the days are pretty much runnin' together now. i think it's saturday, but i could be wrong...
i'm sittin at a starbucks in nassau, where i'm using the internet for the first time in like 4 days or something like that? it's weird how quickly i lost track of time and days of the week.
thangs have been pretty good for me. i've met a ton of new and mostly cool people. i've actually done surprisingly well at remembering most of their names too. i'm learning that a ship is really just a small community floating in the ocean and people generally look out for each other.
i got off the boat yesterday in freeport and ventured to a resortish place called port lucaya. i tagged along with the musical director, will, and the sax player from our band, erick. after a somewhat terrifying cab ride that nearly ended in a head on collision, we visited some restaurant that served steak and ale pie bc will is from england and was craving a taste of home. he's a pretty funny guy. while we were waiting for our food he used his watch to shine a ray of light in some guys face who was sitting across the room from us. he did so for a good 15 minutes, laughing the whole time as the guy was trying to figure out where it was coming from. he eats really fast too. him and colin would probably be best buds.
musically things have been okay. we played 3 shows yesterday, the last two of which were clicked and tracked production shows. they were long shows and hung in the upper register for the most part, but i think i hung in there okay. it was kinda sad, though, to hear the other horn parts in the track and realize that these boats used to have much larger bands. i heard some pretty cool bass bone parts... i asked will and he told me they used to hire 3 trumpets, 3 saxes, and 2 bones. now it's one trumpet, one sax, and one bone.
welp, i think that's about it for this post. starbucks is gettin' pretty crowded now and i should probably give up my seat as i've been here for a while. i kinda feel like roamin' around anyways. thanks for readin'.
love,
james
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
day whatever (4?)
Day 3
Part 1
Sittin at the Miami aiport in the boarding area for my flight to key west and felt like writin’ a little bit. I have no internet and am typing in word, just incase you’re wondering about the unusual amount of capital letters in this post…
So yesterday went as planned. I basically watched tv, practiced, and played a little poker. I gotta tell ya, football is much more tolerable if you mute the tv and have an instrument in your hand. I don’t mind watching football, but the commentators can be so annoying. I also saw some of the bewitched movie with will ferrel and Nicole kidman. I didn’t even know it existed until last night. Did anyone else see this? It was a total chick flick but I didn’t care because will ferrel is just that amazing. I also saw parts of a lord of the rings movie and walk the line.
Well, the lady at the front desk thing just warned me that “they” are famous for not getting luggage to key west with the passengers… awesome. So I’ll just show up without my tux then? That’ll go over well don’t ya think? I sure hope she’s wrong. I guess I’m a little nervous though because I had to go back out through security to get to this concourse, and it was quite a trek, which means my bags probably have a ways to travel too. F.
Well, I see people coming off the plane I’m supposed to board so I’d better wrap it up. Hopefully I’ll have some more interesting things to write about in the next few days. Not sure when I’ll have internet next so this post may be a little dated by the time I get it posted.
Love,
James
Ps –I’m gonna smack all 5 of these chads sitting next to me if they don’t quit being so chaddy. And if I hear Kenny g destroy another Christmas song in this airport, I’m probably gonna puke.
Part 2
Well, I made it to the boat. The plane I took from Miami to key west was a little bigger than my car with no overhead compartments. There was no door or even a curtain between the cabin and the cockpit, so I could see out the front window from where I was sitting. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pilots were younger than me. I was a pretty fun flight because we over a bunch of swamp looking land, then we flew by the nasa launch pads, then finally over the ocean to the keys. It was a beautiful day too. The key west airport was the smallest thing I’ve ever seen. There was one little carousel for the luggage and like one rental car place. I found a taxi to the boat and enjoyed a nice ride through what my driver told me was ‘old key west.’ It was a pretty cool lookin’ neighborhood.
