People – Zing Blog 2

Midwest Adventure, Part 1 – Art and Industry

I just got back from a trip with Jeannie to the Midwest, specifically Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. The trip was centered on an origami event, CFC6 (Conference for Creators, Number 6), hosted by my good friend Beth in Ann Arbor Michigan. We’d never been to that part of the country before, so we figured we’d do a few days touristing before the conference began.

Our flight left NYC Monday morning and landed in Detroit shortly before noon. From there we had time for one daytime activity, and chose the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo, Ohio. The main attraction here was a decommissioned lake freighter. As the big freighters go she was bigger than most, I think they said 800 feet long. You could go up to the bridge and down into the hold and engine room. Pretty neat. The rest of museum was housed in a regular building and featured exhibits about the history, ecology, climate, and economy of the great lakes region, with a lot about the evolution boats and ships, from indigenous people and the arrival of French fur trappers up thru the present day. The museum was situated in a larger park that was nice to walk around.

The evening we drove out to Auburn, Indiana. The main attraction there was the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum. I’ve been a longtime fan of Duesenberg, Cord and Auburn automobiles since I was a kid into building model cars, and this place has been on my bucket list for a long time. And it did not disappoint. For those who don’t know, these were some of the coolest classic cars ever, each with their own unique character. Duesenbergs in particular were the ultimate luxury car, big as a modern extra large SUV or monster pickup truck, but with a giant racecar engine and amazing styling and coachwork. They typically had aluminum bodies. (Each body was custom built on an engine/chassis platform.) Today they’re considered priceless, rolling works of art, with only a few hundred in existence. Twenty or so are in the museum, all meticulously restored. The ultimate Doozy is the SJ, with a supercharged engine and distinctive external exhaust pipes. The Auburn was the Duesenberg’s smaller cousin, smaller, lighter and slightly more affordable, but still with a focus on luxury and performance. They are famous for their boattail roadsters. Cord was its own thing, very advanced and a little weird for the day, being the the world’s first successful mass-manufactured front-wheel drive car, with its distinctive coffin nose and touches such as disappearing headlights. Sadly, Auburn Cord Duesenberg went out of business during the great depression. Amazing to think that these cars are all ninety years old or more, many of them over a hundred.

The museum was in the former company showroom and headquarters, and had a good selection of all of these cars, plus other historical autos including a Cadillac V-16, and a Lincoln and Chrysler from the same era, as well as a fleet of earlier models going back the the beginning of the 1900’s and the origin of automobiles. They also had some rare prototypes, some engines and few historical airplanes, and exhibits on E. L. Cord, the automotive design studio, and the history of the factory and the company, and the rise and fall of the automobile industry in Indiana.

Next door was the former manufacturing plant, which is now a classic car museum with alot of muscle cars from the 60’s, a handful of different kinds of racecars, and a broad spectrum of mainly American historical cars from the entire spectrum of the twentieth century. A couple 1960’s Mustangs like my own.

I will say my one big disappointment for the trip was that my other bucket-list item, the National Brass and Woodwind Museum and the Conn-Selmer factory in Elkhart, Indiana, closed sometime in 2025, even as we were beginning to plan our trip, so we never got to see that. Ah well.

Both days we had dinner at a bar nearby the museum we were visiting. I must say the general vibe of the tri-state region was exactly the opposite of exotic to me, rather it was very friendly warm and even felt familiar. The landscapes, the people, the history and context, all that. It felt alot upstate and western New York, and southern Ontario when you get out west toward London. I guess that’s what they mean by the Great Lakes Region.

Tuesday evening it was off to Ann Arbor. The convention didn’t officially start until Thursday, but there were activities slated for Wednesday. The convention was at a hotel called Webers, which was a very cool and funky hotel with a sort of art deco jazz age vibe. We watched the Sabres vs the Canadiens at the cozy, wood-paneled bar while the likes of Cannonball Adderley and Red Garland played on the PA.

Wednesday we met a bunch of our origami friends at breakfast, including Ilan and Nicolas, who run CFC and organized the conference. A short while later, a bunch of convened in the lobby and were joined by our host Beth for the main activity, a day trip into Detroit and the Detroit Institute of Art. Enough of us had a car that everyone got a ride, a pattern that continued throughout the week.

