It's been a quiet week hangin in Sac.

It's been a while since the last substantial post to Hangininsac.

I'd like to say I was just too busy doing all sorts of way cool and interesting things, but I'd be a liar if I did. The dreaded Sacramento summer heat finally arrived last week. Daily high temperatures over 100 degrees F caught me off guard after a thankfully mild spring and early summer. I spent a lot of the last 5 or 6 days languishing in the heat. Really hiding inside from about 11 AM to 8 or 9 PM. Even with the hot afternoons, it's still been cool enough at night to have open windows and fans.

The next six weeks are normally the worst weather of the year here. It's like January in Wisconsin. After that, It'll be September and if it's too hot I can feel more justified in complaining.

While wallowing indoors, I took some time to upgrade the little computer. The Netbook came with Microsoft Works, which, in addition to being named with an oxymoron, absolutely sucks. Word was not a reasonable option, since on grounds of principle alone, I refuse to pay more for a Microsoft program than was originally paid for the computer & its original software.

Open Office came to the rescue. I am writing this on open office at this very moment. I have used the word processor a few times, and I'm starting to like it better than Word. Open office rules. I'll have to find something that needs the spreadsheet. They even have an Outlook-clone misinformation generator.

(I am trying my best to no longer refer to Microsoft as The Evil Empire, since after Steve Jobs's almost embarrassing attempt to smear Consumer Reports in retaliation for their pointing out Apples embarrassing product deficiency, we now have The Right To Choose between two Evil Empires. I just love oligarchy capitalism. (Almost as much as I love using parentheses too much.))

My hack musician career has been taking off. My flute (really flute and low part recorder) trio has been invited to play at a “private concert” of the Saturday Club. The pressure is on, because I think the Saturday Club's expects high quality performances at these events. We're scheduled to play November 20, which is the anniversary of Mexico's 1910 Revolution. That's the one that wasn't against France and didn't happen 12 days before Syttende Mai. Anyway our second rehearsal sounded pretty good for the most part. I have a lot of difficult music to learn. At the onset, I was worried about being dumped because playing a super sized plastic recorder with flutes is kind of weird. The flute “kids” seem to think the ensemble sound is OK, since they haven't kicked me out. Playing music written for flute really drives home how much easier life is with all those extra flute and clarinet keys versus the seven holes you get on a recorder. My fingers are getting a workout. Maybe that will make my typing improve.

This would all have been a lot easier if I had just originally taken up flute instead of clarinet. However, in suburban Chicago in 1970, boys did not play flute. No uhuh, it just wasn't done. Clarinet was already dangerously close to the legal limit for fem-ness. Guess I was supposed to play trombone or something manlier.

I'm about talked out. Time to get back to wood shedding.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.