In Which Ryan Is Outwitted By Various Native Birds
October 2024 | 5:10
Koopa says this story is very long and does not have enough tummy skritches.
What's Been Happening
September featured enough travel and variety that it can best be expressed through my standard love language; bullet points! Also if I'm honest, I'm still jetlagged enough that this will be very disjunct, so this gives me an excuse to call that an aesthetic choice. Anyways, here are random things from this month:
Did you know that you need an approved visa application to fly to New Zealand, even if it's just a layover on the way to Australia? My wife's colleague is now aware.
Koopa and Goomba have never been fed in their lives.
The kea is an endangered alpine parrot that is very intelligent, despite its propensity for eating the plastic casing off of car antennae.
New Zealand's roads and hiking trails are well designed and maintained, but I suppose if you live among a bunch of mountains that occasionally move or explode it changes your baseline definition of what constitutes "heights."
Koopa and Goomba would like food and attention.
Exchange rates are a great way to convince yourself that you're not actually spending money.
The "patupaiarehe" are supernatural beings from Maori mythology that predate European explorers reaching the islands, and are described as pale skinned human-sized tricksters with blonde or red hair that steal women and children. This is probably just a coincidence (looking at you, Dutch East India Company).
If you like hiking and are afraid of heights, get hiking poles. They're not magic but they make an unbelievable difference, to the point of being able to do trails I wouldn't even attempt otherwise.
Koopa and Goomba would like it known that we left them alone and they got no food or attention.
The weka is a chicken-sized flightless bird that is inquisitive and fast, able to steal entire packets of beef jerky when you're not looking and run very quickly through the bush of Abel Tasman National Park, then return and act like nothing happened.
The Oatbarton brew served at the Green Dragon in Hobbiton is one of the top 3 beers I've ever had. Context counts, but Merry and Pippen weren't lying.
Koopa and Goomba note that we are currently in the apartment with them, and yet still have not given them food or attention.
I could obviously go on, but the moral of the story is that New Zealand is an incredibly scenic country, and on top of that the people could not have been more welcoming or helpful throughout our trip. If you're at all considering going, I can't recommend it enough and I apologize in advance for bringing it up constantly for the foreseeable future. That said, it's great to be home and able to disappoint the cats in person, and I look forward to jumping into my writing docket as soon as I'm confident what year it is.
May your masks smell pleasant and your packages arrive without incident,
Ryan
Chart O' The Month
"Sabor" is a salsa standard that I arranged very early in my writing career for use with the University of Akron Afro-Cuban Jazz Ensemble, and this version is also referred to as "Tritone Sub-or" because of how I reharmonized the second half of the tune. As a chart it's mostly what one of my early arranging teachers lovingly referred to as a "cleverly disguised excuse to have solos" but that has also gotten it quite a bit of use over the years.
Most notably, it was the song I prepared to play for a master class with Arturo Sandoval (his commentary was, "sounds great; do you know a blues?"), and in Medium Ensemble lore as the "wine in a box" song. Since that obviously needs some explanation; we were playing a festival and the stage was next to the beverage station which had various beers on tap... and wine in a box, which had become a bit by the time we got to this tune. The words "wine in a box" fit a little too perfectly to the backgrounds (credit to Tom Matta for starting it), and thus the running joke that has kept going every time we've played the chart for the last 15 years.
Look, Nature!
This is a picture from my phone of Lake Hayes outside Queenstown in New Zealand. Besides the fact that it's incredibly beautiful, it's literally just somewhere we stopped on our way and this isn't one of the good pictures that my wife took... so that's the best way I can explain how incredibly scenic the entire country is.
Education Notes
This was probably the least amount of education-related things I've done in a month since I can remember, and the fact that it was September makes that even more unusual. It was definitely refreshing and I feel the itch to get back to work, so if you're scared of taking a long break at some point; don't be.