The Detroit Art Institute is a very cool museum. Its most famous and impressive work is the Detroit Industry mural by Diego Rivera, which fills all four walls of a giant hall and depicts the whole life-cycle of auto manufacturing in a complicated series of panels that merge realism, storytelling, symbolism and mythology in a way that sums up what we’ve seen so far in the Great Lakes Region perfectly. There were several other galleries including American modernists, and some Mid-Eastern and Asian collections that range from ancient Rome to the present day. Apparently there was also a furniture and industrial design collection that I missed. Ah well. It’s always good inspiration when a bunch of artists go to an art museum together.

We all got lunch, and then went to a place called Michigan Central Station, a former train station that was abandoned fell into disrepair in the later twentieth century. The city did not have enough money to demolish it and became a symbol of Detroit’s decline and misfortune. Over the last decade or so, it has been beautifully restored and is now a public attraction and event space, with the the building above the main concourse being an office tower, and overall a symbol of Detroit’s resurgence and renewal. Alot impressive stonework, particularly because you rarely see stone architecture looking new and clean.

Finally, that evening we had a barbecue at Beth’s house. It was a slightly larger group as more conference attendees came into town. It was unseasonably cool but I helped Beth build a fire in a firepit in her backyard. Beth has a very nice design studio in a building in her backyard that used to be a garage, including a large table for folding. Makes me want to rethink my own studio setup. Anyway, it was great to hang out and catch up with my origami friends in a relaxed setting. Although there’s some overlap with the OUSA regular crowd, there’s a bunch of Midwesterners I rarely see.

Okay, halfway thru the trip. The conference is set to begin Thursday morning. I’m exhausted already.

Easter Beagle Birdland

We were up in Buffalo last week for Easter, to visit my Mum and Dad, and Lizzy and Josh. Kathleen and the kids came up for Easter Sunday too. It was a fun trip and a good time. My Mum made a big Easter dinner. We watched some weird TV specials including Peter Cottontail, It’s the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown, and Happy Arbor Day Charlie Brown. Lots of chocolate, my dad really enjoyed that. Charlie is a good chess player. I haven’t played in ages so I’m pretty rusty, but nevertheless he beat me twice. We also played Risk, which was alot of fun. Michelle won that, having consolidated North America early on. On Dyngus Day, Michelle and I visited the Buffalo Zoo, which was a fun time too. I haven’t been there in years. They really have alot of great animals in a relatively small space. Lions, tigers, rhinos, gorillas, giraffes, a Komodo dragon, lots of other reptiles, birds and other creatures, and the largest polar bear I’ve ever seen. That night we all went to play trivia with Lizzy, which was alot of fun too. The Sabres were on TV, having just clinched the playoffs. Back home Wednesday night, Michelle and I went to see the Sabres vs. the Rangers at Madison Square Garden. The Sabres are hot this year and going to the playoffs for the first time in many years. The ended up winning 5-3. It was a well-played game on both sides.

I’ve been binge-watching 1980’s scifi/action movies. So far the list includes Big Trouble in Little China, History of the World Part One (I know, it’s a comedy not action/scifi), Spaceballs, Escape from New York, and first Two Terminator movies. Now I’ve started thinking about it and there’s a ton of fun, cool movies from when I was a teenager that I haven’t seen in many years.

The weather had finally turned nice. I’ve been biking five days in a row. This week I’m also getting rolling on a bunch of springtime projects including getting some work done on the mustang, and project dirt.

A Long Winter’s Nap

We just finished a nice long winter holidays. Jeannie and I had two full weeks off from work, and Michelle had off alot of those days too. Nice to relax and wind down and let your mind go back to its natural shape without a whole day to day pressures. And it’s a good thing too, I was getting pretty run down.

Of the course the holidays are busy in their own way. We did lots of baking, and hosted first and engagement party for Lizzy and Josh, and then Christmas dinner with Mary and Lou and family. On boxing day we went up to Buffalo and visited with my parents, Kathleen and all the kids, and Lizzy and Josh. While we were up there we also got together with Larry and Jackie for an evening of dinner and drinks and catching up on things. Apparently Larry is into improvising jazz on the vibes these days. Good to know if I ever move back there and want to start a new jazz group. He also gave me some tips to improve my drumming. On New Year’s Eve we went out to visit Nick and Lisa and played a bunch of games and watched the ball drop. Fun time.

This was one of the worst winter drives up and back in years. It was freezing rain both ways, slippery and poor visibility. Also, on the drive up, part of the exhaust system went kaput and started making an awful noise for the rest of the trip.

