surf?

I got home tonight at almost exactly midnight. Of course there were hardly any cars on the road. When I got out of my car in the apartment carport I heard a sound that I immediately thought was the surf. What was weird was that it didn’t have the rolling and crashing sound I’ve heard before. I actually went over to the little balcony that overlooks the street and listened more carefully. there were no cars and the surf, for it could be nothing else, sounded like a freight train. Or a jet going overhead, but there was no jet. Even now inside my apartment writing this, I can hear the roaring.

The mighty Pacific Ocean! At one time I thought it was a half mile from my apartment. Someone at the apartment then told me it was a mile and I remember clocking it in my car after that but I don’t remember what it turned out to be. It’s a mile or less to the beach and right now it sounds like it’s right outside the window. Pretty cool!

headaches

I’ve gotten headaches for a long time. Not just garden variety headaches, whatever those are, but really nasty headaches. Despite the fact that these headaches have been serious, I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that they were migraines. I was usually able to control them with ibuprofen. I never had to go to a darkened room for three days or anything like that. There were difficult times, to be sure, but mostly I soldiered on.

I remember keeping track of my aspirin and ibuprofen for a while during my Opera days in the ’80’s. Somewhere in a box there is a calendar with those notes. Thinking about this post this morning, I remembered a particularly nasty one that had to be in 1977. Eventually I stopped using aspirin and took ibuprofen only. It worked sometimes.

I was never a coffee drinker but I knew about caffeine. What I didn’t know was the effect it had on headaches. It wasn’t until I was talking to my doctor in Grass Valley sometime in the mid-90s that I found out how caffeine could stop my headaches. What a revelation that was!

That was good for a long time. I had to be careful not to take Excedrin, my drug of choice containing caffeine, for the nasty headaches, too late in the afternoon or I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep. Nor could I take it in the middle of the night unless I was prepared to stay awake.

About two years ago, I was talking to my doctor here about my nighttime headaches during my annual physical. When I told her about the efficacy of caffeine, she immediately said, ‘Migraines!’ She gave me a prescription – Maxalt – that has been helpful for the times when caffeine is contraindicated.

There are basically two times of the day when the bad headaches show up. One is in the night, usually waking me up in the wee hours, one or two in the morning. My strategy had been to take ibuprofen and hope for a couple of hours more sleep to get me to 5 or 6 am when I could take Excedrin. Now I can take the Maxalt and (usually) sleep better. I always felt these headaches were due to some kind of reaction to food. Maybe some kind of spice as they often came after a dinner of Mexican food. They didn’t always come after such a dinner, though. I couldn’t pin it down. I didn’t stop eating Mexican food, either.

The other type usually started coming on in the middle part of the day. These I believe are tension headaches. I can sometimes identify what is contributing to it and try to deal with the source, as it were. Sometimes . . .

This is my subject today because I’ve had headaches now in the early morning for the last 5 days. It seems unlikely that food is causing them. My diet isn’t great but I haven’t been eating particularly spicy foods. I’ve taken Excedrin at variously 4, 5 or 6 am but it hasn’t knocked the headache out. I’ve had to take the Maxalt at around 8 and a couple of days that didn’t even work. I suspect an element of tension.

I have my annual physical scheduled for two weeks from yesterday so I will definitely be discussing this with Dr Amara. I have some theories about what is causing the headaches this week but that will have to wait for another post. One more day of work today then a couple of days off.

Mom and Dad

I went down to Mom and Dad’s today. Originally I was going to see them this weekend for a birthday party but now the party is happening Saturday when I have to work. Happy Birthday Jim and Teresa! And Happy Birthday to Connor on Monday!

So, it was kind of an old-fashioned day for us, like the ones we used to have (seemingly) all the time before 2015. The only difference was that they had to go to a funeral and didn’t get home until one pm. Normally, I got there at noon or 12:30 for lunch and stayed through dinner. Today wasn’t much different: I ran a couple of errands on the way down and got to their house a little after 1.

We had a leisurely lunch and sat around the table in the sun room talking for over an hour. Before the funeral mass, they had gone to their exercise class so they were pretty tired. About 2:30 they went in to take a nap and I went to the computer to work on their taxes. Actually, their taxes are done. What I’m doing is running the numbers through Turbo Tax to see if there are trouble spots with an eye towards doing the taxes for them myself next year. It doesn’t appear that the tax guy is putting in any kind of special sauce for his $500 so now all I have to do is convince Dad to let me do it.

