute out again.
I was playing an exercise fingering B for C, duh. I leafed a couple of pages back and started there. The "Rockstro" alignment is taking a little adjusting to, but I can tell it's better. I played a couple of pages and that make an hour's practice.
A couple of days ago I did the math for the legendary 10,000 hours and I'd have to do 2.7 hours a day for 10 years to make it. In other words, if I started in right now at 3 hours a day, I'd be an "expert" at age 70. I don't know if I can do that, but that's the kind of practice time I need to become competent.
It's a great feeling when the tone comes out pure and practicing the same exercises an octave up, I'm not too worried about not being heard, when I play out on the street.
I went to bed and woke up around 1 with a call from Ken. He has covid so he won't be in this week. I said it's no worry, I've got money in the bank. He says he'll come in next week and the check will be for $1400. He also said he felt worse yesterday and for a guy with covid, he didn't sound that bad on the phone.
So I got up and did a few exercises and was having a croissant with butter and some baker's chocolate when there was a knock on the door. It was an inspector who needed to take a little camera thing around and check the dimensions of the shop and take photos of things like the bathroom and check where the power panel is, and he was a smiley guy who likes to bullshit so we had a great time bullshitting a lot and eventually his work got done. The new owner is having everyone sign 4-year leases and raising their rents, and the welding guy up the way was *not* happy, the inspector said.
Good old Putin has annexed, as far as he's concerned, some parts of Ukraine and he's drafting military-age males from there. Arm people who hate you, that'll go well. They're being mobilized with hardly any training and maybe there are some Russophiles among them but most will probably be looking for the first chance to slope off and join the Ukraine army. Even the Russians and Russophiles are a sad lot; a real bunch of Keystone Kops.
I packed the big thing and took it up to FedEx, and got yelled at for taking some green onions from the organic dumpster out back. I stopped by the EMT education place and picked up tons and tons of "Pain Away" pills that are a mix of aspirin, Tylenol, and caffeine. Guess they make the pain go away? I'll donate them all of course.
I stopped by Tom's and the light in the front room was on but he didn't answer my knock so he was out or passed out. I left at least half of the green onions and rode home, checking the "bountiful" dumpster which really didn't have anything at all. So I just got back in here.
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