It was a very Lego Christmas in our house this year. Everyone got legos, including all Kathleen’s kids. Also, a few months ago I got a fancy lego castle as a spiff from some bonus points at work, the kind you have to spend on one of a handful of stores. It was Schloss Neuschwanstein, the famous castle in the Bavarian Alps. Part of the Architecture series, it’s a really big model, with several thousand pieces. I started building it sometime after Thanksgiving and finished the last day of winter break. I must say it looks really cool. Next time I play with legos it will be attacked by spaceships and dinosaurs.

We thought of going skiing last Saturday, but there’s not enough snow yet in the places we go in the Catskills and Berkshires. Our favorite mountain, Catamount, had only three lifts and a handful of trails open, less then half the mountain. Ah well, let’s hope for snow.

Meanwhile I got out on my bike twice already in the new year. If the weather is above freezing and it’s not too windy I can bike comfortably. So hopefully I can keep at it semi-regularly thru the winter. I’m happy to say I’m back to a full weightlifting workout too, and feeling good, which is not always the case this time of year.

I also worked a lot on my forthcoming album Spellbound: In the Dead of Winter. More on that next post.

Today we’re back to work and so far so good.

Congratulations Lizzy and Josh

It’s time for winter break. Good thing too, I’ve been working real hard and have been feeling increasingly low energy the last few weeks with all the cold and darkness. A week ago we had a big onsite event at work, with everyone on our team showing up from all over the country to the new NYC office for a day of planning and strategizing, followed by a dinner outing. The next day we reconvened in Yonkers for more, followed by our office Christmas party. All very fun and productive, and I must say I feel pretty good about our team and the time ahead, the usual existential uncertainty notwithstanding, but it sure was a bunch of long days. Then on top this we had a bunch of year-end deadlines and the usual last-minute scrambling.

We had a big snow a week ago, wet and heavy, lots of shoveling. But then it turned warm and rainy on Friday and it all melted. Today is the first day off I’ve had in a long time, easily filled up with random tasks and trying to find a more relaxed pace, even if only for a little while. I felt somewhat refreshed and did a full weightlifting workout, and it seemed less of struggle than it’s been of late. I also managed to go on two bike rides in December, but only five miles each time. It still seems harder than twice that distance then the weather is warm. The good news is yesterday was the solstice so the days are gonna start to get longer again.

The big event here is Lizzy and Josh got engaged over the weekend. They were visiting New York City and he proposed to her on the ice of the skating rink at Rockefeller Center. Very romantic moment. Lizzy has been guessing that Josh would propose for a while now, and is over the moon now that it’s happened. Josh is very relieved that it all went according to plan. Jeannie and Michelle and I were told ahead of time so went into the city to see the magic moment. Afterwards we met them for dinner along with Josh’s parents. Very nice people, looking forward to getting to know them better. Jeannie and I are very pleased about all this, and think Josh is great, and can see that the two of them are very happy together. They’re already starting to talk about planning the wedding.

In music world, my jazz group Spacecats is going to try and record our second album in the new year. With the drums and mics and audio interface all proved out, we’re all set to make the record here in my home studio. We have more than enough material for an album, maybe almost enough for two. Last record we made we recorded the whole thing in one long day, which was pretty exhausting by the end. This time, I’m thinking of doing it over several sessions, but still doing everything live in the studio since it’s a jazz record. For the first session I want to pick songs that Josh (different Josh) can play on the keyboard or synthesizer to eliminate one set of variables. My grand piano is upstairs in the living room and the drums and downstairs in the studio. So I figure start in the studio and see if we can get a good sound on everything there before we add an acoustic piano the mix.

My song Frozen Ocean for the Spellbound project is coming along. I tracked the lead and backing vocals, and am learning Martin’s guitar solos so I can lay down the lead guitar track. Spent some time tonight working on getting the right sound. I’ve also been listening closer to Martin’s original rhythm guitar part and am thinking of re-recording that with some different voicings closer to his original part. There’s some ninth chords in there that I didn’t pick up on first time around. Lastly, Rick is going to come over sometime during the break to check out the drum recording setup, and has agreed to play drums on the Spellbound project if I can’t get the drum parts together myself. More on that as it progresses.

Adirondack Adventure Plus Jazz

Just got back from a wonderful and relaxing vacation in the Adirondacks with our good friends Mark and Kelly. For whatever reason, Jeannie and I didn’t feel like traveling far away by plane this summer, so we kept it relatively close with a road trip within New York State.

