Monday, November 08, 2004

Fall update

If the weather of this past week is any indication, we will have a very cold winter. It has been in the 30s every night for the last week or so, and we've made our yearly shift to the flannel covers and down comforters. This is particularly good news to our cat Ollie, who likes to sleep on the pillow just above June's head, but ONLY if there's a flannel pillowcase on it.

Healthwise, the news is mixed. I had my back operation in September, and felt really good for a few weeks. Now, however, the same old symptoms are reappearing. I'm definitely in better shape than I was before the operation, but it seems that I'm regressing. I can still walk without a cane most of the time, but that may not last. I'm still having fun playing with the 7th Street Jazz Band. We could use a few more horn players, particularly trombone, but it's still a lot of fun to play those old tunes. It's good exercise for my sight-reading, too.

I've also started doing a few more casual jam sessions, which is great fun. I have a number of side projects in motion, some of which I can talk about and a few I can't. I just finished mastering 3-CD set of a live recording from Paul Bass' 50th birthday party. This has been a long-term project, and I'll manufacture and ship as many as are requested, in honor of my late music partner. I'm also about halfway through archiving all of my recorded song demos to CD. So far, this amounts to about 30 CDs. Some of the tunes are not too bad! I also want to transcribe as many of my tunes as possible to leadsheets. I'll probably get a high-end notation program like Finale or Sibelius next year to help with this. It'll be a rather large book, tentatively titled, "Steve Pinkston -- Less Than a Fake Book." Those familiar with Charles Mingus will get the joke.