Recovery and Renewal

Camp was great; it probably ran more smoothly than any previous year despite having more people than ever before. Even with five big bands, the concert only lasted two and a half hours last night. I was really happy with how my band played, and I think they all enjoyed themselves and learned a lot. (And for whatever it's worth, my band bought more CD's of last night's performance than any other band, which I thought was pretty cool.)

As I promised in an earlier post, I slept past noon today...in fact, way past noon, finally crawling out of bed at 1:30. G called me a punk for doing that, but I reminded her just how seldom I actually get to sleep that late, ever. It's impossible to catch up on a week and a half of too little sleep in one fell swoop, but I do feel much more rested now than I have recently.

The downside of camp being over meant that this was the first day that I was actually home during the daytime since the A/C broke at the house last week. I've dealt with it this long by not being there except to sleep, and the sleeping part was made bearable when Angie's dad (an A/C guy himself) loaned me a window unit for my room. The rest of the house, however, topped out at 90 degrees this afternoon (it's a really weird sensation to walk from my room to the living room and just feel the temperature rising), so, needless to say, I spent most of my time in my room, which is also really weird.

The other result of the hot house was that I didn't do much of anything except for watching a Rangers game on TV. I ate dinner out because I didn't want to heat up the kitchen any more than it already was by cooking, and when it was still 89 at 10 p.m., I chilled (literally) at Starbucks for a while. I'm really hoping that the home-warranty repair guy can make it on Monday so I only have to deal with this for one more day.

Despite all this, the heat did not keep me from my primary mission: Day One of the new "practice every day for a year unless you're out of town" commitment that Halfling and I made on Thursday. I obviously moved my location from the studio to my room, but I got it done and may well do some more in a bit. This first day was critical; if I could actually practice today, a day after a week of musical immersion, I can do it tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day...if this was a test, I passed it. There will be challenges during the year when I get really busy, but I really, really want this. Even if I don't hit the level of my camp-faculty section-mates within a year, I'll still be way better than I am now, which will only help me and the new combo we're about to launch.

And don't worry, even though I'm reexamining some of my priorities to allow for this extra practice time, this blog will definitely not go away or even decrease; I enjoy this outlet, and the online community that it's built, way too much. Other lesser diversions may fall by the wayside a bit, but Kev will continue to muse.

It's "cooled down" to 88 now; I think I may go play a bit more.

UPDATE: Halfling has done a night-by-night rundown of the camp concerts; I may do the same in a day or two, just because I've never done that and because it'd be cool to chronicle everything from my side of the stage.

Merging two parts of the Trifecta?? Krispy Kreme is evidently coming out with a liquid doughnut. Cool or scary?

(via Dave Barry's Blog)