We packed Friday night and drove up Saturday. We got lunch on the way in Lake George Village in a restaurant on the waterfront. By the time we got up there it was mid-afternoon. Lizzy and Josh happened to be spending the weekend in Lake Placid, so we met them for dinner at some nice restaurant there. Fancy cocktails all around, and yummy food. Lizzy remembered Mark and Kelly from when we used to vacation up there when she was a child, so that was a fun reunion. I think the last time she was in Lake Placid we went to see a Harry Potter movie in the theatre there.

Sunday the main event was an epic bike ride. There’s a rail trail going in either direction from Saranac Lake to Placid one way and Tupper Lake the other. Last summer we did the ride to Placid, so this time we did went towards Tupper. We didn’t get all the way into town but it was a good long ride, over twenty miles. We stopped and turned around at a park and campground at Clear Lake Pond (I think it was), where there was a nice beach for swimmin’. On the way back we stopped for lunch at a place on the side of the trail. All in all this took the better part of the day. We spent most of the evening hanging out and listening to music. Mark turned me on to a group call Tin Hat Trio. Neat stuff, sort avant-garde gypsy jazz combined with Americana and twentieth century modern classical. Excelling violin and accordion player. Mark also showed me his guitar pedal board. He’s been collecting pedals and experimenting with multiple loops and delays. Great sound and he’d getting quite good at it.

Monday was the start of the main event, a three-day camping trip to Pine Island (I think) on Lower Saranac Lake. We spent the morning getting our canoe, food and supplies together, then we drove out to the boat launch. Everything had to be brought in by canoe. Mark and Kelly have two small, single-person canoes, which Jeannie and Kelly rode, while Mark and I paddled the larger, two-person canoe. We had to make two trips, since our load shifted right when we set out, and one of our coolers slid into the water! Luckily it floated. It was a pretty long paddle, about a mile and a half, took about forty-five minutes. Mostly thru twisting bays and channels, but the last part was out in the open waters of the lake. After paddling out and back and out again we were pretty tired.

One we set up our tents, the rest of the time there was pretty mellow and blissful. The weather was hot (Jeannie and I seem to bring the hot weather with us whenever we go up to Adirondacks, Thousand Islands or Montreal) so we went swimmin’ every day. Also more canoeing, exploring the other islands on the lake, some light hiking, and hanging around making campfires and cooking. The second night we all went out to the swimmin’ rock to watch the Perseids meteor shower. Saw lots of shooting stars, and even a UFO, all glowing and swirly in the night sky for several minutes. We later learned was a detached booster from a rocket launch, falling back to Earth and burning up in the atmosphere.

Wednesday morning it was time to go. The trip back was much lighter. We’d consumed most of our food and firewood, plus Mark and Kelly left their tent since they were planning on coming back on the weekend. We had planned on hanging out on our little island until after lunch, but there was a thunderstorm coming so we packed down and lit out rather quickly. Good thing too. As we made the boat trip the looming clouds came a-rumbling in, but by the time it actually started raining we were putting our boats on our cars.

Wednesday night Mark’s band Crackin’ Foxy had a gig at a bandshell in a park over in Tupper. The band is soft of a mix of dixieland jazz and and old time country. The rhythm section is Mark on banjo accompanied by a tuba, and the horn section is a trombone, trumpet and soprano sax. All excellent players and a fun sound and repertoire. They recently lost their lead singer so everyone in the group sang a few songs. Mark invited me to sit in, so I brought my saxophone along. Funny thing, everyone else in the band except the sax player is named John, so to bring me on stage, Mark asked the audience if there was anyone out there named John who plays sax. The song I sat in on was the standard Comes Love.

Thursday it was time to head home, and we had lunch in Lake George again. Thursday night I had rehearsal with my own band. Friday was a rare complete day off, so Jeannie and I ended up unpacking our camping stuff, and doing laundry and other random tasks, but at much more relaxed pace than we would otherwise.

Saturday Jeannie and I went for a bike ride on our local rail trail. I did twenty-two and a half miles again. Jeannie’s brother Denis was in town came up to our place Saturday and came out to our gig.