After a while, Mom came out and started working on her genealogy program. She determined that she isn’t keeping up with the various families as much as she wants to. Then she looked into a letter she had gotten from the Kaiser people about her password. She got that fixed then asked me about downloading Dad’s health record. Pretty cool! We got it done, then for good measure downloaded hers as well. Now they’re resident on her computer in PDF form.

About then Dad was up and got the News Hour started on the TV. It usually drives me crazy but today it was fairly reasonable. They had a long story about the Great Barrier Reef dying off because the ocean temperatures are rising. They also had a pretty balanced panel commenting on the Supreme Court vacancy hearing today.

Then it was time for dinner and Jeopardy, followed by Wheel of Fortune. Tradition!

I usually leave right after dinner because I’m tired and I don’t want to get involved in the evening TV watching. Tonight I was getting my things together when their friend Chacko called. Chacko is part of the 10 am community at the Mission and a regular on Thursday afternoons at the coffee shop. He’s at least 10 or 15 years younger than most of the Thursday crew but he was calling to tell them his back has gone out and he won’t be going tomorrow. He apologized for missing the funeral Mass too. We all commiserated, then he signed off and I headed out. My father said, as he often does, ‘Drive with care, everywhere!’

Chuck Berry’s legacy

Chuck Berry died over the weekend. He was 90. Some might say he had a good long life. On the guitar forum I frequent (TDPRI.com), there has been a lot of commentary about his passing. Most of it appreciates the pioneering music he created but some commenters have felt the need to remind everyone of some of Chuck’s not-so-nice qualities. Anyone interested in the unsavory details can get them somewhere else. My thesis is that art is greater than the man (or woman).

Maybelline, Roll Over Beethoven, Sweet Little Sixteen, and especially, Johnny B Goode, will live on in Rock ‘n’ Roll music long after anyone cares about the kind of person Chuck Berry was. Once art is created, be it music, writing, painting, or whatever, it belongs to the community of humanity. Arguably, that’s where it came from anyway.

The example I thought of this morning was the reluctance of Jews after the Holocaust to perform any music by the German composer Richard Wagner. This seems understandable since Wagner was a favorite of the Nazi’s who tried to exterminate the Jews. Eventually, though, the art was allowed to speak on its own in 1981 when the Israel Philharmonic played an excerpt from Tristan und Isolde.

(That was what I remembered, but the truth is, as usual, somewhat more nuanced. I did some research and found that there was such an outcry after that concert that the orchestra has not played any of Wagner’s music since. Interestingly, the reasons for that are not clear. Many other well-known composers who were worse anti-Semites and/or more popular with the Nazi’s are performed by Jewish musicians without any comment. Wagner has that special something . . . Still, I will stand by my thesis.)

So, Chuck Berry is gone but his music will live on. Tom and I, along with Loose Gravel, will be playing a CB retrospective set on Sunday in Loomis. Chuck’s music formed an important part of our coming of age as band musicians. We won’t be celebrating the man so much as the music. The music will live on.

band update

SoundBox Saturday. We opened last night and close tonight. I’ve got the day free until 7 to rest. The week was not without challenges but all in all was easier than most. The only night I worked late was last night for the show. Everyone involved is very proud of doing something special but there is no funding for beyond the next set in April. The Symphony has made huge investment in infrastructure but admission prices do not begin to cover the costs. The Constellation System will continue to be used for orchestra rehearsals and the odd special event but the lighting and projection stuff will go into boxes except for a few times a year in the big room.

Meanwhile, I’ve been faithfully going to jazz band rehearsals every Monday. A couple of the charts we’re doing have exposed guitar parts and solos which require a lot more practice than I’ve been getting away with previously. We have sort of a mid-term coming up. Zack has a deal with a local Daly City bar for us to play a set there on Monday the 27th. Last week he assigned which guitarist – there is myself and one other – will play which charts. One assigned to me is African Skies by Michael Brecker where the guitar plays the head with the tenor sax. I’m doing my best to channel Pat Metheney who played on the original track. At the end I trade twos in (more or less) F minor with the tenor. That’s fun.

We’re also doing a version of Bags’ Groove with both guitars playing the vibraphone part, then we each get a couple of solo choruses. It’s fun but there are some tricky rhythmic bits in it. Zack has been very patient with his guitar players who don’t read that well.

After the first rehearsal in January, I emailed Zack to say I was having trouble picking up the guitar away from rehearsal. He was gently encouraging and I’ve gotten better. I just spent a solid half hour working on African Skies. That’s more real practicing than I’ve done in a very long time.