Getting on the ship was relatively easy. Luckily I had luggage with me and the people in charge could tell I was boarding the ship for the first time and directed me where to go. After some paper work the musical director, Will, came down to meet me and show me around. He plays keyboard and is from England. Seems like a nice guy so far… when he was showing me around the boat all I was thinking was, ‘yeah, I’m definitely gonna get lost a few times before I figure this out..’ and I did. As soon as he showed me back to my room, my roommate took me up to this place where I could get some food. He explained to me that the staff was only allowed to eat in this certain restaurant at certain times and that I should bring my food down to the crew mess hall. I found a slice of pizza and basically walked around with it for a good 10 minutes before I figured out where the hell I was. Yeah, so imagine being a guest on the ship and seeing an employee wandering around with a slice of pizza on a plate, looking completely lost. Not only did I feel like a complete idiot, but I was afraid some high ranking officer or whatever was going to see me and ask me what the hell I was doing. I did manage to find my room and just ate my pizza there instead of in the mess hall, probably breaking yet another rule.
So I hadn’t been on the ship for even an hour until we had our first rehearsal. We have two shows tonight, one at 8:30, one at 10:30 and had a quick run through at 3:45. The guys in the band seem cool from the little time I’ve interacted with them. It was a relief to finally get the horn on my face and realize that I’m going to be just fine on this stuff. I’m actually more worried about getting in trouble from breaking some silly rule than I am about screwing up my parts.
Well, I may end up writing a part 3 after the shows tonight, but right now, I gotta go get some food. Some guys from the band just stopped by my room so I’m gonna go try to sit with them while there’s still room. It get’s pretty busy in the crew mess hall from what I hear.
Laters,
James
Day 4
Sheesh. Where to begin? Guess I’ll start with the shows. Basically, they were a lot of fun. We played for an entertainer named Tia Thompson, a comedian, whose name I forget, and a little schtick the cruise director did. The music was pretty straight forward and my parts didn’t go too high (which I guess is kinda my main concern, bein’ a bass trombone player and all…) we played “I Wish” for the walk on and walk off of the comedian and it totally felt like I was in a late night show band. I didn’t have a part, though, so I had to read off the trumpet player’s music, which was luckily just a C treble clef lead sheet. I’m sure I would have been okay if I had had to transpose, just because that’s a tune I already have in my ear, but it was nice to have that added pressure. The only other difficulty I really had on the gig was seeing the MD (musical director). I sit on the end of the horn section so he’s directly down the line to my left and there’s very little room for me to move to a place where I can see him. I think I only missed one cue last night because I was able to pick up on the fact that he was watching the performers on stage, so if I did the same, I’d probably be right.
In the second show, when the comedian was kinda telling the audience about himself, he mentioned that he did his undergrad at Eau Claire. Every ounce of me wanted to scream ‘gooooo blugolds!’ making a complete ass of myself, but I refrained. I want to be myself and have a good time out here, but there’s so many f’n rules and etiquette and crap that I haven’t yet figured out what’s okay and what’s not, so my default is to just keep my head low and not attract any attention.
Now writing from a starbucks in Nassau…Gosh I hope my roommate was right about the boat leaving at 9pm….
So it looks like I get cell service here? Hmm….hopefully I’m not being charged a million dollars a minute. I best figure this out.
Ok, so after the shows I went to the crew bar to hang for a bit. I didn’t stay long cause I had to get up and be at some safety thing at 9 this morning. Safety thing basically consisted of me finding my way to this room I had been shown once, walking into this smokey office where some officer with a really thick accent of some kind made me watch a video. I now know what to do when drunk people fall overboard, which I guess is good because there are a lot of drunk people from what I’ve seen so far. One thing I hate, though, is not being able to understand all the accents. Hopefully it’ll get better the longer I’m here but it sucks to look so confused all the time and ask people to repeat themselves constantly because I couldn’t understand them.
Well, I this post has become waaaaay too long so I’m gonna stop it here. No idea when I’ll get internet again, but I’ll probably have more to say by the time that happens. Miss you all.
Love,
james
Part 1
Sittin at the Miami aiport in the boarding area for my flight to key west and felt like writin’ a little bit. I have no internet and am typing in word, just incase you’re wondering about the unusual amount of capital letters in this post…
So yesterday went as planned. I basically watched tv, practiced, and played a little poker. I gotta tell ya, football is much more tolerable if you mute the tv and have an instrument in your hand. I don’t mind watching football, but the commentators can be so annoying. I also saw some of the bewitched movie with will ferrel and Nicole kidman. I didn’t even know it existed until last night. Did anyone else see this? It was a total chick flick but I didn’t care because will ferrel is just that amazing. I also saw parts of a lord of the rings movie and walk the line.