Saturday night was the Spacecats’ gig at the Green Growler. We debuted about six new tunes, three originals and three covers or standards. The group is really connecting and sounding great. We’ve gotten to the point where we have our own distinctive sound, even with a wide variety of material across the spectum of jazz, funk, soul and prog. Everyone is really dynamic and interactive on the stand, listening and feeding ideas to one another. We probably have enough new material to record a second album, and may very well do so in the fall. Only problem is, we need to find a way to get more people to come out to our gigs! The place was only half full, and half of those were friends and family. Ah well, it’s August and everyone is away. Still, the music is happening, and so they’ll come eventually. Meanwhile it’s time to start reaching out to other venues so we can build the thing that way.

Origami USA 2025 Convention

July 22, 2025

Just got back from the Origami USA 2025 Convention. Lots of fun, lots, of folding, lots of friends. The big news this year is that Jeannie joined the convention committee and helped run everything on site all weekend, including leading the registration and check in. This being a volunteer organization, lots of people including myself were quite happy she stepped up to join the leadership.

Meanwhile I spent the week before the convention trying to advance some ideas I had for new models. I kinda had a hard getting back into doing origami this year. Martin passed away just two weeks after last year’s convention, and it took me until the winter to unpack my stuff, and this led to a whole reorganization of my studio. I threw out several boxes worth of old origami, and as I went thru them I rediscovered a bunch of ideas I’d been working on. I finally got out of my rut in springtime when Ilan asked me to make a video for an upcoming online event. The model was my Semi-Sunken Icosahedron, which is composed of triangle and sunken pentagonal pyramids in the shape of a ball. I perfected some internal details of the folding sequence and closure. This led me to also perfect my Dimpled Icosahedron, and a variation with hexagons and pentagons like a soccer ball.

I was on a roll, so I dusted off an idea that I had never finished before, a Dimpled Dodecahedron, where the sunken triangles make the overall form that resembles an icosidodecahedron. The dodecahedron is a very hard shape to fold, for a few reasons. First, it’s made of pentagons, and so requires a fivefold geometry throughout. Second, unlike squares, rectangles, rhombi, triangles or hexagons, pentagons do not tile the plane, so one must use a non-repeating quasicrystal pattern for the layout. Third, once you get into the 3-D part of it, the faces come together in threes, so there’s no straight lines on the internal layers that develop. They always have to turn a corner, which can get awkward and difficult.

I’d folded a version this shape before, using a layout that has the middle of a pentagonal face at the center of the paper (a.k.a. the north pole), and five flaps from the edges of the paper coming together to form the lock at the south pole. This layout works well for models such as my Stellated Dodecahedron and Great Dodecahedron, where there’s a vertex in the center of what would other wise be a pentagonal face. But it’s unsatisfactory for the Dimpled Dodecahedron, because one of the faces is not smooth but has the five pinwheel flaps coming together.

So I’ve been trying to work out a new layout where the center of the paper is a the vertex of three pentagons, and the lock is also three pentagons coming together with tabs in a spiral. Unfortunately, this layout is even harder. For one thing, it requires a decagon rather than a pentagon as the starting shape, since the central point has three wedges of 3/10 coming together for the pentagons, and a gap of 1/10. Then this gap becomes an internal ridge that has to get folded away in a zigzag fashion to get to the south pole. I folded a number of studies, but but had not worked out how to close the model by Friday afternoon when it was time to head into the city for convention.

Jeannie had gone in to the city in the morning by train, and Michelle and I drove in after she got home from work. Once we arrived it was the usual chaos and buzz of setting up my exhibit, meeting up with friends, going out to dinner and returning for late night folding. We stayed at the hotel Friday and Saturday nights since Jeannie had be there early to run the registration desk.

Saturday morning I ended up in the exhibit space talking to people the whole morning. For lunch a group of us found a Mexican restaurant that was serving breakfast burritos along with margaritas. In the afternoon I taught my first class: my Flying Saucer and Retro Rocket, two of my favorite models from my spaceship collection. Each is foldable in ten to twenty minutes. That evening a bunch of use went to an Irish pub for dinner.

When we got back I showed John Montroll my progress with my dodecahedron and explained the difficulty with the hidden layers of paper. I know he’s spent alot of time thinking and working on one-sheet polyhedra, having written several books on the topic. He took one look at my CP and immediately spotted a troublesome confluence of pentagons. He suggested an alternative layout where three pentagons come together and the negative space between them forms a sort of double fork, which can be collapsed symmetrically, thus sidestepping the turn-the-corner problem. I modified my design to take advantage of his insight and began folding a new study. This was a three-quarter sphere (nine pentagons instead of twelve) to see if the layout would work in practice before I dealt with designing the closure and the lock. Shawnuff it was a big improvement, although it took me until Sunday afternoon to get far enough to demonstrate it.

