Stalled

I've been working on a blog entry for the past week, but can't yet get it off the ground. I've gone through several attempts at a beginning, but haven't been satisfied with them. It's not an issue with perfection, but maybe an issue of overwhelmingness. I think now I have an idea on how to say it, but we'll see. I'm gonna have to just keep it in draft form for now. So, on to other things...

The Kitchen
Vacation has been kind to me so far. Tina and I have taken advantage of my time off to prepare for baby's arrival. We've assembled the crib and set it up with a new mattress and crib sheets. I finished stripping the varnish off an old 4-drawer chest and after two coats of primer, finished it off with two coats of glossy white. (We've chosen all white furniture). We rearranged our room so that we could fit the crib, chest and our organizer cart into our little studio. We had to shift some of our clothes around to make more space for baby's stuff...who now seems to have more space needs than mommy and daddy!

The Oven
As for Tina, she's been holding up GREAT! What an inspiration to me cuz I know getting a swift kick in your ribs at any moment of the day can't be all that fun. I'm sure some of you moms can relate! Her belly is starting to lower too, so we are really really really eagerly anticpating baby's arrival!

The Bun in the Oven
Baby is now pointing downward in fetal position and is preparing to squeeze out into this world (ala Jim Carrey and the rhino in the 2nd Ace Ventura). Active as ever, we play the "oooh! what part of the body do you think that is?" game whenever baby decides to stretch out a limb or rearrange his/her position. Every so often, you can feel baby going through hiccuping fits!

The Baker
I've been enjoying my time off and have been taking full advantage of not having to work. I've gotten back on my exercise routine and am in week two of running again. I've been able to check off some things in my To Do list, so I'm being productive. We'll see how much more I can check off before baby comes!

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Holy Moly! and other idioms

Since Tina's moved down and our time together has increased almost 7 fold, my vocabulary has expanded to include some of Tina's sayings. For example, when things are going unexpected or something happens that deserves an exclamation, you will now hear me say something like "Holy Moly! What's going on?" (of course intonated as a third grade teacher might do so).

Now if you've known me for awhile (haha...or even the first day of meeting me), then you know that although I exercise good constraint, I can launch a vitriolic tirade of cuss words here and then. If someone is razzing me in good fun, I usually have no qualms with volleying a nice little "Man...Fuck you!" along their way.

So it seems a bit odd to hear myself saying "holy moly!". In fact the other day, while fishing with one of my high school buddies, I saw a big 24" trout surface from the depths of the lake to grab a bug. I was startled and exclaimed, "Holy moly! That was a big ass trout!". As soon as the words left my mouth, I thought to myself, "Wow, that sounds kind of odd." My buddy confirmed my suspicions with his own quizzical look that read "did i just hear you say holy moly with the phrase big ass?"

Oh well. I suppose with the baby on the way...it's better that I start watching my cussing and put a little more effort to speak in 3rd grade diction.

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Getting in the Zone

This weekend, Likha will be performing in the opening weekend of the Ethnic Dance Festival in San Francisco. Since my last missive about losing my musical chops, I've been doing several things to help me get back in the groove.

First and foremost is forefronting it all. With all the responsibilities that comes onto our plates (work, family, school, etc), sometimes some responsibilities need to be given higher priority. That's what I mean by forefronting it all. It makes a big difference for me to simply DECIDE to make it a priority. And for me, this means not just saying "Yeah, yeah...I'll do it" but more of "Damn, I had better do this...".

Second is more practice. You can't get to the NBA Finals or the Stanley Cup or to Carnegie Hall without it. Last Sunday, musicians had a gruelling practice. We haven't played that much strings, especially with these new challenging songs, in a long time. But after five hours of playing, the harder pieces were no longer as hard...so repetition and time on task paid off.

Third is immersion. When I first started playing percussion and even string, I would listen to our own or others recordings over and over. If you rode with me in my car, you would here gong music coming out of my speakers. When I go to bed, I would fall asleep listening to Rondalla music. Learning to play music is like learning to speak a new language. How do you learn a new language? Well the best way is through immersion, living it, breathing it, crapping it!

The piece we'll be playing this weekend if from the Bagobo tribe of the Philippines. Our musical instruments include agungs, a tanggunggo (a hanging set of eight graduated, embossed gongs), music of a kudyapi, a kubing (jaw's harp), and a few bird and bug whistles. We picked up this piece from workshops with the Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group in the the Philippines.

The dance we play for depicts a rice planting and harvesting cycle.

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