(I wrote this at 4:00am on Saturday morning.)

Hi, all!

It's been go-go-go land here, so I apologize for not writing or generally being more present or responsive. I have been reading here and trying to comment where I can, but that's about all I can offer for the next 8-9 days or so.

We are now just a few days away from Beatlefest 2019. It's going to be the same format as last year, in the same location, etc.

The biggest change for me is that instead of using three enormous 3-ring notebooks full of sheet music, I'm trying to use my new tablet that I bought expressly for this purpose. I struggled so much last year juggling several percussion instruments and having to turn pages, so I needed something electronic with a bluetooth foot pedal. I labored over my decision, and I chose the Boox Onyx Max2 Pro, 13.3" e-ink tablet, so it's crazy-light, and easy on the eyes, and displays a sheet of music at full Letter Page size that my 48-year-old eyeballs can read.  I've been using this amazing app called MobileSheets Pro which is everything you want in a music-performance device. 

Sadly, the app blew up last night (Friday night, just 11 hours ago) and I lost 4 days' worth of the notes I transcribed from my paper notes from last year. I am heartbroken. The app developer is ridiculously responsive, so he may be able to salvage some of it. I am not hopeful, but we're trying.

It's very late (or early, depending on how you view days)-- I've been trying to fix this since 5:30pm and now it's 4:09am (good morning, Jenn!). Today (Saturday) we core-band BeatleFest people move into the venue and get everything wired up for sound, and then we run a quick sound check with the core band.  Then the strings, horns, and Indian musicians come in Sunday to get them wired up and rehearsed.  

And then we start Beatlefest on Monday! 

In other news, my iron levels have crashed, but I go for an infusion on Tuesday (yes, a Beatlefest day). That was the fastest they could get me in, so I'll take it... and hopefully I'll be feeling magically awesome by Thursday night when I really need to be thinking clearly. It's remarkable how fuzzy my brain is when it doesn't get oxygen. 

Away we go!

It's so hard to live a life through the constant filter of physical pain. It's so hard to explain it as well.

It's not even a bad day today, just having some nostalgic moments on a warm summer evening, and I know there was a time I lived and moved freely and without this thing tugging at me, in my back, my legs, and tonight, my arms and neck and head.

I once sat without any awareness of my body at all. I sat in the air and just *was*. I hear music or remember a moment and it surprises me how far from that I am.

Just putting the thought down on paper, not for any particular reason.

music: The Smashing Pumpkins - "Soma"

mood: nostalgic

There's quite a bit about life that could be improved, and where we're able, we're working on it, but I am very happy to be sharing it with the person to whom I've been officially married for sixteen years today. SCHMOOP.

I feel reasonably confident we'll make it to the next power of 2, thirty-two thanks to good health and a stable living situation. If we make it to sixty-four, I'll just state my wish that it not be with significantly lessened quality of life.

If we actually hit one hundred and twenty eight, I will assume we've been at some point uploaded into solar-powered robotic carapaces clattering around the searingly hot, wind-scoured remains of human civilization, making a living wrenching the last few bits of rare earths required to keep ourselves alive. I wonder what kind of sex we'll have?

We look back at the Apollo 11 mission and see a triumph of human will, technology and daring. But at the time there was a chance that it would all end in disaster. Setting aside the prior Apollo 1 deaths of three astronauts, Gus Grissom, Roger White and Ed Chaffee, in a "plugs out test" of the Saturn V rocket and the Apollo Command and Service Modules. There was a single, critical piece of equipment that could not be tested until it was time to use it. Specifically, the Lunar Excursion Module's ascent engine. The LEM descended with a more powerful engine on it's descent stage. But rather that tow all the weight of the descent stage, NASA engineers decided to leave it behind and only ascend to rendezvous with the Command and Service modules with a much lighter ascent stage carrying the astronauts and the moon rock samples.

Of course, Murphy also had to intervene. In the tight confines of the LEM, either Aldrin or Armstrong's life support pack broke off the push button that would activate the ascent engine. Aldrin used a pen nib to push the button and the engine activated, but I can't help but imagine that the atmosphere in the LEM was pretty tense as they approached lunar liftoff.

Tension in the White House was also pretty high. As William Safire wrote this speech for President Nixon to read;

IN THE EVENT OF MOON DISASTER:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dare to send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern time, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

My Blackberry KeyOne's battery has been bulging uncomfortably for about 6 weeks now. I didn't feel right bringing it on our trip to Portland this past week... I remembered that Samsung Galaxy 7 phones had bulging batteries that would asplode randomly and were prohibited on planes, so I took my cue and tossed my SIM into my previous phone, my Blackberry Priv. 