Well, the lady at the front desk thing just warned me that “they” are famous for not getting luggage to key west with the passengers… awesome. So I’ll just show up without my tux then? That’ll go over well don’t ya think? I sure hope she’s wrong. I guess I’m a little nervous though because I had to go back out through security to get to this concourse, and it was quite a trek, which means my bags probably have a ways to travel too. F.
Well, I see people coming off the plane I’m supposed to board so I’d better wrap it up. Hopefully I’ll have some more interesting things to write about in the next few days. Not sure when I’ll have internet next so this post may be a little dated by the time I get it posted.
Love,
James
Ps –I’m gonna smack all 5 of these chads sitting next to me if they don’t quit being so chaddy. And if I hear Kenny g destroy another Christmas song in this airport, I’m probably gonna puke.
Part 2
Well, I made it to the boat. The plane I took from Miami to key west was a little bigger than my car with no overhead compartments. There was no door or even a curtain between the cabin and the cockpit, so I could see out the front window from where I was sitting. I wouldn’t be surprised if the pilots were younger than me. I was a pretty fun flight because we over a bunch of swamp looking land, then we flew by the nasa launch pads, then finally over the ocean to the keys. It was a beautiful day too. The key west airport was the smallest thing I’ve ever seen. There was one little carousel for the luggage and like one rental car place. I found a taxi to the boat and enjoyed a nice ride through what my driver told me was ‘old key west.’ It was a pretty cool lookin’ neighborhood.
Getting on the ship was relatively easy. Luckily I had luggage with me and the people in charge could tell I was boarding the ship for the first time and directed me where to go. After some paper work the musical director, Will, came down to meet me and show me around. He plays keyboard and is from England. Seems like a nice guy so far… when he was showing me around the boat all I was thinking was, ‘yeah, I’m definitely gonna get lost a few times before I figure this out..’ and I did. As soon as he showed me back to my room, my roommate took me up to this place where I could get some food. He explained to me that the staff was only allowed to eat in this certain restaurant at certain times and that I should bring my food down to the crew mess hall. I found a slice of pizza and basically walked around with it for a good 10 minutes before I figured out where the hell I was. Yeah, so imagine being a guest on the ship and seeing an employee wandering around with a slice of pizza on a plate, looking completely lost. Not only did I feel like a complete idiot, but I was afraid some high ranking officer or whatever was going to see me and ask me what the hell I was doing. I did manage to find my room and just ate my pizza there instead of in the mess hall, probably breaking yet another rule.
So I hadn’t been on the ship for even an hour until we had our first rehearsal. We have two shows tonight, one at 8:30, one at 10:30 and had a quick run through at 3:45. The guys in the band seem cool from the little time I’ve interacted with them. It was a relief to finally get the horn on my face and realize that I’m going to be just fine on this stuff. I’m actually more worried about getting in trouble from breaking some silly rule than I am about screwing up my parts.
Well, I may end up writing a part 3 after the shows tonight, but right now, I gotta go get some food. Some guys from the band just stopped by my room so I’m gonna go try to sit with them while there’s still room. It get’s pretty busy in the crew mess hall from what I hear.
Laters,
James
Day 4
Sheesh. Where to begin? Guess I’ll start with the shows. Basically, they were a lot of fun. We played for an entertainer named Tia Thompson, a comedian, whose name I forget, and a little schtick the cruise director did. The music was pretty straight forward and my parts didn’t go too high (which I guess is kinda my main concern, bein’ a bass trombone player and all…) we played “I Wish” for the walk on and walk off of the comedian and it totally felt like I was in a late night show band. I didn’t have a part, though, so I had to read off the trumpet player’s music, which was luckily just a C treble clef lead sheet. I’m sure I would have been okay if I had had to transpose, just because that’s a tune I already have in my ear, but it was nice to have that added pressure. The only other difficulty I really had on the gig was seeing the MD (musical director). I sit on the end of the horn section so he’s directly down the line to my left and there’s very little room for me to move to a place where I can see him. I think I only missed one cue last night because I was able to pick up on the fact that he was watching the performers on stage, so if I did the same, I’d probably be right.
In the second show, when the comedian was kinda telling the audience about himself, he mentioned that he did his undergrad at Eau Claire. Every ounce of me wanted to scream ‘gooooo blugolds!’ making a complete ass of myself, but I refrained. I want to be myself and have a good time out here, but there’s so many f’n rules and etiquette and crap that I haven’t yet figured out what’s okay and what’s not, so my default is to just keep my head low and not attract any attention.