Sunday lunchtime I ran the Paper Airplane contest, this time with the help of Michelle and Paul Frasco. It’s really alot of fun and amazing how people get so into it. The space we use has a spectator gallery, which adds to the excitement. This year, in addition to the usual prizes (gift certificates for the origami store), Boice donated some high-end supercomplex books from Japan as extra prizes.

Sunday I taught another class, this time my Narwhal, which don’t believe I’ve taught before, and haven’t folded in ages. I’m kind of amazed how many people still like my book Origami Animal Sculptures, and come up to me to say it’s one of their favorite books, and ask to me sign it for them. A surprising number of people also asked me about when I’m going to publish another book. I’d love to, and indeed I have enough models for three or four books. But diagramming is alot of work, and so is pulling everything together to make a complete book out of a collection of diagrams. Right now I don’t have a publisher, so I’m looking at self-publishing on Amazon, and that’s a whole ‘nuther level of work. Not to mention that my we site is fiver year out of date for just photographing my models and posting the pics with a basic blurb.

Sunday evening a bunch of us went out to dinner at a Raman place. I ended up sitting next to Robert Lang, and he told me about his current plans and progress around rebuilding his house and his studio, both of which burned down earlier this year in wildfires. Everyone in the community is concerned for him and very supportive, and I must say his resilience and positive attitude are remarkable. His eyes lit up when he described how he’s going to build a new dream origami studio expressly for his needs. Of course it’ll be a couple years before it’s all done and ready to move in. Meanwhile he and Michael LaFosse made a stack of Origamido paper incorporate the ashes from his old studio and his countless lost origami models.

Sunday night was the Giant Folding contest, and I helped Marc Kirschenbaum judge the entries. More great fun and alot of very cool models.

Monday was pretty chill. Jeannie and I slept in late and arrived around noon, and went out to lunch with Eric Ma and Brian Webb. I spent most of the afternoon hanging out with John Montroll (his new collection is Gnomes, which are adorable and a ton of fun to fold!), Brian Chan, Jon Tucker and a few other people. Talked guitars and music with Marc Kirschenbaum. I successfully folded a full model of my dodecahedron. It’s definitely supercomplex and takes some time. But the layout clearly works and it all collapses nicely. All that remains to arrange to tabs for lock to close the model.

I talked to Nicholas Terry for a little while. He hasn’t been to OUSA in a few years, but he was special guest this year, coming over from France. He also asked about when I planned to publish another book, and after I explained my situation he offered to help. Wow, awesome, we’ll see if anything comes of it. In any event he won’t be back home for a few weeks. He brought his family out to the States and they’re taking a month-long vacation around the American west. Very cool.

So even as the convention recedes, I feel freshly motivated again. Hopefully that will translate into making time to do origami every week like I do for music. Designing, folding exhibit-quality instances of my models, photographing, making CPs, posting to my web site, diagraming, page and books layouts, etc. Eventually I’ll get into a rhythm and the results of my efforts will begin to accumulate.

Sunny

A week went by and now it’s July. To celebrate my birthday I went and saw Sungazer at the Blue Note in Manhattan. This was a different configuration than I’d seen the before. The core group of drums, bass guitar and keyboards was accompanied by not just a single sax player but by an entire big band! It was pretty mind blowing. They did big band arrangements of a bunch of their songs (plus a Duke Ellington number), which I’d describe as jazz-adjacent prog rock jam band. My kind of weird for sure. With the addition of the big band the sound was somewhere between Steely Dan, Zappa, and Joco’s Word of Mouth. I must say the band was awesome and the arrangements were great, but my only criticism is the band played just over one hour. I mean, I know how much work it is to compose, write out and rehearse all those parts, but you could’ve thrown in a drum solo and some stuff like that.

The hot weather continues, but not as hot as before. Last week I did couple more ten-mile bike rides. Trying to get out early in the morning these days to beat the heat.