I looooooooved my BB Priv. It's a slim phone, gorgeous screen, has a slide-out keyboard so you don't even have to use the keyboard if you don't want to (though I always want to). I stopped using it because the battery got shot and wouldn't hold a charge for longer than 5 hours or so, which isn't do-able in real life. Worse is that I dropped it one time with it plugged in and janked up the charging port, so the thing only charges wirelessly. This wouldn't be a problem if it held a charge for a decent amount of time.

Anyhoo, I brought my doesn't-hold-a-charge-long Priv with me to Portland and just kept it in airplane mode unless I actually needed it... and HOLY CRAP how liberating! How fabulous not to be constantly interrupted with bullshit! 

I don't have the self-discipline to not look at it (even with notifications turned off), but with the sucker actually in airplane mode I was able to be much more mindful about my phone usage. It was painless. 

Now that I'm home, I still keep the Priv in airplane mode unless I need it, and my bulging KeyOne (which is wifi only/sans SIM) is in a drawer, and I only use it if my Priv's battery is Bill.Bixby.dead.dead.dead. 

I made an appointment with a friendly local business guy to replace both "non-replaceable" batteries late next week... it'll take a week for the batteries to arrive. (Strange that he doesn't keep Blackberry Priv or KeyOne batteries in stock /s). 

Anyway, I'm really enjoying being more mindful about my phone use. My friends and family are puzzled as to why my usual speedy text reply-time is now delayed by half-days, but this was fine in 1995 and it's gonna be fine now. I shouldn't be that important to anyone. :-)

In other news, my iron levels are officially in the shitter. If I had more time, I'd explain how my iron was in the shittter 2 months ago but not quite shitty enough where insurance would justify an infusion, so we had to wait until I'm gasping for air like a goddamn guppy out of water like I finally am now. It's weird that I have to "look forward" to getting so shitty so I can get fucking treatment. I hate it.  With any luck I'll be ironed up before Beatlefest.  (Last year I did not get an infusion until after Beatlefest, which was a giant mistake.) Let us pray to the scheduling gods that they can fit me in within the next 2.5 weeks. 

In other other news, our trip to Portland to make music with Sunnyvale was amazing, inspirational, beautiful, and magical, and I'll tell y'all more about it soon. But now I must shower for I stink. 

for the cat hair and potting soil that blew onto the painting that was drying on the balcony... it actually sort of works...

The Folio Society is having a 50% off sale on over 160 titles!  It ends on July 12th.

Thinking of you, Beth Adele!

I finally bought the book I have been vulturing around for over a year ...

African Folktales collected by Roger B. Abrahams.

When I was a kid, one of my teachers from kindergarten through first grade was a professional African Storyteller.  Her name was Linda Goss, and not only did she involve us in the interactive process of listening to her stories (call and response chants, answering questions), she also directed some of us in a performance of one of the trickster tales.  We performed it at the local childrens' museum (the Please Touch Museum). Ever since then, I have felt a particular attachment to African folk tales, particularly stories about Anansi the Spider, the trickster who'd put all tricksters to shame ... if only he'd been able to get out of his own way.

I don't remember where Linda's stories originated - if they were tied to a particular country or region.  I was a shy little kid and I was excited to play the Rabbit in the show.  My friend Jenny played the Monkey. I remember crouching on the floor covered in a brightly-colored print and being rabbity, and I remember Anansi.

I've been looking for books of Anansi stories or of just African Folk Tales for years, and they are surprisingly hard to find.  Or maybe not surprisingly.  Anyway, I found one, and the table of contents is maddeningly NOT on the website, but the description gives me hope that Anansi will be inside, eating himself sick and trying to pull one over on his animal friends.

I guess I haven't been keeping up to date with my cellular network protocol lingo. I just always thought that Verizon's network  was CDMA and everyone else was/is GSM. Since I've been on Verizon since my first work-issued on-call cell phone in '99, I just always remembered those four letters (CDMA) as the letters I needed to look for whilst phone-shopping, especially lately for phones bought off Amazon versus phones bought from Verizon directly.

But apparently I'm stupid and old, because CDMA I guess is the old shit, and LTE is the newer/current thing... and Verizon is shutting down its CDMA infrastructure soonish.

If I'm understanding things correctly (I read a whopping one article, so take this info with a giant salt lick), CDMA is what runs the 3G network, and that's what's going away. If you have a 3G-only phone, you will be required to get a new phone. If you live in a place with sketchy 4G/LTE service that falls back on 3G constantly, then you'll have also enable WiFi Calling after 3G/CDMA goes away. And if you're someplace without WiFi, I guess you'll have to eat a dick? 