Now writing from a starbucks in Nassau…Gosh I hope my roommate was right about the boat leaving at 9pm….
So it looks like I get cell service here? Hmm….hopefully I’m not being charged a million dollars a minute. I best figure this out.
Ok, so after the shows I went to the crew bar to hang for a bit. I didn’t stay long cause I had to get up and be at some safety thing at 9 this morning. Safety thing basically consisted of me finding my way to this room I had been shown once, walking into this smokey office where some officer with a really thick accent of some kind made me watch a video. I now know what to do when drunk people fall overboard, which I guess is good because there are a lot of drunk people from what I’ve seen so far. One thing I hate, though, is not being able to understand all the accents. Hopefully it’ll get better the longer I’m here but it sucks to look so confused all the time and ask people to repeat themselves constantly because I couldn’t understand them.
Well, I this post has become waaaaay too long so I’m gonna stop it here. No idea when I’ll get internet again, but I’ll probably have more to say by the time that happens. Miss you all.
Love,
james
Saturday, December 15, 2007
day 1
hello from jacksonville, fl. yep. i missed the boat. the short version of the story is that i was delayed out of indianapolis and it all went downhill from there, resulting in the boat leaving without yours truly. the good news, however, is that carnival has put me up in a nice hotel and is paying for my meals until they can fly me to key west to meet up with the ship on monday.
so how's the weather down here you ask? well let me show ya...
tornado watch till 'bout 8am is what the tv says. i'm pretty beat, so i'm sure i'll just sleep right through it.
not sure what i'll be doin' tomorrow but it will probably involve tv watchin', practicing with my mute in, and wasting time on the internetz. gonna be a busy day, better get some rest.
g'nite,
james
so how's the weather down here you ask? well let me show ya...
tornado watch till 'bout 8am is what the tv says. i'm pretty beat, so i'm sure i'll just sleep right through it.
not sure what i'll be doin' tomorrow but it will probably involve tv watchin', practicing with my mute in, and wasting time on the internetz. gonna be a busy day, better get some rest.
g'nite,
james
Friday, December 14, 2007
bon voyage
welp, in about 12 hours i'll be on an airplane to jacksonville where i'll board the carnival ship 'celebration' for 2 1/2 weeks. i don't have my plane ticket yet, but they assured me it'd show up in my e-mail along with some other transportation details sometime before my 6am flight tomorrow. yeah, so right now i'm sitting in my lonely apartment in bloomington, in, blogging on my computer while some clothes dry and at this time tomorrow i'll be somewhere out in the atlantic, cruising to the bahamas...needless to say, i'm a little anxious, but excited. i've talked to a few people about the whole cruise ship experience before, but i still feel like i have no idea what to expect. if nothing else, it should make for some interesting blog topics right?
today my quartet recorded a christmas cd which we hope to give to our family members as inexpensive christmas gifts. it was a lot of fun but wore out the chops fairly quickly. we had only played some of the music before the session so after rehearsing a piece and then trying to get a couple takes of it, the face was pretty tired. hopefully it'll turn out well and i can post a track here that won't be completely embarrassing.
ok, so i gotta run to target for toothpaste and shampoo, return a movie to blockbuster (so glad the stupid film musical class is over!), put my netflix dvd in the mail, pack my clothes, tidy up the apartment, play my ultimate game at 11, and get 3 hours of sleep. no problem.
oh, and i hope you all have wonderful breaks/holidays with your families. this will be my first christmas without my family, and i'm definitely jealous of all the people that get to be with theirs.
love,
james
today my quartet recorded a christmas cd which we hope to give to our family members as inexpensive christmas gifts. it was a lot of fun but wore out the chops fairly quickly. we had only played some of the music before the session so after rehearsing a piece and then trying to get a couple takes of it, the face was pretty tired. hopefully it'll turn out well and i can post a track here that won't be completely embarrassing.
ok, so i gotta run to target for toothpaste and shampoo, return a movie to blockbuster (so glad the stupid film musical class is over!), put my netflix dvd in the mail, pack my clothes, tidy up the apartment, play my ultimate game at 11, and get 3 hours of sleep. no problem.