My other band, Loose Gravel, is playing in Loomis a week from tomorrow. They’re not really my band, but I’ve been allowed to sit in with them whenever I want. This time I decided a couple of weeks ago that I really wanted to go so I arranged my work schedule to keep the Sunday free. When Tom was down here he said he was trying to sing less with them so I thought I would try to resurrect my singing. He’s given me Big Boss Man, which I used to do back in the days of April and Dry Creek, and Dizzy Miss Lizzy, which was always his to sing. We’re familiar with The Beatles version which features John Lennon on vocals. I dunno, I’m no John Lennon singing. We’ll see . . .

Winnie-the-Pooh

Now I’ve got the Pooh books out and I’m looking through them, remembering.

I remember the night at our home in San Francisco when, after reading from one of those books at Jeremy and Sarah’s bedtime, I lost track of it somehow. I asked Jeremy where it was and I thought he said he had thrown it out the window. Jeremy wasn’t more than three then.

The sill for the bedroom window was low and the window opened sideways so it was possible. I became frantic and went out onto the short roof outside the window to look for it. It wasn’t there so I thought maybe he tossed it farther and it went down into the back yard. I couldn’t find it there although it was dark and I could have missed it. All I could think of was that this was the book my father had given me as a child and I’ve lost it.

Then we found it. I don’t remember where it was. Behind a chair or something. Boy was I relieved.

Here’s a little bit from the last story in Winnie-the-Pooh:

‘When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,’ said Piglet at last, ‘what’s the first thing you say to yourself?’

‘What’s for breakfast?’ said Pooh. ‘What do you say, Piglet?’

‘I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?’ said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully.

‘It’s the same thing,’ he said.

Crustimony Proceedcake

Last week I was talking to someone at work and they said just do what you usually do. I said, ‘Oh, the crustimony proceedcake.’

It’s from Winnie the Pooh. They didn’t get it.

Here’s the story: Winnie-the-Pooh has discovered that The Old Grey Donkey, Eeyore, has lost his tail. (Here I am following the capitalization of Mr Milne.) So he goes to see Owl. As Pooh says, ‘. . . if anyone knows anything about anything it’s Owl who knows something about something . . .’

At Owl’s house, Pooh asks him what to do. Now Milne:

‘Well,’ said Owl, ‘the customary procedure in such cases is as follows.’

‘What does Crustimony Proceedcake mean?’ said Pooh. ‘For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me.’

‘It means the Thing to Do.’

My copy of Winnie-the-Pooh is inscribed with my name and the date, 1955, in my father’s hand. I was two.

mail

I got mail yesterday! Addressed to ‘Grandpa Chris’! Inside were two sheets of paper from Rosalie. This one I put up on my kitchen cabinet. It might be a little hard to see but it’s Rosalie’s full name with lots of decorations. Very impressive! And fun. Thank you Rosalie!

jigsaw puzzles

I guess I never wrote about my jigsaw puzzles. I’ve always liked doing them. Many Thanksgivings and Christmases in Santa Clara featured a jigsaw puzzle. Mom likes doing them and had has one going occasionally. Dad thinks it’s foolishness so he ignores the whole thing.

I had talked about doing them here at my apartment for a long time. I even went shopping for a folding table but the ones I found were funky so I blew it off.

Then Rose came over one day and brought a table that she said she never used. It was nice: good support and surface and size. A week or so later she brought over a new puzzle. I was off!

That was about a year ago. Since then, I’ve had a puzzle going pretty much all the time. I’ve gone through everything that Mom has. I’ve bought a few puzzles and Sarah gave me one but a couple of weeks ago I finished one and had nothing in the pipeline. Barnes and Noble carries puzzles as does Target, but I didn’t care for the ones they had so . . to the Internet!

I started at the website of the last one I did. It was made in USA and decent quality. That led to Puzzle Warehouse. They had some that I liked. As I put the first couple in the cart, they announced free shipping for an order over $75. Oh well, I don’t do this often. Six puzzles later, I’m done.

They came a couple of days ago and now my puzzle table is full again! Now I just have to figure out where to store the others . . .

sleeping

I worked last night. The show got done on the early side. I was home before 11. I felt like I could sleep so I went right to bed without taking any medication. Instead of a book, I picked up the ipad again and fooled around on guitar forums and played solitaire. Soon I was not tired but actually restless in bed. After about an hour of that I went in and took the sleeping pills (ibuprofen PM).

Back to bed and the ipad. Another hour and a half. Not feeling sleepy. Finally I got up and worked the jigsaw puzzle for a bit. Back to bed and the ipad but this time I was sleepy. that was around 2:30. Woke up a little before 7. I have the day off so I can take a nap later if I’m still tired.

I’m going to hide the ipad for a while. It’s not like I don’t have books to read.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31