While driving to Blue cliff monastery, I heard on the radio that today in 1941 the definitive recording of Take The A Train was recorded today. This tune and it's popularity put Billy Strayhorn on the map.

Drove to Blue Cliff Monastery for a day of mindfulness. Today was different than my last visit in December. Today seemed to be more work and required more of my attention during the Dharma talk. The talk was also 90 minutes with no break so concentration also be came a challenge. I was also internally challenged in a new way given what's going on these days. Nonetheless I'm glad I attended and will probably go in another six weeks. This seems to be the most reasonable attendance track for me at this time. I might in the future stay a weekend.

Home by 6:00 and rest for 30.

I go out to dinner to meet old friends. Old friends from the late 60's to early 70's.

This was a great dinner and meeting. We had so much to talk about when we were kids. It was great fun. We hung out for two and a half hours remminising. We talked about all the bands we played in - we were all musicians at the time. One is still a professional musician.We decided we will do this again in another month. Looking forward to this.

Home at 10:50.

Posting at 11:11

during Sunday's YGT meeting break Kevin was talking about joining facebook. Couple of days later, I thought I would check it out. I joined yesterday and today I spent some time looking for friends.I then got responses from others who want to be my friend. Seems pretty cool, I was all surprised to see how many family members were already on to befriend me. The next thing is now I have to learn how to navigate this how to contact people. And what's the best way to use facebook.

Today's been a fairly gray day weather wise, but the temperatures up so it's not horrible. Somewhere in the mid 40s. I'm hoping that this will be how the remainder of winter continues.

during a break today, I forgot to go out and buy a FireWire cable.

Weekend catch up

Saturday morning gave guitar lesson - looks like we will be on every two weeks.

Sunday was Children's church - two new songs today - One was Michael Row the Boat Ashore - didn't realize this song has four verses.

Home by 10:00 leave at 10:30 to Goldens Bridge. I set up the Pro tools rig and then I did some work on the music binder for church. I had a lot of loose music so put them in these plastic sleeves to protect them.

YGT meeting from 12:00 - 4:00
Worked on:

Gallery of Ghosts, Continuing to get better
Clockworks - We did a lot of work on the transition from the A to B section - it's starting to get tighter.
Thru the Smoke and the Haze - for some reason I had a lot of difficulty remembering how many passes for each part. I think we got one complete take.

Roiling - This is a fast piece and moving from one section to the next is a challenge. We actually dropped the metronome by 2 bpm which surprisingly made a reasonable difference. I'm pushing for 10 bpm. Alan also came up with and idea for an intro using the C section of the piece.

Usually when I get home from these meetings I start to edit. For some reason I have a technical problem - The computer will not se the interface. So now I have to figure out the problem. First Idea is the firewire is bad. I called alto music and they suggested that one of the firewire outputs is fried. I also emailed digidesign and waiting to hear back from them. I might take the laptop to the apple store to check its firewire connector.


This morning was laundry.

I made one more attempt with pro tools but no luck.

Out at two for sessions at Goldens Bridge from 3:00 - 8:00

Beatle news! Today is the forty fifth anniversary of The Beatles first performance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

I remember being glued to the TV I was eight years old.

A day of rest and practice.


HBO put the wire first series back on demand so I watched while doing guitar work

This evening the family made home made pizza;s . Kai got a pizza making stone for christmans.

Makes good pizza.

Posting because I feel like it today.

A strange wide open day but busy. Twelve degrees this morning.

Three sessions one no show.

A number of phone calls.

Out to BJ's to get office needs.

Back to Goldern's bridge to make more phone calls and finish session

Home to make tea.

Posting at 10:23

Winter is starting to act strange. Mild and 45 degrees for most of the day. This evening after work I went to a sangha meditation meeting in Newburgh. At the end of the meeting there was heavy snow. A longer ride home because of this but the meeting was good idea to attend. Helpful.

Listening to Julie Fowlis and Sigur Ros.