oh, and i hope you all have wonderful breaks/holidays with your families. this will be my first christmas without my family, and i'm definitely jealous of all the people that get to be with theirs.
love,
james
Saturday, December 01, 2007
some recent awesomeness
it was a pretty rough week for reasons i don't really feel like talkin' about, but the last two days have been f'n sweet.
last night was my first game of winter league ultimate. for those who don't know, i'm a nut for ultimate frisbee. i've always wanted to play in a league but have never had the time. well, finally my prayer was answered because there's a winter league here that plays at 9pm on friday nights at an indoor sports complex. nothin but parties on friday nights, so i can pretty much go to every game. and ya know what else? there's only one other guy in the music dept that plays and he's not on my team. i love music people, but an hour a week surrounded by nons does a body good. anyways, our first game was last night and i had a blast. the play was pretty competitive, something i'm not used to, but it's sooooooooo much fun. i suffered a minor injury when a guy i was marking pivoted and stomped on my left foot. it seemed fine during the game, but afterwards my big toe was hurtin' pretty bad. we wear cleats cause the field is this turf type surface and mine are really old and probably not protective enough. as long as i'm all good for the next game, i don't really care.
in addition to playing ultimate last night, i got to go rock climbing today. i hadn't been in quite a while, and today i realized again how awesome it is and how i need to go more often. my friend matt, who is an undergrad trombone music ed major who's starting his student teaching next semester, and i went to this indoor place called 'hoosier heights.' it was in this old steel wharehouse type building in the middle of nowhere. they don't heat the place, so it was a bit cold in there, but once you got climbing, it wasn't so bad. i started on a 5.6 (fairly easy) and then climbed a 5.7, 5.8, and a 5.9, all without falling. i basically decided i was gonna keep going up in difficulty until i got to where i couldn't get to the top without falling off the wall. i met my match on a 5.10. i think i fell off about 5 times before getting half way up. it was pretty challenging. my forearms are wicked sore right now too.
i hope you are all enjoying the snow you're receiving as i type this. i'm pretty jealous, i'm not gonna lie. those with digital cameras should probably send me pictures of it, or at least post them on facebook. i miss snow and just northern winters in general. and since i'm not gonna make it home for christmas, i could use some photographic reminders of what it looks like :-)
ok, as always, i hope you all are well.
love,
james
last night was my first game of winter league ultimate. for those who don't know, i'm a nut for ultimate frisbee. i've always wanted to play in a league but have never had the time. well, finally my prayer was answered because there's a winter league here that plays at 9pm on friday nights at an indoor sports complex. nothin but parties on friday nights, so i can pretty much go to every game. and ya know what else? there's only one other guy in the music dept that plays and he's not on my team. i love music people, but an hour a week surrounded by nons does a body good. anyways, our first game was last night and i had a blast. the play was pretty competitive, something i'm not used to, but it's sooooooooo much fun. i suffered a minor injury when a guy i was marking pivoted and stomped on my left foot. it seemed fine during the game, but afterwards my big toe was hurtin' pretty bad. we wear cleats cause the field is this turf type surface and mine are really old and probably not protective enough. as long as i'm all good for the next game, i don't really care.
in addition to playing ultimate last night, i got to go rock climbing today. i hadn't been in quite a while, and today i realized again how awesome it is and how i need to go more often. my friend matt, who is an undergrad trombone music ed major who's starting his student teaching next semester, and i went to this indoor place called 'hoosier heights.' it was in this old steel wharehouse type building in the middle of nowhere. they don't heat the place, so it was a bit cold in there, but once you got climbing, it wasn't so bad. i started on a 5.6 (fairly easy) and then climbed a 5.7, 5.8, and a 5.9, all without falling. i basically decided i was gonna keep going up in difficulty until i got to where i couldn't get to the top without falling off the wall. i met my match on a 5.10. i think i fell off about 5 times before getting half way up. it was pretty challenging. my forearms are wicked sore right now too.
i hope you are all enjoying the snow you're receiving as i type this. i'm pretty jealous, i'm not gonna lie. those with digital cameras should probably send me pictures of it, or at least post them on facebook. i miss snow and just northern winters in general. and since i'm not gonna make it home for christmas, i could use some photographic reminders of what it looks like :-)
ok, as always, i hope you all are well.
love,
james
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