welcome back birthday blog

Are you ready for this? Here comes Buddha Stew in all its original glory. Musings, reflections, angst, and humorous takes on everyday life all at your quick and easy perusal.

Okay, enough of that.

So, a summer spent lifeguarding at a water park. A summer that found North Texas drenched with rain for all of June and a good part of July. A summer where I learned the difference between the rumble of thunder and the rubbery sound of an overweight person sliding through the moist skin of a wet innertube. A summer where my colleagues, young and fresh-faced with the air of self-possesed 17-year olds, lived out their seasonal dramas in catch pools and lazy rivers. A summer spent giving swim lessons to little children, some of whom irrevocably and unequivocably fell in love with me and became my small cheering fan club as I sped screaming to what seemed like my inevitable demise on the yellow speed slide (a near straight drop of 300 feet). A summer where my innate ability to tan brown as a the proverbial berry became apparent to all my Texas friends, who were previously convinced I was just as inherently pasty white as the rest of them.

I finished my last academic obligation at UNT, but failed to get the necessary paperwork in on time, and so will not be graduating officially this August but instead in December. UNT wins again! Nevertheless I continue to play in the Jazz Repetory Ensemble, which kicks my ass and takes my name and yet promises to be a lot of fun on a week-long trip to the mountain paradise of Crested Butte, Colorado.

I'm writing this from my future home of Albuquerque, NM (now affectionally known to the people I will be joining here as Albukkake), where I've been for a day and am preparing to find a place to live when I eventually move (tenative date: August 20th). I've already managed to misplace my camera at one rental possibility and am kicking myself for doing so right before going to see the legendary Bobby Shew play his own particular, highly superior, liquidy jazz licks. On Monday the quintet (Copper Street Brass!) heads up to Denver for the Summit Brass Festival, in which we hope to not only rock out but inscribe our names on the list of up-and-coming promising brass players.

And all of this is, of course, centered around the main event of my 26th birthday, a feat I never hoped to actually acheive and yet here I am, entering with great grace into what Hedwig affectionally terms my 'early late twenties'. If 25 was something else entirely (and it was...possibly one of my favorite ages so far), then I hope 26 will be just as good. Never mind that I'm speeding toward 30...this is all just too much fun. I'll miss the crowd I've assembled at UNT (jazzers, trombonists, linguists, and like-minded drinkers) but this will be fun too. Already I feel at home and already I'm planning great things.

Now, I imagine I'll have to go and take Al's dog for a walk, or she'll simultaneously combust as she poops on the floor. Not something I want to have to explain.