All That Jazz

In one week I managed to touch on all of my dormant hobbies with a manic vengance. I might even keep them going after I recover.

Regular readers will already see me returning to martial arts. I made it to Monday’s class, which was a good aerobic workout. My endurance is not what it used to be, so my kicks started to suffer towards the end of the class (power dropped, technique followed). I did find several things reassuring:

1. I was paired up with a yellow belt, and was able to quickly help him kick better with a few simple tips (knee height, positioning the plant foot, etc.).
2. I think the yellow belt listened to me because I easily moved him across the floor with my first few sets of kicks (while I still had energy and could concentrate on technique).
3. I know clearly what mistakes I am making and can work on correcting them this week.

Monday night and Tuesday were devoted to getting the Dragon*Con DVD project completed. Sunday’s exercise of swearing at my computer was replaced with an actual fix and several days of video productivity. I know have lots of video and a lot less disk space free on my computer.

The rest of the week was preparing for GaFilk 2009. I took the rest of the week off to catch up on household chores and practice. Once again, Play It With Moxie played the GaFilk banquet. Our little jazz band has grown into an eight piece group complete with horn arrangements, Canadian singers, hot swing numbers and a few sci-fi sight gags (playing the Star Wars Cantina song with an alien horn section and Darth Vader on the drums).

GaFilk was a good chance to not only play the drums, but hang out with friends and listen to other musicians … everything from one person’s little guitar ballad to full group arrangements. I did skip a lot of the late-night jam sessions to just hang out and talk to people, friends both new & old. I also ate well, thanks to group dinners and late-night expeditions to restaurants serving cake slices the size of my head.

Now I’m back in the real world, with junk to unpack and work to be done. But I’m heading to karate tonight, I have video to edit during the week and will help our guitar-wiz Carly by playing drums with her in a video next month (part of a contest entry).

My life needs to be more than business travel and cubicles.