In Which Ryan Shares Some Dumb Things
October 2023 | 4:10
Koopa has noticed a pause in his strict 24/7 tummy skritch regimen.
What's Been Happening
I would say that this month was a nice change of pace, except that strongly implies that the pace of anything changed. More accurately, I've done a much better job of making sure I'm doing a wider variety of things and enforcing some breaks while still emitting my usual firehose of self into the universe. In the name of said variety and since this is usually a space where I or others expound on success, here's some dumb things I've done this month:
I had my first "nope, we're throwing this out" dinner in at least a few years due to a pepper I thought was mild and instead was nuclear enough to take out an entire soup.
I briefly and inexplicably stopped skritching Koopa's tummy.
Did you know the Padrón pepper has a random 5-10% of the fruits that are hot rather than mild? I sure do now.
I thought I would remember my list for the store without writing it down, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
I read a news article about a political subject.
I remembered that if I'm chopping onions and peppers there's a specific order to having my contacts in and then taking them out, and then got said order exactly backwards.
I drove about 20 miles through cornfields (on roads) before realizing my GPS was frozen.
I spent about an hour trying to figure out why a section of music didn't sound right, and it's because I had modulated without noticing and then was having an ongoing harmonization argument with my ear that was pretty sure I should be in the new key, and my intellect which was really sure I was in the old key.
At one point, I was sleeping instead of refilling the dry cat food silo that was only a quarter full.
I'm not sure there's a moral here other than to recognize the ups and downs for what they are especially when we usually only hear about the extremes, and look out for that outlier Padrón pepper because it's a doozy.
May your masks smell pleasant and your packages arrive without incident,
Ryan
Chart O' The Month
Considering the amount of writing I do, especially for big band, I was kinda surprised when I thought about it and realized how few of my charts have actual professional studio recordings. Obviously part of that is the general decline in true studio records for large ensembles and my lack of impetus for making one myself, but even with that it's odd that this might be the only track.
So, an even bigger thanks than usual for Bob Lark for not only commissioning this arrangement of his tune, but then recording it on the groups' debut album! For anyone who doesn't know Bob, he was the longtime Director of Jazz Studies at DePaul University in Chicago including while I was there for grad school, and his alumni big band features many of the great musicians that have gone through that program. This chart in particular features Bob along with trombonist Craig Sunken, and as you would expect the band sounds great so if you haven't checked out the rest of the record please do so here.
Look, Nature!
This is a normal sized woodpecker in Calaveras Big Trees State Park (giant sequoia included for scale).
Education Notes
If there's a single phrase that's come up more than any other as I worked on education related things this month, it's "comparison is the thief of joy". The problem is, the truth of the statement is only matched by the necessity of comparison to any kind of actual learning. If there's a guide I've found to balance the two it's this; recognize the necessity to steal some joy as an investment in learning, but make sure you're leaving something left. You can't steal something that isn't there any more than you can plant seeds you don't have.