It’s goal setting time at work, and in addition to the usual stuff, they want everyone to come up with and AI goal. Let’s see if I can have some fun with that…

For fourth of July we went up to Buffalo for a few days to visit my Mum and Dad. Kathleen and the kids were there, and Lizzy and Josh came over too. I must say my Mum was in much better sprits than she was back in June. My brother Jim and my nephew William came out to visit them for a couple weeks in June, and helped out with a bunch of things, so that made a big difference. Kathleen’s kids got me some awesome birthday presents. Charlie made me a 3-D printer dice jail in the form a castle, using a very cool filament that glows iridescent green blue and purple when you look at it from different angles. Way cool! And Abbie drew me a card with a picture of a Mimic that unfolds to show the teeth and gaping maw of the monster. Also Lizzy got me a pair of drumsticks from the Rock’n’Roll hall of Fame, and Michelle got me a comic book: Godzilla vs. Thor #1.

We drove up the evening of the 3rd and arrived late, stayed in a hotel in East Aurora, a cool little artsy town. I’ve always wanted to take some time to check it out. The day of the fourth we basically spent the whole time going the the park and sitting on my parent’s back porch drinking beers and barbecuing and listening to class rock. Perfect. In the evening we went to the fireworks show, which was great.

We got home last night and everyone was pretty tired. Today I had a much needed day off, but my list of thighs too is growing longer faster than my free time. Today my replacement MBox arrived and I plugged it in an it just worked with no additional hassles, at least for playback, so that’s lucky. Tomorrow I’m going to test out the recording side.

Halfway Up and Halfway Down

Well the year is half over. I guess I’ve done about half the things I wanted to this year. I certainly got alot of stuff done, and there’s certainly still alot of stuff to do.

One thing in the last half of June is finally stopped raining and went straight up to 100 degrees. It’s been above ninety most days the last week and a half. Last Saturday, right at the start of the heat wave, we had a barbecue and a party, but everyone stayed indoors until early evening when it was time to light the grill. Luckily (or by good planning) we put in the front air conditioner the night before. Kathleen and the kids came down, and so did Lizzy and Josh. Nick and Lisa and Geo and Sara came out from Long Island, and a couple of Lizzy’s friends and their boyfriends turned up too. Burgers, dogs, chicken, salads and desserts, beer and booze. Built a fire once if got dark. A great time.

Jeannie and I both had last Friday off, and it turned out to be the one cool day, so we got back into doing long bike rides. I did my usual sixteen miles, and for the first time this season broke 14mph as my average speed to reach 14.1! Probably because it was less crowded than on a weekend, so I didn’t have to slow down as often. Overall I’ve been feeling good physically. I don’t know if it’s because of the heat, or massive doses of vitamin D every time I go outside, but I’ll take it. For the last year or so I’ve been having low-grade pain in the joints of my shoulders, elbows and fingers, and that’s suddenly gone away. I think part of the reason is the handlebars on my new bike are better ergonomically. Anyway, I’m back up to 115 lbs. on my free weight dumbbells and 196 on bench press. Hoping to reach 120/200 by the end of the year.

Sunday we finally got a beach day after a couple times when the situation wasn’t right. Jeannie and I took our bikes with us and Michelle came along but mostly worked on her tan. We went to Robert Moses State Park on Fire Island. We wanted to go East from the bridge and check out the inlet, but there was no way to get there by bike, only by car on the highway or walking several miles on the beach. So we went to opposite way, past the lighthouse and biked around Kismet, a cute little beach town where they don’t have cars. Fun and interesting perceptive.

Now we’re well into summer and trying to make our plans for July and August and beyond. This weekend I made the schedule for the upcoming OUSA convention, using software I wrote with Robert Lang a few years back. I think we pretty much have all the kinks worked out by now, and everything went smoothly.

Life is a Series of Hellos and Goodbyes

Just got back from a road trip up to Buffalo, for Michelle’s graduation from college. She got a Bachelor of Civil Engineering, and has a job lined up starting in a couple weeks working on train bridges in the Bronx. We’re all very proud and she is quite psyched. Now she’s moving back in with us for the summer and maybe beyond.

We did a few things on the trip. Jeannie and I left New York on Wednesday night and drove up to Ithaca, so we we could do some hiking on Thursday. We picked a hike called Buttermilk Falls, which was quite scenic, and the weather was perfect, sunny and warm, after a long run of cold and rainy days. We arrived in Buffalo Thursday evening and went out dinner with Lizzy and Josh, and met Josh’s parents Rita and Ryan. They’re very nice people and we all got on well; it was alot of fun. It seems like this means Lizzy and Josh are getting pretty serious. He just graduated with a second degree, and tomorrow they’re going on vacation together. I wonder if he’s gonna propose to her soon.

