Lots of saxophone

Last Sunday I played with The Turtle Dove Blues Band at the Dickens Opera House in Longmont. Sharing the playbill was our buddy Uriah's band Stedfast. It's a punk band consisting of about a dozen teenagers, most of whom are cross-dressed. They put on a pretty funny and weird show, including having four people on stage sitting at a tea table and periodic trips onto the dance floor for moshing. The most amusing part for me was how much Logan loved it. He was grinning like a kid on Christmas the whole time. The performances were delayed due to complete absence of a sound man for about an hour, but eventually the venue tracked someone down and things proceeded. We played pretty well and it was a fun night.

Monday I drove down to Denver and met another classical sax player to play some duets. He is the music director at a Baptist church, so we met there and played in the sanctuary. Being both a saxophonist and an organist, his sight reading was impeccable, so we breezed through a whole bunch of material. He's a strong player so I'm looking forward to playing with him some more next month. Hopefully we'll be playing the pedestrian malls in both Denver and Boulder.

Then I headed to Thornton to see a movie at Cinebarre, which is an eat-in theater. They serve food and drinks both before and during the movie. Tickets are just $5 Mon-Thu. I think I'll definitely be going back. It's a fun experience. I went with Julia and we saw "Horrible Bosses" which was funny and worthwhile and reminiscent of "Office Space".

I spent Tuesday in Boulder starting with Boulder Open Coffee Club. I've been back on the Slow Carb diet for the last 2 weeks or so trying to get down to minimal weight before Burning Man, now that my digestion issue has been figured out. (Quick aside, I was having bad chronic problems with my digestion for the last 3 years and I finally figured out what the issue was and solved it, which is awesome). I applied for a job at a Boulder startup and met the cofounders for coffee later that afternoon. Tuesday was binge day, and I finally managed to do it mostly successfully. Just some sushi for lunch and some snacks here and there. For dinner I tried the new restaurant in downtown Louisville "Lu Lu's BBQ". It's Texas style barbecue, which I don't really like, so I have to give it a thumbs down. Julia and I watched "Vicky Christina Barcelona" Tuesday night, which I thought was great and very funny. I may watch it again just to re-hear some of Javier Bardem's dialog.

Wednesday I did some more interviewing in Boulder, this time with a web consultancy. Thursday I stopped by Connor O'Neils for a going away party for a friend of mine who is leaving town to go start a company in Palo Alto. Then it was over to the Laughing Goat for an Afronauts gig. It was a good gig, although I think our first gig had a few more people and even better energy, but still it was a lot of fun and well appreciated, I think. Afterward Mike (Afronauts percussionist) and I ate burritos and drank Dos Equis Amber at Illegal Petes while chatting about Mike's adventures at raves in L.A.

Thankfully today was the first day in a long time where my calendar was completely clear (and google calendar just doesn't even show that the day exists). I was given a "challenge problem" by the startup, so I spent most of the day working on that. This evening I put together my home made swamp cooler, which I will bring to Burning Man to cool my hexayurt. That was a fun little project and hopefully I'll be very grateful for it about this time next week. Speaking of which, I leave for Burning Man on Wednesday. I'm part of my camp's early setup crew so I'm arriving about three days prior to the official start of the event. As of now I don't have an official ride to get me from the event site to Reno so I can fly to St. Louis for Cousin Dr. Annie's wedding. I'm counting on hitchhiking and hoping the fact that I won't have much of any gear with me (probably just my alto sax and a day bag) might make a successful hitch more likely.

Still lots of planning and packing to do between now and Wednesday.