Verizon's new thing is VoLTE, and it looks like new/current phones need to be able to handle VoLTE ("Voice over LTE"), which also delivers their HD Voice service featuring unicorns and rose-scented farts.  

(I'm so classy today!)

Of course, Verizon will not acknowledge that their cell tower got smashed during a freak 2014 hailstorm here, and within 20 minutes we North Wilmingtonians all went from 5 glorious bars of delicious 4G service to maybe one bar or the dreaded No Signal Triangle. Repeated calls to Verizon and coordinated efforts by neighbors have yielded no fixes, but Verizon is happy to sell you a signal booster/network extender. 

I'm all about no longer supporting ancient stuff, and eventually ripping off the Band-Aid and forcing people to upgrade (*cough* she writes from her physical keyboard phone *cough*).  But I'd rather not be forced to upgrade to something where the supporting infrastructure is broken. 

So maybe it's high time to jump to TMobile or something.  I'm forgetting why I thought staying with Verizon was important. 

Sources: 

https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/knowledge-base-218813/

https://www.fxtec.com/forums/topic/fxtec-on-verizon/#post-18556

I sat and had tea with Roger's mother (and Roger) last night, and it was so reminiscent of sitting at the kitchen table with my grandmother, I felt a little teary inside. There's a bit of an age difference, so I didn't want to offend her by comparing her, my boyfriend's mom, to my grandmother, even though there's about 15 years difference. Past 80, I think it's fair to stop reminding people they're past 80.

Anyway, it was a cool night, and she likes to make tea, and I ended up awake til 5am but damn if it didn't feel so much like coming home after a long time away. I was pleasantly surprised by this. I guess most times we stop by there's a bunch of folks there, or it's mid-day and her shows are on, but yesterday ended up with just the three of us, and we sat at the old worn out kitchen table* that reminds me of mine, inherited from my own grandparents not that long ago, and had tea.

We talked about Leh's, and she showed us old glasses and bits of advertising on swizzle sticks of places around Allentown, PA that are long gone. She can be a funny lighthearted lady. She can tell a good dirty joke. But she can also be stern. Her grown kids don't cross her. She still runs her house with the long arm of a parent with Presence. She nursed her bedridden husband for four long years before he passed. Her boys are Pretty Good People and very devoted, but also kind and helpful to everyone in general.

And she talked about how she cleaned her floors every day, and dusted all her furniture, with six people in the house every day and that lit me up pretty good. It was my first time really finding a connection with her. I helped her clean her vent grates and we talked about how hard it was to see the quality of our cleaning go downhill for health reasons. It's funny because we had gone so Rog could spend time with her, and I ended up kinda getting this huge nostalgia hug, with bonus bonding.

I think the first time I spent any amount of time with her, almost two years ago, I was a little intimidated. Here I was blowing in off the heels of helping her son's best friend through cancer, and who knows what she thought about what had been going on (and we certainly didn't fill her in), but it didn't seem to matter, and there we sat, this time four of us: me, Rog, his sister Linda, and her, and played some Gin Rummy. I was rusty as hell, but I ended up winning the first game and she the second and all in all it was a good few hours of just sitting and talking and laying down cards. I can't sit for long in a chair, and this was before the second back surgery (though it's not any better now), but it was an easy feeling, one I hadn't been aware I'd missed until I was aware, you know?**

Oh, and the house has bits and bobs in every nook. A row of Scottie dog statues next to a ceramic garlic braid, one that's in everyone's house from a trip to Italy years ago, along with the daughter's amazing paintings, and pictures of weddings and growing kids, stuff crammed in everywhere. It's a home that's been the same family home for an entire lifetime, and it's amazing to me. I've been going there for 2 years, and while I knew right away his family was a good kind, I hadn't seen past to the heart of it, and that is that they were the old-fashioned, close, traditional family unit that somehow stayed together to the end.

In my life our childhood home disappeared at 10, and my closest parent (my dad) moved out of the house we maturated in in our 20s. My mom sold her home and moved states away. There's no childhood home for me. And no one took up the mantle. Not for long. We're all scattered. Trying, but spread thin and getting thinner. Still a family, just... different. Not as close. No bits and bobs.

But there they are, doing The Thing. And it's nice.

Sit down. Have some tea.

*Anne Mollo I'm thinking of you. :)

**My writing skills feel so rusty. I'm also feeling Penna Dutch-y as I'm writing, and I know it's from talking with my nextdoor neighbor awhile today.

Today I'm editing a review of a microphone made specifically for podcasters. My supervisor wrote the article. The mic is called the Podcaster, and it's made by Rode. He opened the article with, "At our office, we have more Rodes than the Roman Empire." 

In the summary paragraph, I added, "It's a colossus among the podcasting-tool hegemony."