*whew*

It almost happened again. Just barely over a year after I was rear-ended by a soccer mom, I almost had an incident with another one, and this one would have legally been my fault.

I was headed from the college to the store this afternoon, turning left from Spring Creek onto the southbound service road of 75. I could hear the sound of a siren behind me, but I wasn't sure where it was at first. As I went under the freeway overpass, I could see that a fire engine was behind me, but there were several cars between me and it. My goal was to pull over after making the left turn--for which we had a green arrow--just in case the fire truck was turning left also. It seemed like a good enough plan...

...Except for the fact that the SUV in front of me suddenly stopped. That's right, she stopped, partway in the act of making her left turn, right in the middle of the street. I slammed on my brakes, my tires made the appropriate screeching sounds, and my car spun ever so little to the right. (It goes without saying that I screamed the usual obscenities in the process of all this.) What was she thinking? Did she not have a clue that there were cars behind her (thankfully, nobody was that close behind me) or that, if the fire truck had wanted to turn left, that the middle of the intersection was not the appropriate place to "pull over" out of the way, that in fact we would've both quite possibly gotten run over by it?

Thankfully, she realized the error of her ways rather quickly (hmm, perhaps the sound of my screeching tires gave it away) and got on out of there, freeing me up to do the same. I actually felt a bit of tightness in my chest for a second, but it wasn't in the "heart area" and was likely just a by-product of the momentary tensing-up of my muscles. Needless to say, the couple of errands I was going to run before teaching at the store got put on hold; instead, I had a relaxing stop here, just because it was there.

Oh yeah, and the fire truck didn't even turn. It went straight. We wouldn't have been in the way at all...unless the soccer mom had caused me to run into her. I was happy to dodge the bullet on that one, but what's up with this particular time of year lately? Julius Caesar had to beware the Ides of March; evidently, I have to beware the Single Digits of that same month.

A work of art on multiple levels: So you're a young jazzer and you're hoping to build your musical library using iTunes or burned CD's? John Murphy says you should think again, because you're missing out on a lot when you don't have the actual CD package to hold in your hand. This especially pertains to the liner notes and cover art, which often are on a level of expression that is equal to that of the music itself. I totally concur; before they had all those cool jazz history courses at UNT (many of which are taught by John), a lot of my early jazz education came from reading the liner notes during my radio show at KNTU. While I originally did that to have something intelligent to discuss on the show, I realized later on how much it helped me as a student of the music.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: (This is the closest I come to "liveblogging," but the AIM conversation with one of my musician friends while I was typing this post contained some blogworthy moments.)

FRIEND: Hey, did you ever get really frustrated with your playing...like "why do I suck so much?"
ME: Every day of my life, dude.
ME: (And no past tense in that, either.)
FRIEND: It's just like the littlest bit of improvement I can see, it opens up a million more things that I see that need work.
ME: But hey, if we didn't keep searching like that every day, our music would grow stale, and 'comfortable,' and worthy for airplay only on the Oasis.

(For those outside of Dallas, the Oasis is one of those "smooth" radio stations...eww.)