Hey all,

I'm at my favorite place again-- the Thirsty Mind Coffee Bar!

I was worried for a minute that my laptop wasn't going to start up. I have an iBook G4, which is "old" now. I'd love to have a shiny new MacBook like everyone else, but considering they cost at least $1,000.... I find it cheaper for now to just keep fixin' the iBook! I'm gonna drive my iBook into the ground-- wait, I think that expression only works on cars. Oh well. Some info about the state of my iBook:
( Read more about the iBook )


But anyway... yeah. I'm at the Thirsty Mind. I LOVE it here-- it's exactly as a coffee shop should be-- good music, warm lighting, coffee, conversations, laptops, and more. I've been going relatively often lately... I'm gonna be broke at this rate from buying coffee though!! But hey... it's $3 including tax for a caramel latte, and I usually give like 30-50 cents tip (whatever change I pull out of my wallet). So if I went every day for 2 weeks, that would be $42 plus tip. I get paid about $200 every 2 weeks with my on campus jobs, so assuming I don't spend more money it's fine! haha but that's a big assumption.

For example, I went to Gerry's Music Store today to have them look at my saxophone and also to look at mouth pieces-- yeah sad story, btw, I broke my mouth piece and also my saxophone is squeaking lately. Not good. So I brought it in, and the guy examined it and commented, "Your saxophone is leaking like a sieve." Apparently 3 pads need to be replaced, plus some springs and cork. Good news though-- this should cost about $40. Not bad... this will be it's first major repair job ever pretty much... I bought it brand new nearly 4 years ago. ( Read more... )

OK, I'm rambling too much about instruments and money. yeah, basically my sax needs fixing... which is good that it's getting that attention now, since the big broadcast is on Sunday and also I wanna play my sax for one or two songs at my senior recital. I was thinking of checking out Scaramouche by Milhaud from the UMass library.... might take the PVTA up there on Friday.

LINKS

Sax Maintenance Tips
Saxophone Care and Maintenance
Yamaha's Saxophone Maintenance
Random Sax Site I just found...

"Keep It Clean" from Trombone.org
Yamaha's Trombone Maintenance
Cleaning Your Trombone


Some of those Sax links are interesting-- like the advice for how to clean the saliva stains off the mouthpiece. That's damn helpful!! I should get more into my instruments.... I love music. I feel at home with it... I think I'd like to do something with music when I graduate. I'd like to work for some kind of nonprofit music foundation. Then eventually go to grad school for music education.