Practice last night went well, and I'm progressing in the Rubank book. I noticed when I was having trouble hitting the high notes in the exercises, if I thought about keeping my chin just a bit flatter, it cleaned those notes right up.
It's not even tensing it up, just thinking about it and there being a bit of "support" and things start working out much better.
I'm considering "splashing out" as the Brits say on this one Gard brand short cornet case I've found online, that's a bit over $100 with the shipping, this one Yamaha short-shank cornet mouthpiece that's named after one of their sponsored players, that's $61 plus whatever the shipping it, probably another $10-$15, and one or two of those little Protec mouthpiece pouches that used to be everywhere for $10 and are now more like $20. I still like 'em a lot though.
I packed All The Things(tm) last night, practiced, got some sleep, woke up around 2 in the afternoon (had my alarm set for 3) looked at the weather, yep still pouring, went back to some sleep until 5, then had my coffee and nuts and took off for the post office and FedEx and timed things well; I only got rained on coming back.
I'd stopped at H Mart on my way back from the post office and gave them their package and it had started raining again. So I went in and bought a couple of things, and when I came out it was still raining so I went back in and found a couple more things to buy, then when I went out at least it was raining less.
It was nice having nice clean dry clothes to change into back here. I guess when I'm back in Hawaii I'll be renting a room from someone and in that respect I'm going to miss all the room I have around here. I'm not going to miss the work, though.
Since I'll be just turned 65, I'll be able to do things like sign up for classes at the university without having to pay more than a token fee, and that opens up things like being able to use their practice rooms, and being around the campus in general.
I also plan to join the musicians' union which isn't that big a deal here in California, maybe a bit more of a deal in Los Angeles, and really only a big deal in NYC. But in Hawaii it may well be; they have their own building and recording studios and have get-togethers and building maintenance days.
It will be a bit of a shock after having had one routine, working for Ken, for so long. And I expect to burn through a lot of money. First I'll be staying in a hotel until I can find a room to rent and that may take some time. I'll be back to how I lived as a young adult, when I didn't do a lot of cooking for myself but ate cheap stuff from Foodland, the local supermarket chain I even worked for at one time.
I got back from being rained on, hung my jacket up in the loft, changed out my other clothes and fixed up a cold-cuts dinner of cheese, sardines, olives, and the 2nd half of a big batch of kim chee cole slaw I made a couple of days ago.
Then I packed All The Things(tm) again. I have to be ready to go when there's a break in the rain.
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