Friday we kinda had a day off. Jeannie and I went to the Buffalo Botanical Gardens, a place I’d heard of but never been before. It’s a 19th century greenhouse modeled after the famous Crystal Palace of Victorian London, all glass with great domes and galleries. Lots of tropical jungle and desert plants, palms and cacti, and an impressive array of carnivorous plants. Afterwards we went up the Michelle’s apartment to help her pack and bring some things back to Orchard Park. That evening we met up with Larry and Jackie for the Hamburg Music Festival. Larry is a band director at Hamburg High School and some of his students were playing in small woodwind ensembles in a park right downtown. Afterward we walked around the neighborhood, where various bands were playing in all the bars. We ended up in a park with a beer tent watching a The Tragically Hip tribute band. Fun night.

Saturday was the graduation. There was a bit of last minute drama that Michelle might not be able to walk with her class because of an AP class that she never got credit for. But it all got straightened out. Technically she’s not graduation until September because she switched majors and needs to complete the last of the electives this summer. But she did the ceremony, and it was great and the Engineering and Applied Sciences school is huge, over 800 students graduating. Beforehand we went out to Board Point and took a bunch of pictures. The weather was windy and threatening but it didn’t actually rain. Afterwards we took Michell, Lizzy and Josh to a nice restaurant downtown.

Sunday morning we spent some time talking with my Mum. She’s been feeling kinda down, knowing she and my Dad are getting older, and wondering how much longer they’re going to be able to keep driving and doing other things, and what that will mean for their ability to get around and all that. No easy answers, I guess. Then we went up to Michelle’s apartment and helped her pack and load up all her stuff into her car and my SUV. It was a long drive and by the time we got home and unloaded it all, it was late and we were all pretty tired. Luckily we all had today off to relax and unwind and get ready for the next adventure. Today Michelle is looking to buy furniture.

In the Dead of Winter

We finally got some snow over the weekend, and then it turned really cold the last few days: in the teens in the daytime and single digits at night. Looks like the snow will stick around a while. Of course this meant we got to go skiing for the first time this season. We went Monday, which was a day for for me and Jeannie, and Michelle’s last day at home before going back to school. We got up early before sunrise, went up for day and got home again sometime after sunset. It was a good time, and we all had a good days skiing after getting used to it the first runs. The snow was mainly good, even great for the northeast, with just a little bit of icy patches here and there, easy enough to avoid. Only trouble it was pretty crowded, and by mid afternoon there were alot of kids taking lessons zigzagging all over the place, so we decided to call it day. All in all we skied ten runs, over four hours. Next time Jeannie and I are gonna play hooky from work and go up when the kids are all in school.

All our wintertime projects are coming along. Maintaining good health and good focus. I finished a major chunk of cleaning out my studio over the weekend, clearing the way for new origami and other projects (more on that later). Only downside is Michelle went back to school before we had a chance to watch Return of the King. The Bills are in the playoffs and have advanced to the ACF Championship (once again against the Chiefs, after beating the Ravens in an intense, high-drama matchup), so that’s cutting into our TV time. Ah well, I guess there’s spring break.

Aside: my friend Robert Lang, one of the most accomplished and creative origami artists of all time, lost both his house and his studio in the recent fires in L.A., including a lifetime of literally priceless artwork (much of it has been exhibited at galleries all over the world), all of his tools and his supply of high-end origami paper (I read that Michael LaFosse is coming out of retirement to make a new batch of origamido paper just for him.) and literally everything else except his pets and one origami cuckoo clock. My heart goes out to him and his wife. Amazingly, Robert seems pretty upbeat for the situation, or at least resilient and determined to get thru the current tragedy and rebuild.

Back here where things are more stable, our D&D campaign continues. True to their chaotic neutral alignments, the party decided to open a half-dozen doors at once at the end of the last session, revealing a captive dragon and whole host of goblins. Next session should be fun. I hope they figure out a way to get the dragon to attack the goblins, or that they can run fast. Also they’re on the verge of having enough XP for second level.

I’m also helping Charlie set up a Minecraft server on Martin’s linux box in the cloud. It turns out this is not exactly straightforward, since he wants a modded version, but we’ve made some good progress, and we’ll probably get there soon.

Most of the rest of the stuff I want to talk about has to do with music, and I think I’ll cover that in a separate post.